The Book-Hunter
by John Hill Burton · English · Gutenberg #22136 · 811,036 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Book-Hunter
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Book-Hunter
Author: John Hill Burton
Release date: July 24, 2007 [eBook #22136]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22136
Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK-HUNTER ***
E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 22136-h.htm or 22136-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/1/3/22136/22136-h/22136-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/1/3/22136/22136-h.zip)
THE BOOK-HUNTER
[Illustration: Yours truly, J.H. Burton]
THE BOOK-HUNTER
etc.
by
JOHN HILL BURTON
D.C.L., LL.D.
Author of 'A History of Scotland,' 'The Scot Abroad,'
'The Reign of Queen Anne,' &c.
A New Edition
_With a Memoir of the Author_
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
MDCCCLXXXII
_All Rights reserved_
_PUBLISHER'S NOTE._
_The learned Author of 'THE BOOK-HUNTER,' very shortly before his death,
gave his consent that the Work should be reprinted._
_This has now been done from his own copy, with any slight additions or
emendations which it, or the notes of literary friends, supplied, and in
a form which, it is hoped, will be acceptable to all lovers of choice
books._
_A Memoir of Dr Burton, by his Widow, has been prefixed, and a copious
Index added._
_The portrait of the Author has been reproduced from a characteristic
photograph, and etched by Mr W.B. Hole, A.R.S.A. The View in the
Library, and the Vignettes of Craighouse and Dalmeny, have been drawn by
Miss Rose Burton, and engraved by Miss E.P. Burton._
45 GEORGE STREET,
EDINBURGH, _May 1882_.
_THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION._
The Author, in again laying his little book before the public, has taken
advantage of some suggestions kindly contributed by the critics who
reviewed the previous edition, and he has thus been enabled to correct a
few inaccuracies which they have courteously characterised as mere
errors of the press. Productions of this indefinite kind are apt to grow
in the hands of an author; and in the course of his revision he was
unable to resist the temptation to throw in a few additional touches
here and there, as to which he can only hope that they will not
deteriorate the volume in the eyes of those who thought well of it in
its old shape.
1863.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_CONTENTS._
PAGE
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, i
_THE BOOK-HUNTER._
Part I.--His Nature.
INTRODUCTORY, 1
A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS, 14
REMINISCENCES, 59
CLASSIFICATION, 62
THE PROWLER AND THE AUCTION-HAUNTER, 88
Part II.--His Functions.
THE HOBBY, 101
THE DESULTORY READER OR BOHEMIAN OF LITERATURE, 108
THE COLLECTOR AND THE SCHOLAR, 115
THE GLEANER AND HIS HARVEST, 124
PRETENDERS, 161
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CREATION OF LIBRARIES, 168
THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE, 205
LIBRARIANS, 227
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, 233
Part III.--His Club.
CLUBS IN GENERAL, 243
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK CLUBS, 251
THE ROXBURGHE CLUB, 265
SOME BOOK-CLUB MEN, 283
Part IV.--Book-Club Literature.
GENERALITIES, 311
JOHN SPALDING, 330
ROBERT WODROW, 338
THE EARLY NORTHERN SAINTS, 352
SERMONS IN STONES, 404
INDEX, 419
List of Illustrations.
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, _Frontispiece._
THE AVENUE, CRAIGHOUSE, i
CRAIGHOUSE, lix
DALMENY CHURCHYARD, civ
A NOOK IN THE AUTHOR'S LIBRARY, 1
[Illustration: _The Avenue, Craighouse._]
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I.
ABERDEEN.
_Parentage--Patons--Grandholm--Jersey--"Peninsular War"--School and
schoolmasters--Flogging--College--Competition for bursaries--Home
life--Aunt and grand-aunt--Holiday rambles--Letter._
John Hill Burton, the subject of this notice, was born on the 22d of
August 1809, in the Gallowgate of Aberdeen. He was wont to style
himself, as in his childhood he had heard himself described, "The last
of the Gallowgate bairns;" the Gallowgate being an old part of Aberdeen
devoted chiefly to humble trade, no one, in modern times at least, even
distantly connected with gentility living there.
His father, William Kinninmont Burton, is believed to have been an only
son, and no kith or kin of his were ever seen or heard of by his
children. The only relic of their father's family possessed by them is a
somewhat interesting miniature on ivory, well painted in the
old-fashioned style, representing a not beautiful lady in antique
head-dress and costume, and marked on the back "Mary Burton." William
Kinninmont Burton held a commission in the army, though he had not been
originally intended for a military life. He was, it is supposed, engaged
in trade in London when the military enthusiasm, excited by the idea of
an invasion of Great Britain by Napoleon, fired him, like so many other
young men, into taking up arms as a volunteer. In the end of last
century he came to Aberdeen as a lieutenant in a regiment of
"Fencibles," or some such volunteer title, and there captivated the
affections of a beautiful young lady, Miss Eliza Paton, a daughter of
the laird of Grandholm, an estate four miles distant from Aberdeen. Of
this lady and of her family a few words must be said.
So small was the value of land in Scotland in the beginning of the
century, that it is safe to suppose the estate of Grandholm yielded less
than one-third of its present rental. The circumstances and social
position of the family were, besides, seriously lowered by the
extraordinary character of the then laird. John Paton, grandfather of
Dr Burton, was a man not devoid of talent, and of a strikingly handsome
gentlemanly appearance and manner. He married, early in life, a
beautiful Miss Lance, an Englishwoman, who, after bearing him ten
children in about as many years, fell into a weak state of health, of
mind as well as body. The laird nursed his wife devotedly for a long
period of years, cherishing her to the exclusion of all other persons or
interests. His children he regarded as the enemies of his adored wife,
and consequently of himself, and his conduct to them from first to last
was little less than brutal. When the enfeebled wife at last died, the
husband's grief verged on madness.
He would not allow her body to be buried in the ordinary manner, but
caused a tomb to be erected in a wood near the house of Grandholm, where
the corpse was placed in an open coffin, and where the bereaved husband
could go daily to bewail his loss. The distracted mourner rejected all
attentions from children, relatives, or friends, yet apparently dreaded
being left alone, for he advertised for a male companion or keeper to
bear him company. The writer has often heard Dr Burton amuse himself and
his audience by describing the extraordinary varieties of struggling
humanity who applied for the situation. Ultimately, it is believed, none
of them was selected, and the laird fled from his natural home, and from
that time till his death lived chiefly in London, leaving his large
young family to take care of themselves as they best could.
The three sons went successively to India or other foreign parts, and
died there, one of them leaving a son, whose family are the present
possessors of Grandholm.
Of the seven daughters--several of whom were very handsome--two only
were married, namely, Eliza, who became Mrs Burton, mother of the
historiographer; and Margaret, who espoused rather late in life a Dr
Brown, and continued as a widow to inhabit an old house belonging to the
Grandholm family in Old Aberdeen till June 1879, when she died at the
age of ninety-eight.
The young family, thus deserted by their natural protector, fell chiefly
under the authority of his eldest daughter, Mary--said, of all his
children, to most resemble the laird himself.
Among this lady's nephews and nieces there linger strange traditions of
the violence of her temper, and of the intensity of her loves and hates.
It is hardly necessary to say that none of the females at least of the
family received any particular education.
Mary was a woman of strong natural abilities, and of an excellent
business faculty. She managed the very small resources left at her
command with consummate skill, and in her later years made of Grandholm
a hospitable, cheerful, old-fashioned home for those whom it pleased her
to receive there. Her sister Eliza's marriage had not pleased her. There
was much to justify her objection to it; William Burton, not then
holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary resources.
His strongest talent seems to have been for painting, and by such
occupation as he could get in drawing and painting in London he was
barely able to maintain himself. The old grandfather and his lieutenant,
aunt Mary, have been described to the writer in the darkest colours as
having constantly interposed between the true lovers, William Burton and
his beloved Eliza Paton, who, in spite of all advice to the contrary,
soon became his wife. What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter Mary
did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions
themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it impossible
to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into her paternal
home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder brother. The
wife, of course, earnestly and constantly desired to rejoin her husband.
The father and sister declined to facilitate her doing so by paying the
expense of her return journey, concluding that if her husband was unable
to meet that outlay, he was not in a position to maintain her beside
himself.
After some six or eight years of mutual longing for each other's
society, separated by the distance of London from Aberdeen, William
Burton succeeded in exchanging his position in the Fencibles for a
lieutenancy in a line regiment under orders for India. There also he
went unaccompanied by his wife. After brief service in India he had to
return home in ill health. Then at last the husband and wife were
reunited; first to live together for a time in Aberdeen--afterwards to
go with their two sons to Jersey.
The eldest son, William, ten years older than John, afterwards went into
the Indian army, and died in India, leaving a son and daughter.
John Hill Burton's earliest recollections dated from his stay with his
parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811
or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he
remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine
recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady
Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who
showed some slight kindness towards him and other garrison children.
The greatest adventure of Dr Burton's unadventurous life occurred when
he was returning with his parents from Jersey, in a troop-ship. The
vessel was chased by a French privateer, and for some time the little
family had reason to fear becoming inmates of a French prison. It was
this incident which Dr Burton used in his later life to say entitled him
to assert that he had been in the Peninsular War. The homeward journey
from Jersey was to Aberdeen, which it is believed Lieutenant Burton and
his family never left again till his death. His failing health obliged
him to retire from active service on the half-pay of a lieutenant. His
wife, from some writings to be hereafter mentioned, seems also to have
enjoyed an allowance of £40 per annum from her father.
Besides William and John Hill, there were born in Aberdeen to William
Burton and Eliza Paton three sons--two of whom died early, one of them
being accidentally drowned in the Don at Grandholm--and one daughter.
The surviving brother of Dr Burton is a retired medical officer of the
East India Company. The sister, Mary, remains unmarried.
The little household established in Aberdeen about the year 1812 knew
the woes of failing health and narrow means, part of the latter doled
out to them by an unwilling hand. Lieutenant Burton's health continued
to decline till his death, about the year 1819. His son John was then
ten years old, and had begun his school education.
His recollections of schools and schoolmasters were vivid and
picturesque. The one schoolmaster--almost the only teacher--to whom he
acknowledged any obligation, was James Melvin. To him, he was wont to
say, he owed his good Scotch knowledge of Latin; and he delighted even
till the end of his life in dwelling on Dr Melvin's methods of teaching,
and on the fine spirit of generous emulation and eagerness for knowledge
which inspired his pupils.
Both before and after the time of his studies under Dr Melvin he had
experience of schoolmasters of a different type. The tales of flogging
under these pedagogues were so absolutely sickening, that Dr Burton's
family used to beg him to stop his narrations to spare their feelings.
He had beheld, though he had never undergone, the old-fashioned process
of flogging by _heezing up_ the culprit on the back of the
school-porter, so as to bring his bare back close to the master's lash.
The trembling victim, anticipating such punishment, used to be sent to
summon the porter. He frequently returned with a half-sobbing message,
"Please, sir, _he says_ he's not in." The fiction did not lead to
escape. Cromar was the name of the chief executioner in these scenes.
Detested by his pupils, he was a victim to every sort of petty
persecution from them, so that cruelty acted and reacted between him and
them. On one memorable occasion he flogged John Burton with such
violence as to cause to himself an internal rupture.
The offence which led to this unmeasured punishment was "looking
impudent!"--and the look of supposed impudence was produced by a
temporarily swollen lip; but the swollen lip was the effect of a single
combat with a schoolfellow; and fighting was so rife, and so severely
repressed, that it appeared less dangerous to meet the consequences of
the supposed impertinent face than those of the battle. The unfortunate
pupil of course continued to grimace, and the wretched schoolmaster to
flog, till the pupil streamed with blood, and the master sat down from
sheer exhaustion and an injury from which he never recovered.
Before John Hill Burton had completed his course at the grammar school
he gained a bursary by competition, and began his studies at Marischal
College. The open competition for bursaries at Aberdeen was a subject
on which he delighted to talk, often with tears of enthusiasm in his
eyes. The entire impartiality, the complete openness of these
competitions to the whole world, the spectacle of high learning freely
offered to whoever could by merit earn it, seemed to Dr Burton, to his
life's end, as fine a subject of contemplation as any the world could
offer. During his last illness, a friend, who knew his strong interest
in his Alma Mater, presented him with Mr M'Lean's 'Life at a Northern
University.' He read it with the utmost delight, often reading passages
aloud with great emotion, on account of the vivid picture they presented
of the scenes of his youth. It was a rough hard life that of an Aberdeen
College student fifty or sixty years ago.
Mr M'Lean says of his fellow-students: "As the most of them came from
the country--generally from the Highlands and Western Islands of
Scotland--they brought with them all their native roughness and
coarseness of manners. The great majority of those who had spent their
lives in town frequented the neighbouring university,[1] where the
entrance and other examinations were not nearly so severe. In general,
the great bulk of the students were far behind in good manners, and that
polish which a large town always gives. Their secluded habits when at
college, and their intercourse only with their own number, prevented any
improvement in this matter. On the whole, their conduct in the class,
and their behaviour towards some of the professors, were anything but
gentlemanly."[2]
[Footnote 1: Marischal College. Mr M'Lean's descriptions refer to
King's; but the two colleges, close together, must have been pretty
similar in their manners and customs even before they were, as they now
are, formally united.]
[Footnote 2: Life in a Northern University. By Neil M'Lean, author of
'Memoirs of Marshal Keith,' 'Romance of the Seal and Whale Fishing,'
&c., &c. Glasgow; John S. Marr & Sons: London; Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.
1874.]
Another quotation from Mr M'Lean may be allowed, as embodying the
descriptions often given by Dr Burton of the motley crew of competitors
for the scholarships and bursaries dispensed by the university: "Gazing
round the room, I noted that my competitors consisted of raw-boned
red-haired Highlandmen, fresh from their native hills, with all their
rusticity about them. All the northern counties had sent their quota to
swell the number, and even the Orkney and Shetland Islands were
represented. Many rosy-faced young fellows were also to be seen, who had
left their country occupations for a little, and who, if
unsuccessful"--_i.e._, in gaining a bursary--"would return to them, and
work in their leisure hours at their favourite classics until another
competition came round. Here and there were to be seen a few rather
better dressed than the rest; whilst amongst the crowd the eye rested on
many a studious, thin, cadaverous, hard-worked face, which made you look
again, and feel in your heart that there sat a bursar. A more motley
crowd, as respects age, dress, and features, could scarcely be found
anywhere; and yet over all there was an intellectual, manly look, a look
of innocence and unacquaintance with the low ways of the world."[3]
[Footnote 3: Life in a Northern University.]
Among this motley crowd John Hill Burton was no model student. He took
his full share of the rough sport so well described in the 'Northern
University'--wrenched off door-knockers and house-bells, transplanted
sign-boards, &c. He was but a schoolboy in years when he left school for
college, and his mother was frequently obliged to provide him with a
private tutor, not so much to assist him in his studies as to keep him
from idleness during his hours at home. Home was, during these years,
for a time sad, and was always quiet. During his father's lifetime it
was diversified by frequent changes of abode within a very narrow
circuit.
The writer has seen some half-dozen small houses, in a rather unlovely
suburb of Aberdeen, all within sight of each other, which had
successively been inhabited by Lieutenant Burton and his family; the
poor invalid craving for the real change which might have benefited his
health, and seeking relief, instead, in constant change of house. Mrs
Burton was entitled to an abode at Grandholm as well as her sisters, and
the little family went there occasionally, at least after Lieutenant
Burton's death. The place, which is a rather interesting one, filled a
considerable space in the affections of the children. Its inmates did
not. Clearly sister Eliza never was forgiven for her unfortunate
marriage. Affection for her husband and for his memory prevented her
apologising for it, and her children were not of the sort to apologise
for their existence. A series of petty slights, small unkindnesses,
imbittered the mind of the poverty-stricken widow against her unmarried
sisters, and her feeling was strongly inherited by her children.
A house in Old Aberdeen has been already mentioned as the abode of Mrs
Margaret Brown, Dr Burton's last surviving aunt. This quaint old house
had been purchased by Mrs Brown's grandmother, mother of the laird of
Grandholm, and at the beginning of the century was inhabited by her
maiden daughter Margaret, or, as she was oftener called, Peggy Paton.
This lady lived to the age of ninety, and at her death left her house
and fortune to her niece and name-daughter, Margaret Paton (Mrs Brown),
who in her turn adopted a grand-niece, the daughter already mentioned of
Dr Burton's eldest brother, William,--the same who, having nursed her
aged aunt till her death, in the last year of his life so tenderly
ministered to her uncle, the subject of this notice.
The second in the line of female owners of the old house, Peggy Paton,
was, for the outer world, what George Eliot calls "a charicter"--one of
those distinguishing features of country-town life which the march of
improvement has swept away: a lady by birth, but owing little to
schools or teachers, books or travel: a woman of strong natural
understanding and some wit, who loved her nightly rubber at whist, could
rap out an oath or a strong pleasantry, and whose quick estimates of men
and things became proverbs with the younger generation.
For her inner circle Peggy Paton was a most motherly old maid. She it
was who, when she found her niece Eliza _would_ marry Lieutenant Burton,
mediated between father and daughter, and arranged matters as well as
might be in an affair in which her good sense found much to disapprove,
and her heart much to excuse. Not only to her niece Margaret, her
adopted daughter, but also to her other nieces at Grandholm, motherless
by death, and fatherless by desertion, did she fill a mother's part as
far as these robust virgins would permit her. Sister Eliza's rough
little children, or rougher great boys, always found kindness in the
house in the Old Town, first in their grand-aunt's[4] time, and
afterwards in that of her successor, Mrs Brown. David, Dr Burton's
younger brother, was lovingly tended by them during part of the
lingering illness of which he died, and the youngest of Eliza Paton's
sons remained an inmate of Mrs Brown's house that he might continue his
education in Aberdeen, when his mother removed to Edinburgh.
[Footnote 4: It may not be counted indelicate, as it refers to a period
120 years gone by, to mention that Peggy Paton once had a lover, and
that this, her first lover, was no other than the son of that Moir of
Stoneywood, whose correspondence is so frequently quoted in Dr Burton's
'History of Scotland.' The young man was Peggy's first cousin, the
lairds of Grandholm and Stoneywood having married sisters--Mackenzie by
name. The laird of Stoneywood is known to posterity by his ingenious
achievement of ferrying the rebel army across the Dornoch Firth in small
fishing-boats collected by Stoneywood all along the coast. On the defeat
of the Pretender, and the suppression of the insurrection in 1746,
Stoneywood's estate was confiscated, and he fled to the Continent.
Family tradition adds that his escape was achieved by his disguising
himself as a miller and swimming across the Don from Stoneywood to
Grandholm, where the laird of Grandholm, who was of opposite politics,
had removed the ferry-boat, and saw but did not denounce his kinsman.
The houses of Grandholm and Stoneywood are exactly opposite each other
on the two sides of the Don. Mrs Moir of Stoneywood did not immediately
follow her husband, but remained with her friends to bring up her
children, among them Miss Peggy's lover, who, soon after his engagement
to her, joined his father on the Continent and there died.]
For those who do not know Aberdeen, it may be proper to say that _Old_
Aberdeen is as entirely distinct from New Aberdeen as Edinburgh is from
Leith--in a different way. The distance between them is somewhat
greater, about two miles; and whereas New Aberdeen is a highly
prosperous commercial city, as entirely devoid of beauty or interest as
any city under the sun, Old Aberdeen is a sweet, still, little place,
hardly more than a village in size, in appearance utterly unlike any
other place in Scotland, resembling a little English cathedral
town,--the towers and spires of college and cathedral beautifully seen
through ancient trees from the windows of Miss Peggy Paton's old house,
to which that managing lady added a wing, and which possessed a good
flower and fruit garden, wherein grew plenty of gooseberries, ever Dr
Burton's favourite fruit. His birthday, 22d August, was, during his
mother's life, always celebrated by a family feast of them.
Such were the scenes and circumstances of Dr Burton's childhood and
early youth. As he grew old enough to begin those long walks which to
the end were the great pleasure of his life, he made acquaintance with
the beautiful scenery of the Upper Dee and Don. In holiday time his
mother used to give him a small sum of money, at most one pound, and
allow him to travel as far as the amount would take him. His legs were
almost always his only conveyance; throughout his life he entertained an
aversion to either riding or driving. His temper was too impatient, too
energetic, to allow him to enjoy progress without exertion. After
railways existed he sometimes used them in aid of his walking power; but
all horse vehicles were odious to him, partly by reason of an excessive
tenderness for animals. He could not bear to see a horse whipped, or any
living creature subjected to bodily pain.
Wonderful are the accounts the writer has heard of the duration of that
holiday pound: how Dr Burton and sometimes a chosen companion would
subsist day after day on twopence-worth of oatmeal, that by so doing
they might travel the farther; or how, having improvidently finished
their supply, they would walk some incredible distance without any food
at all, till they reached either their home or the house of some friend.
In these holiday rambles Dr Burton made the acquaintance of several
families either more or less related to him through his Grandholm
kindred, or willing, in the old Scotch fashion, to extend hospitality to
any wayfarer who needed it. In this way Dr Burton has described himself
as the guest of Mrs Gordon at Abergeldie, who, as he said, made a
request that when he came to visit her he would if possible arrive
before midnight. Invercauld, Glenkindie, Tough, and many other
country-houses, were visited in the same unceremonious way.
The letter here given was written to his mother during one of these
holiday rambles, when its writer was about twenty, and describes some of
the scenes of the wonderful flood of '29, so graphically described by
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. The Colonel H. was the son of Dr Burton's
godfather, and a man of mature years at the time the Highlander and Dr
Burton describe him as having "run away." The writer can offer no
explanation of this rather amusing passage in the letter: it might
either be a mere joke or refer to some family quarrel of the Colonel's.
"LAKEFIELD, _8th September 1829_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have just arrived at Lakefield in the midst of
determined and ceaseless rain. I expected of course to meet A.H.
here, but it seems he ran away the other day, and will by this time
be in Aberdeen. He wrote to Mrs Grant from Elgin, but she has not
yet heard of his arrival in Aberdeen.
"In my way here I ran a risk of being violently used for his sake.
As I was perambulating slowly the border of Loch Ness I met a tall,
gaunt-looking man, who eyed me rather suspiciously, and stretched
forth his hands in the attitude of one interrupting a stray sheep.
I looked at the being in my turn, and began to be a little
suspicious of his purpose, and to think of my dirk. The man
approached nearer still in the attitude of making a spring. When he
had come so close that I could hardly escape him, he roared out:
'Is't you 'at's the laad Colonel H. 'at's been runnan' awa'?' 'No,'
said I, 'I am not.'
"The man continued to eye me rather suspiciously, and then went
slowly away. I suppose he hoped to be rewarded for me. I have told
you that I got rain. When I was proceeding to Huntly, as you are
aware, in the coach, there came two or three heavy gusts of wind
from the hills, carrying along with it a sort of soft drizzle, but
nothing like rain, and the roads appeared dry. After I had passed
Keith, however, the whole country had a drenched and draggled
appearance, the burns were swollen, the corn was hanging like wet
hair, the trees were drooping and black, and the country people
themselves looked as if they had been held in water for the last
six months. A heavy and unceasing rain came on. The clouds grew
black and seemed to settle, everything had a ghastly and dismal
appearance. I met a man, and asked him if it always rained here.
'Ou ay, sir,' replied he, 'it's the parish o' _Rayne_.' I was
content with the answer, and asked nothing more. In a condition you
may easily imagine, I reached Elgin and dried myself. The rain
stopped, but the clouds did not clear. I went and visited the
cathedral, and wandered about the ruins for an hour or two. It is a
noble and beautiful building, but I will not begin to speak about
it, as the post leaves in a few minutes. On Saturday afternoon I
left Elgin for Forres, with the hope of better weather. During the
walk I could hardly persuade myself I was out of Aberdeenshire, the
country is so very like, but it is rather flatter. Next morning was
clear and cloudless, and the sun shone bright over a country
drenched and covered with water. I wished that day to reach
Inverness, but a new difficulty appeared. I was told that the
Findhorn was so swollen that no mortal man could get across. I saw
the boatman going to his ferry-house, and I followed him to see how
the matter stood. I soon came to a deep and rapid sweep of water,
which appeared to spread far beyond two narrow banks which might
have formerly bounded it. This I thought to be the Findhorn, but
ere I went many paces farther another sight met my eyes--the real
river itself dashing through the glen with an awful majesty, and
carrying roots, trees, and herbage of every description hurriedly
over its broad breast. In the midst of this scene of devastation
appeared the ruins of a noble bridge, nothing but the piers
remaining, and these dashing to pieces in the furious current. The
stream I had seen at first was the river flowing down the road. The
river fell in the evening, and I crossed the ferry. I had two days
of most delightful weather, and yesterday evening I had a sunset
and moonlight walk by the side of Loch Ness, among the most noble
scenery I ever beheld. The sky was perfectly clear, and without a
single cloud.
"I must now finish, as the post is going away. If you see Joseph
[_i.e._, the late Joseph Robertson, a constant companion and
attached friend], tell him I will write to him soon and have a deal
to say to him, particularly of my discovering a sculptured stone in
Elgin Cathedral. Notwithstanding the fineness of the evening, this
day is determinedly rainy. If you see any of the H.'s, give Mrs
Grant's compliments.--Adieu for the present; and I remain, my dear
mother, your affectionate and dutiful son,
"J. HILL BURTON."
The writer has heard many farther details of the excursion of which this
letter records the beginning. The temporary clearing up of the weather
referred to was but a hollow truce in the tremendous elemental warfare
of that memorable autumn. The flood described in the Findhorn was but a
faint precursor of the wave sixty feet high, which, a week or two later,
burst through the splendid girdle of rock which at Relugas confines that
loveliest of Scotch rivers, and spread over the fertile plain beneath,
changing it into a sea. At some points in Morayshire, the enormous
overflow of the rivers broke down the banks which bound the ocean, and
permanently changed the coast-line of the country. The most striking and
extraordinary part of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's description of this flood
is an extract from the log of a sailing packet--a sea-going
vessel--which directed its course over and about the plain of Moray,
picking the inhabitants off the roofs of their houses, or such other
elevations as they could reach.
Dr Burton had the good fortune to see the Fall of Foyers during this
great flood, and had the temerity to cross its stream, which lay on his
road, upon a remaining parapet of the fallen bridge!
CHAPTER II.
EDINBURGH.
_Apprenticeship in lawyer's office--Grandfather's letter--J.H. Burton's
letters to his mother, conveying first impressions of Edinburgh, and
account of passing Civil Law trial._
On the completion of his studies, John Burton was apprenticed to a
writer in Aberdeen. He has talked of this period as one of the most
painful of his life. He was utterly unable to master the routine of
office-work, or to submit to its restraints; and one of his most joyful
days was that in which his indentures were, by mutual desire, cancelled.
A piece of yellow old paper was found in Dr Burton's desk when he died.
It was a letter written some fifty-five years before, and had probably
lain there during all these years. As it refers to this period of Dr
Burton's life, it may be given. It seems fully to bear out the writer's
conception of the unsympathising character of the intercourse between
Mrs Burton and her family. No stronger incentive to exertion could have
been offered to a man of Dr Burton's character, than the desire to
falsify the implied prediction of such a missive. With a view to its
effect in this way it had probably been given him by his mother. It is
an entire letter, and the whole is here printed.
"GRANDHOLM, _June 6th_.
"DEAR ELIZA,--I have this day received a letter from my father,
part of which I think it necessary to transcribe to you, as the
best mode of giving you his meaning.
"'The account of John Burton's being in such an idle unemployed way
displeases me much. I wish you, Mary, would speak to his mother on
the subject; tell her I would have acquainted her with my
displeasure before now, only, on account of her misfortune in her
family [this must refer to the death of her son David], I deferred
what I ought to have done. Why was he taken away from his
attendance at Mr Winchester's office? Doctor Dauney said he could
not be better than with him, as there was plenty of business, such
as was going. Tell her that as I have neither funds nor inclination
to support idle gentlemen, or rather vagabonds, I have given
directions to Mr Alcock not to pay up her next half-year's annuity,
till he hears from me on the subject, and until she gives you
satisfactory accounts concerning her son's return to Mr
Winchester's office or otherwise. Tell her not to write to me, but
to act as is her duty.'"
The sister here continues, "I hope Mary [Dr Burton's only sister,
the youngest child of his mother] continues well, and that you will
not fail to give me an answer to this, as you see it will be
absolutely necessary to give attention to the subject. Barbara
continues very unwell.--I remain yours sincerely, M. PATON."
Whether the threat conveyed in this letter was executed, the writer has
now no means of knowing. The expression of it alone was cruel
enough--the threat to starve a poor mother into forcing a son to
continue a business utterly repugnant to him. Mrs Burton, however, did
not protect herself by the sacrifice of her son. She believed in her
son's powers, and acted on her belief in spite of all opposition; and
she had her reward. She lived to see her son gaining fame in letters,
and to find in him the utmost devotion a son can show to a mother. He
never forgot or failed to acknowledge his obligations to her. These were
undoubtedly great. She not only gave him, in part personally, his
education, but when that was finished, and she hoped to find peace for
her declining years in the little home she had prepared for herself, she
sacrificed that also to her hope of her son's advancement--her faith in
his talents and perseverance.
With the death of her husband, perhaps also on account of that of her
father, and the loss of her two little sons, Mrs Burton's pecuniary
position seems to have become somewhat easier. Whilst her son John was
destined for business in Aberdeen, she had built a small house for her
own occupation in the neighbourhood. When he set his mind on the higher
walk of his profession, and desired to come to the Scotch Bar, the
necessary expense could only be compassed by the devoted mother selling
her newly built house, and casting in her lot with her son. She, her
young daughter, and an Aberdeenshire maiden (so primitive in her ideas,
that she conceived the only way of reaching Edinburgh from Warriston
must be by _wading_ the Water of Leith), followed John to Edinburgh, and
took up their abode in a very small house on the north side of Warriston
Crescent in the year 1831.
Dr Burton was no great letter-writer. After he began, as he said, to
write for print, he considered it waste of time to write anything which
was not to be printed, except in briefest form. His letters to his wife
and family during absences on the Continent or elsewhere, seldom
contained more than a bare itinerary, past and future, often referring
them for particulars to the article in 'Blackwood,' which was to grow
out of his travels.
His mother was naturally the recipient of the writing which came before
the days of print,--before the days of penny postage also. Almost every
letter contains a history of how his mother's last reached him, as well
as how he hoped to have that which he is writing conveyed to her without
paying the awful tax of postage.
The next letters here offered belong to the beginning of his Edinburgh
life, and relate to a feat of mental exertion equal to his bodily
performances. He was at the time living in lodgings, for the purpose of
passing his legal examinations preparatory to coming to the Bar; but he
may be allowed to give the history of this part of his life entirely in
his own words.
"EDINBURGH, _3d Nov. 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have just arrived here, and as there is a
friend of Mr Dauney's just about to set off for Aberdeen, I
preferred letting you get a bit of a note or so to sending you a
newspaper. Of course I have nothing to write you about but my own
concerns. A delightful moonlight night for travelling, but the
coach rather full: there were three nice children, with whom I
contrived to amuse myself. All went on well till we came to
Burntisland Ferry, where we had to proceed so far in an open boat.
The sea poured in in a rather disagreeable manner; and while I
thought every one was getting a good ducking but myself, a large
miscreant of a wave contrived to escape every other passenger, and
to settle right upon my shoulders. I have not yet secured a
lodging in Edinburgh, but have been wandering through all the
streets admiring. Of the Old Town I think far more than of the New,
it is so majestic and magnificent, and am resolved, if I can, to
live in it.
"I dined at Mr Dauney's to-day. He has requested me to stay with
him till I can get lodgings conveniently, but I expect to be stowed
away to-morrow. I delivered Mr Innes's parcel; and remain, my dear
mother, your most affectionate son, J. HILL BURTON.
"_P.S._--I would have written you a long letter, but do not wish to
absent myself from table."
* * * * *
"11 KEIR STREET, EDINBURGH,
_Tuesday Evening, 9th Nov. 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I take the opportunity of Mr Innes's parcel,
which leaves this to-morrow afternoon, to give you a more succinct
account of my affairs than you could derive from my laconic epistle
of last week. I must, however, preface by requesting you to write
me as soon as you conveniently can, either by Innes or L. Smith's
conveyance, as I am anxious to hear the state of your cold, and how
James is succeeding at school.
"When I dismounted from the coach I was peculiarly struck by the
sight of magnificent streets, with scarcely a human being to be
seen along them. I expected to have found them of that crowded
description so often characteristic of a metropolis; but to one who
is accustomed to see our grand mercantile thoroughfare, the
paucity of perambulators in _some_ of the streets of Edinburgh
appears rather peculiar. _Others_ I found at particular periods to
be thickly inhabited. My first course was to direct my course
through the rain to G.B.'s dwelling, where I found him reading a
large Bible. He appears to have carried fanaticism to a ridiculous
pitch, unworthy of his education and station in life. He put into
my hands a tract (composed I am afraid by himself), with
injunctions to read it. I intend to send it to you as a curiosity.
His brother Charles, whom I best knew, used to be a clever and
sensible boy, very well informed; I hope he, too, is not also among
the prophets. How few steer a middle course! G.B. cannot do the
most trifling act without connecting it with religion. It is a mere
disease. Others never think of it at all. I think it is Dr Johnson
who says something to this effect: '----was mad, and showed it by
kneeling down and saying his prayers on the street. Now there are
many men who are not mad, yet I am afraid are worse than poor ----,
for they never pray at all.' But to return--I inquired at Mr B. if
he could recommend me to any cheap and respectable lodging. After
applying some thought to the subject, he began to recollect that he
did know of one or two. With regard to one the address was rather
imperfect, as he knew neither the name nor the number, but had a
guess of the street. The other I discovered, and now occupy,
although he gave me both a wrong name and wrong number.
"Immediately on leaving B.'s I went to Dauney, who appeared glad to
see me, and kindly asked me to dine with him. He has a very
handsome house. Mrs Dauney is a very agreeable person, and they
have two children. He would not hear of my leaving him till I had
got accommodated with good lodgings. The rooms I now occupy I did
not enter till yesterday. They were inhabited by a person just
about to leave them, and I had no recommendation to others so well
situated. The person who keeps the lodgings is named M'Gregor. I
have a room and closet, neat enough, for which I pay 8s. a-week,
which includes coals. I could not have a place nearly so cheap in
the New Town. The situation is delightful. It is behind the Old
Town, and the windows look across towards it and the Castle, just
as those in Union Terrace look towards Belmont Street. The view
extends as far as the Firth of Forth.
"There are, moreover, other advantages. Heriot's Hospital and the
old city wall are close by; and when I choose I may, in going to
the New Town, pass through the West Port and the Grassmarket.
"I have been a good deal annoyed about my luggage, which has not
yet been sent up, so that you may imagine some of my present
drapery has been worn long enough.
"I directed a person, calling himself the Clyde Shipping Company's
agent here, to get them sent up last Saturday, which was to be done
'pointedly.' I amused myself from day to day annoying the man, till
at last his patience appeared determined to weather out mine, so I
went to Leith to-day and saw after them myself--found the man had
nothing to do whatever with the concern, and neither could nor did
give directions. The clerk, after blessing himself the usual number
of times, stated his opinion that it would have been better for
both parties had they left his office some time ago, so I expect to
see them early to-morrow. I will let you know of their safe arrival
if before three. I read your poetry[5] all over, but did I begin to
remark on it here I would exceed the limits which a narration of
facts has left me. It has afforded me much pleasure in the
loneliness, which, of course, I feel a little at first. However, I
cannot say it makes me at all sad. There is something independent
and free in the idea that none of the vast multitude you are among
cares more for your life or welfare than the breeze that passes. I
begin my studies to-morrow, and if I behave properly will have a
good deal to do.
[Footnote 5: Mrs Burton wrote verses well. She occasionally
published in the 'Gentleman's Magazine.']
"By the way, I may here mention a somewhat important circumstance.
The greater part of the entrance fee is paid immediately on passing
the Civil Law trial, which you know I wished to do this spring. The
whole fee is less than £300, and the part payable _then_ is more
than £200. The fees are to be raised, but the increase cannot be
levied upon me; it only applies to those who have not commenced
their studies at the period of raising. Speak to R. Alcock about
this. I daily meet troops of Aberdonians. I dined on Friday last
with a young man, Fordyce, and yesterday with Mr J. Jopp. I
calculate I have about fifty fellow-citizens connected with law
here....
"_Wednesday, half-past two._--Just got my luggage--cost 8s. All
right, save that your jars have bolted, and played the very deuce
with some of my books, two waistcoats, and a pair of drawers.
"Hoping your cold is better, I remain, my dear mother, your
affectionate and dutiful son,
"J. HILL BURTON."
* * * * *
"11 KEIR STREET, EDINBURGH,
_20th Nov. 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have scarcely an instant's time to say a word
or so in reply to yours.... It was not _one_ of the jars which
burst, but there was a general conspiracy among them all to slip
out at the side of the paper.
"I do not board for anything, just get in a little bit of meat or
anything I want, can take my own way, and am never annoyed. I
breakfasted and dined last Sunday with Mr H. Constable, who is a
very agreeable young fellow. He is the proprietor of the
Miscellany.[6] By the way, I find out that if I do not pass my
Civil Law trial before 1832 I shall be compelled to pay £50 to a
Widows' Fund. Too bad to make young fellows, who may never have a
_widow_ all their _lives_, pay so much. Determined, if I pay it, to
get a widow immediately....
[Footnote 6: Probably a mistake. He was the brother of the
proprietor.]
"Breakfasted to-day with the B.'s. At the theatre with Mellis day
before yesterday. I hope Mary continues better.--Your affectionate
son, J. HILL BURTON."
* * * * *
"11 KEIR STREET, EDINBURGH,
_1st Dec. 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have got something to communicate with regard
to my prospects of entering the Faculty, which will not be of the
most agreeable nature. I was told from the proper authority (I have
already mentioned to you) that a Widows' Fund subscription is to be
charged against those who enter after 1st January 1832. I have
consulted the Act of Parliament, and find it is leviable against
those who enter after 1st January 1831. The last examination this
year will be on _Tuesday week_,--the last for passing which £50 and
an annual payment of £7 is not charged. Now for this examination I
intend to prepare myself, unless you inform me _immediately_ that
the money, £213, cannot be obtained. See Mr Alcock immediately, and
explain this, but tell it to _no other person_, as I should not
like it to be known that I had failed. I expect to know your
intentions at farthest by _Monday_, as I must then give warning to
the Faculty. You must be expeditious, as I can assure you _I_ shall
be. The subject is not difficult, and I think I may be able to
prepare myself for an ordinary examination. Should I find it
_impossible_, I will still reserve to myself, even after you send
the money, the power of withdrawing. The Widows' subscription (as
the Act states) is repayable to those who are rejected or die
before joining, and I presume the entry-money is so too. If it is
_not_, I should insure my life.
"If you consent to my arrangements, you must send me a certificate
of my age--an extract from the Register of Baptisms, or something
of that sort. I suppose Cordiner can give it you....
"Should I not pass my Civil Law trial immediately, I will still
have the satisfaction of passing at some early period, avoiding an
additional £60 which it is intended will be imposed, and from which
no advantage, either real or fortuitous, is to be expected. Now the
Widows' Fund, you know, when one has a widow, will be a very good
sort of thing--£80 per annum, I believe. So if any lady wishes me
to marry her, she had better advise me by all means to join the
scheme. I know of no way of making one's own by it just now but by
marrying some old advocate's widow who is on the list.
"What you do, do quickly. Write me as soon as you can, and
_definitely_, with bill for the money if possible--if not, a plain
statement of its impossibility. I will work hard till I hear from
you. How are you all? I am in good health, and remain, my dear
mother, your affectionate and dutiful son, J. HILL BURTON."
* * * * *
"EDINBURGH, _4th December 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I this morning received your and Mr Alcock's
letters, enclosing a bill for £200 and order for £33, and having no
opportunity to-morrow, I take this occasion to acknowledge receipt
and return thanks. Tell Mr Alcock I am afraid I will never be able
to repay him his kindness in procuring me this sum upon my very
cavalier notice. With regard to yourself, you know, I suppose, we
have a pretty long account together, and the balance somewhat
against me, as it will always remain.
"I suppose you will have received my hurried note of last night. I
thought you had entirely forgot my £20 amid the other weighty
matters you had to settle for me. I am still preparing and covering
the Civil Law with rapid strides, but to make one's self master of
a subject so intricate in a fortnight is something of a
consideration; however, I do not despair. I am doing my best, and
if I do not use my utmost endeavour, after what has been done for
me by others, I will allow you to call me anything you please.
"Still I beg you will not make yourself too sanguine of my success.
In the meantime tell _no one_, not even Robertson, what I am
attempting, that in the case of my being remitted to my studies
(that is the term), it may not be generally known. I give in my
name for examination on Monday next--it takes place on Tuesday
fortnight. But I do not know when I will be acquainted with the
issue. Do not be afraid that I will confuse or disturb myself much
about it. You know I have been accustomed to such things, as eels
are to be skinned.
"While writing, I have been interrupted by a porter who has come
seething in with a large box. To open a parcel is a most
interesting thing, and the imagination revels with pleasure over
its uncertain contents; but the rich and varied stores of this have
exceeded expectation. I am glad you sent the certificate of
baptism. I do not consider it at all necessary to write by post, as
this goes by a most careful hand; but should I not hear next week
of your having received it, then I _shall_ write by post. Perhaps I
may enclose a receipt to Mr Alcock. He 'hinted,' it seems, 'the
danger of placing so much money,' &c. I have not time to let my
imagination run loose just now, or else I might have pictured to
myself the thousand things which might be done with such a
treasure; but I assure you I never should have thought of anything
(as things now stand) but the intended destination of it, and of
_that_ I shall have enough to think. But you know the fable, or
story rather, of the Priest and the Hostler. I have not time to
tell it you now, but perhaps Robertson can furnish you with it....
"I remain, my dear mother, your sincerely affectionate son, J. HILL
BURTON."
* * * * *
"EDINBURGH, _15th December 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--If you had not been in expectation of such an
event, I might have commenced my letter after William's manner,
with saying, 'You will be surprised to hear I have passed,' but as
the matter stands, I must begin with--'I have the satisfaction of
informing you, &c.' It is just about a quarter of an hour since I
was examined, the time being deferred from yesterday to to-day. The
questions were very easy, at least I thought them so, and I think I
answered each. If there were any I did not answer, it was from
abstracting my attention from the more trifling to the more
difficult branches of the law. So far of my examinations are over;
but you must hold in mind that if I do not pass my SCOTS Law trial
in a year, the £50 must still be paid. One thing I have lost by
preparation, the chance of gaining the prize in the Civil Law
class. This is given by the greatest number of correct answers to
one hundred questions. Ten of these have already been answered. _I_
only accomplished _seven_ of them, and consider I have forfeited my
chance. Seven is a good proportion out of ten difficult questions;
but as the person who gains the prize is seldom deficient by above
two or three, I do not conceive I have a chance. You may now tell
whom you please that I have passed, but need not be publishing it
to all the world. Had I _not_ passed, I should have been called a
rash foolish fellow for attempting it; but as it is, it will be
said I have done quite right. You may tell Robertson 'and them,'
and Mrs Brown; and tell Mrs B. I will now have time to write her,
and send a barrel of oysters.... Ask Robertson and Sim and
Cordiner, and so on, to drink my health. I go to a party at Mr
Constable's to-night, the only place (excepting Mr Dauney's) I have
been engaged at since I arrived. I have had nothing whatever to
interfere with my studies for this last fortnight. Tell James and
Mary I can now have time to read their letters. On Saturday Mr G.B.
called on me, asking me to attend a prayer-meeting, and finding I
was busy, told me if I saw things in as clear a light as he did, I
would see the vanity of attending to these earthly things. I trust,
without irreligion, one may say he is mistaken. I write from Mr
Constable's, which is near the Post-office. My dinner-hour is long
past, and the post is just going, so I must bid you adieu. Write me
soon, and inform me how you are pleased with the contents of this.
My 'passage' only cost me 10s. of fee, and 2s. 6d. as fine for
being absent from the Society. I hope you are all well, and remain,
my dear mother, your affectionate and dutiful son, J. HILL BURTON."
* * * * *
"EDINBURGH, _17th December 1830_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I supposed you received my last letter, written
somewhat hurriedly, but of which I suppose you were able to
discover the principal fact. Since writing, I have been relaxing
myself a little, and going about making a few calls, a thing I have
neglected of late; but I beg you will not suppose this to be a hint
that I am to grow idle. I intend, indeed, to be very busy all
winter. I expect to hear from you soon, and to know what is doing
in Aberdeen. I called upon Mrs H. to-night, who told me my
grand-aunt had been very unwell lately. I trust this is a mistake;
but not having heard from your quarter for some days, the fact may
be so, without my having known it.... I just despatched the
oysters, and I would wish that you could send to Mr Dyce, and
inquire whether they have come free of expense, as I left money
with the seller to pay the coach-hire. I have not sent you any, as
they are rather dear--8s. 8d. for a barrel with two hundred. Now, I
presume you might buy the same number in Aberdeen for about quarter
the sum.
"I live here in a sort of honourable solitude--few acquaintances,
and few annoyances; it is just the sort of life I like. I am to
have one or two of the young men I know to spend Saturday evening
with me, and to discuss your nice plum-cakes which I have just cut.
Among them is a young Pole--a Count Lubienski, a very agreeable and
intelligent gentleman--a class-fellow.
"I may now, by the way, give you the history of my discoveries with
respect to the Widows' Fund, &c., which I presume have proved
rather mysteriously annoying to you. When I first heard the report
of the matter, I called on the librarian and requested information.
He told me that those who did not pass before 1832, had to pay it.
_I_ then said it was due at passing the Civil Law trials, and so,
&c.; and then the man shrugged his shoulders, and allowed I had
convinced him it was only payable by those who did not pass their
_Civil Law_ trials before 1832, and I said no more about the
matter. Dining, however, with Dauney on Tuesday fortnight last, I
heard an observation which led me to a different conclusion, so I
procured the Act as soon as might be, and saw how the matter lay.
"Presuming I had a whole month before me, I determined to try the
thing, notwithstanding the shaking of heads of those to whom I was
_obliged_ to communicate it.
"Finding, on inquiry, that there would be no opportunity of being
examined after the 14th, I will allow I was a little startled, but
still stuck fast, and had a sort of feeling I would be able to
pass, as I do not like setting about what I cannot perform.
"Proceeding in my labours, I gathered confidence, and when the day
came thought it would be rather hard were I rejected. There were
four examined at the same time, and being before myself, I had to
stand their statements of the difficulty and minuteness of the
questions, and they stared not a little when I told them I had
studied the subject for a fortnight and two days; for previous to
that time I had been engaged in the _History_ of Roman Law at
college, and had commenced with the Principles. After the first
question I felt myself secure; yet I will allow I felt a little
easy (_i.e. relieved_) when each of the examiners shook hands with
me, and told me I had given perfect satisfaction.
"The librarian tells me some are rejected in the Civil Law trials,
but _none_ in the Scotch Law, for which I must next year be
prepared. I hope the saving will counter-balance the trouble of
raising the money. I believe I shall enclose you my acknowledgment
for the £200 (the £13 goes to the library, or something of that
sort, which, though rather apocryphal in my nomenclature, shows the
destination of the money). Tell the children[7] if they will write
I will answer them soon, and enclose them something. Pray remember
me to Mr Alcock, and repeat my sense of obligation to him. Tell
Miss Seton I am now on the same shelf with her nephew. Remember me
to the Misses Leith and all friends, Miss Johnstone and Mrs Wemyss,
and all your not very extensive circle.... Write me soon; and I
remain, my dear mother, your affectionate and dutiful son, J. HILL
BURTON.
[Footnote 7: Dr Burton's youngest brother and sister.]
"_P.S._--I understand that should I 'kick' before passing advocate,
the money will be returned. This would not be the case, however,
were I to prove fickle, so I must consider my steps taken, and all
thoughts of the Aberdeen law as ended; however, I shall finish my
apprenticeship in summer. Had I time, I should like to go a week or
two to the Continent (Norway or so). J.H.B."
CHAPTER III.
BEGINNING OF LITERARY LIFE.
_Particulars regarding passing of Civil Law trial--Letters containing
account of first years in Edinburgh and beginning of literary
life--First marriage--Wife's death--Publications during married life and
widowhood--Political Economy._
If genius is to be defined as the power of taking a great deal of
trouble, Dr Burton certainly possessed genius. His most remarkable power
was that of mental labour. It did not seem to fatigue or excite him. In
his best years his capability for mental work was limited only by the
need of food and sleep, and he could reduce these needs to a minimum,
and apparently without any future reaction.
He has told the writer that he did not go to bed at all during the
fortnight's preparation for his Civil Law trial, described in the last
chapter, but worked continuously, day and night, living almost entirely
on strong tea and coffee. After his examination was over, he felt no
actual fatigue or discomfort. He went to bed at his usual hour, but
slept till the night of the second day was falling, a period of wellnigh
forty-eight hours. He sustained no injury to health, and became entitled
to style himself Advocate.
He never had much practice at the bar; and the need of earning a
livelihood first led him to literary publication.
The two letters next offered refer to the following years of his life,
when the little family was reunited in Edinburgh. Their mother's absence
on a visit to relations in Aberdeen gave occasion for the letters.
"3 HOWARD PLACE, SOUTH,
_14th July 1833_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I take the opportunity of Spalding's[8] going to
Aberdeen to write you a few lines. James received the other day two
letters--one from you, and one from Mary.
[Footnote 8: William Spalding, author of a History of English
Literature and other works; a close friend till his too early
death.]
"The latter mentioned you had sent a letter for me, which has not
yet arrived. I hope to receive it soon, or that you will write me
another, giving a more particular account of your health than the
letters to James have stated.
"I am at all events glad to hear yourself say you are not worse,
and hope that a little such exertion and variety as you must meet
will tend to strengthen you. We have been going on just as usual;
perhaps I have been a little more idle than usual during the past
week, being the last of the session. I have had one or two friends
in to dine, but did not give them very splendid entertainments.
James is most particular in his care of the cat, and we both prowl
about occasionally looking for gooseberries.
"I caught a hedgehog the other evening, which has been let loose in
the garden. I have been unable to discover his place of abode, but
we sometimes meet him taking an evening stroll through the walks.
He is an object of great interest to the cat, whose curiosity,
however, he seems decidedly to baffle....
"I am sorry to hear Robertson is unwell, but I suppose he is able
to write, and he must really be at the trouble of sending me a
letter before I can trouble myself farther about his trunks.
"I shall be engaged to-morrow and next day in the Justiciary Court,
and shall be otherwise very busy during the rest of the month....
"By the way, could you ascertain anything about the next Circuit?
You might perhaps send a note to Daniel (Alexander Daniel, Esq.,
advocate, Farquhar's Court, Upperkirkgate), asking him to call on
you and see if he can get me a case or two....
"With kindest remembrances to grand-aunt and Mrs Brown.--My dear
mother, your affectionate son,
"JOHN HILL BURTON."
The fondness for animals and for gooseberries were lifelong tastes. That
for animals did not extend to taking much trouble about them; but Dr
Burton had none of a student's nervousness about slight noises or
interruptions. He would have thought a house dull without the sounds of
birds or other pets in it, and one of his favourite amusements was to
watch the ways of animals. He had examples, in his acquaintance among
dogs and cats, of heart and conscience in the two species respectively,
too trivial for notice here.
Dr Burton has stated in the letters previously quoted some of the
studies which he pursued at college in Edinburgh. His contribution to
Mrs Gordon's 'Life of Professor Wilson' furnishes a lively picture of
college life and experience in Edinburgh. He attended the course of the
late Sir William Hamilton, and gained some distinction in the study of
moral philosophy and metaphysics, so much that his appointment as
assistant and successor to Sir William was seriously considered by
himself and others. Had he become Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, he
would no doubt have discharged the duties of the situation well. At that
time of his life, great versatility, along with extraordinary diligence,
was the chief characteristic of his mind. In later years he did not
pursue the study of mental science.
Before the period in Dr Burton's life which we have now reached, he had
contributed many articles to the 'Aberdeen Magazine,' published by his
kind old friend Lewis Smith. These were lately collected and republished
by Mr Smith; but, to judge from such specimens as the writer has seen,
they are not, on the whole, of a character to increase Dr Burton's
present reputation. He seems to have tried his hand at every kind of
composition--romance, drama, poetry. In the last mentioned he had most
success. His sentimental verses are pretty. His romances are so much
crowded with incident as to be almost unintelligible. He was true to his
own peculiar taste in novels. If a novel was recommended to him he used
to inquire, "Is there plenty of murder in it?" He disliked almost
equally the philosophical novel, and the domestic or social novel. Of
the former he used to say he preferred to read _either_ philosophy or
fiction; he could not endure them combined. To hear even a sentence of
the best social or domestic novel read irritated him intolerably. He
would ask, "How any one could feel interest in the talk of a set of
ordinary silly people, such as one must meet with every day. It was bad
enough to hear them talk when one could not help it."
Quantities of early works, never printed, are still preserved by his
family. The habit of writing--_not_ letter-writing--seems to have begun
as soon as he could use a pen, and while his orthography--never a strong
point--was excessively weak. "The Rosted Baron" remains a popular work
in a small circle. It is a tale, crowded, as its title indicates, with
blood and flames. The idea may have been taken from the burning of
Frendraught. It was written when Dr Burton was quite a boy, and is now
one of a heap of manuscripts in a childish hand on very yellow paper
remaining in his repositories.
"3 HOWARD PLACE, SOUTH,
_24th July 1833_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,-- ... I was extremely glad to receive your letter
by post this morning, showing me that you are able to go about, and
that you are enjoying yourself as much as possible. James[9] and I
have been getting on very well and very comfortably.
[Footnote 9: Dr Burton's eight years younger brother.]
"I am obliged to delay our proposed jaunt till Monday next, as I
find it impossible to get my work finished before Friday, the day I
had fixed on. You are aware that I have long delayed an article on
Criminal Trials for the 'Westminster Review.' I have now set about
it seriously, and am resolved not to stir until it is finished,
which I hope may be on Saturday. I have likewise some things to
finish for Chambers before I go, and then I think I shall be able
to enjoy a few days of a stravaig.... I got a slight interruption
last night; just as the twilight came on, Alex. Smith came in. Now
I had been living like a hermit for some time, and though he has
been more than a fortnight returned I had not seen Smith for ten
days. The matter was irresistible. We set to and got very jolly
together. He complained of having low spirits, but they were soon
elevated, and before he went away he was leaping over the chairs,
and very anxious to leap out at the window. I received on Monday
the enclosed letter from Miss H. to you, and wrote by way of answer
that I should send it to Aberdeen intimating my intended visit. By
the way, a circumstance of some consequence occurs to me at this
moment. If you remain for three weeks in Aberdeen and then leave
it, you will do so just about a fortnight (I think) before the
Circuit. Might it not be as well to remain until that period, when
I might attend the Circuit and bring you back? I do not know at
this moment the day of the Circuit, but the newspapers will inform
you.
"You may tell Robertson [the before mentioned 'Joseph'] that his
clothes may rot where they are until he chooses to write to me
himself about them. I suppose James will write you a household
statement some time or other soon. If you wish to amuse yourself
with reading the lives I wrote in the last number of the
Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton,
Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger
Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries
appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for
you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend
to _walk_ to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a
bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. Pray
remember me to my grand-aunt, Mrs Brown, and my aunts; and I am, my
dear mother, your affectionate son,
"JOHN HILL BURTON."
[Footnote 10: The Cyclopædia of Universal Biography.]
This letter describes the beginning of the life of literary labour
which John Hill Burton's was to the end. He would not have liked to see
it described as labour. He even disliked the word work as applied to his
own pursuits, and he did indeed work as easily as most men play. He was
unconscious of his own powers of mental application: his mind worked
with as much ease as his lungs breathed. The great bulk of his earlier
writings must be quite irrecoverable now. He wrote school-books,
specially a set of historical abridgments for the use of schools, under
the name of Dr White; he also compiled much of the information in Oliver
and Boyd's 'Almanac,' and almost all the letterpress of Billings's
'Ecclesiastical and Baronial Antiquities.'
Dr Burton's whole resources at this time were derived from his pen. He
has described this mode of life as a somewhat anxious but by no means
unhappy one. The anxiety lay in that in which all sorts of business
share--the finding work, looking for employment. The employment once
found was agreeable to him. He rapidly acquired a power of mastering
almost any subject on which he had to write, though he always looked
forward with hope to the time, which eventually came, when he might live
securely on a fixed income, free to write from the fulness of his mind
and not from outward pressure.
The house in Howard Place was carefully managed by his mother. On a life
spent entirely in town proving unsuitable to her health, Dr Burton took
for her a little cottage at Brunstane, which served as country quarters
for the family for several years.
In 1844 Dr Burton married Isabella Lauder, daughter of Captain Lauder of
Flatfield, in Perthshire. He then occupied a house in Scotland Street,
and his mother and sister left him to reside in the little cottage
called Liberton Bank. There his beloved and revered mother died, in
1848. His sister still lives in the cottage with a little flock of young
relatives which her kindness has gathered around her.
Dr Burton's first appearance in independent authorship was in 1846, when
he published his 'Life and Correspondence of David Hume.' This work at
once gained for him a recognised position among men of letters.
In 1847 he published a volume containing the Lives of Simon Lord Lovat
and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. This is an eminently readable work, as
are all his minor productions. Literary persons did not consider its
merits quite equal to the promise given in its predecessor. During these
years much of the spare time left by the need of frequent publication
was filled by the task of editing Mr Jeremy Bentham's literary remains,
to which Dr Burton was joint editor along with Dr (afterwards Sir John),
Bowring. He published, as a precursor to the greater work, one styled
'Benthamiana; an Introduction to the Works of Jeremy Bentham.'
In 1849 he wrote for Messrs Chambers a little book entitled 'Political
and Social Economy: Its Practical Application.' May the writer here be
permitted to state that she considers this small and little-noticed work
the best of all her husband's productions? Though the subject is usually
considered particularly dry, there is an ease, rapidity, firmness, and
completeness in this little book, which carries the reader on in spite
of himself or his prejudices.
The book was first published in two small paper-covered volumes. The
writer by chance got possession of the first, which ended without even a
full stop; she, then a young girl of not particularly studious habits,
having read it, its arguments so filled her mind, that she could not
rest till, out of her not over-abundant pocket-money, she had purchased
the other volume. The author was then unknown to her. He was afterwards
gratified by hearing this testimony to the value of a work which he
himself did not esteem so highly as his others. It may not be counted
impertinent to repeat it here, for this reason, that the little book in
question was intended as a popular treatise, not addressed to the
learned, but to the unlearned. It fulfils to perfection the idea of what
such a treatise should be. There is in the style not the slightest
approach to condescension, or that writing down to the meaner capacity
which must always offend an adult student; while the first principles of
the science discussed are stated with such lucidity, that his capacity
must be mean indeed who cannot grasp them, and they are illustrated by
statistics which will remain always interesting, even to the best
informed. Probably the particular charm of the book arises from its
having been written _currente calamo_. The information had been all
previously stored in the author's mind before he ever thought of writing
it. When he began to write, it poured forth without effort or any
reference to authorities. The book was written in some marvellously
short time,--the writer fears now to say how short. It was counted in
days. It would have been quite contrary to Dr Burton's principles to
boast of rapidity of composition. His greater works are monuments of
industry. Dr Burton's information on economic subjects had probably been
acquired during his studies and correspondence about the abolition of
the Corn Laws. He was interim editor of the 'Scotsman' at an early
period of the Corn-Law agitation, and during his editorship committed
the journal to Anti-Corn-Law principles. He was at that time in
correspondence with Mr Cobden, whom he visited in Lancashire, and who
tried to induce him to remove to that part of the world for the purpose
of editing an Anti-Corn-Law newspaper.
Mrs Burton was fond of society, and her husband had not then become
positively averse to it. His acquaintance in Edinburgh gradually
increased. It included Lord Jeffrey and his family, Lord Murray, who
remained a fast friend during his life, and all the remaining members of
the old Edinburgh circle.
About the year 1848, the writer first saw Dr Burton, accompanied by his
wife, as guests at one of those late evening parties given by Mrs
Jeffrey during the last years of her husband's life--a very faint
reflection of the earlier hospitalities of Craigcrook and Moray Place.
In 1848 Dr Burton left Scotland Street for a house in Royal Crescent,
better suited for occasional reception than the other. But in 1849 the
heaviest blow of his life fell on him in the loss of his wife. His five
married years had been a period of perfect domestic happiness. He found
himself left with three infant daughters; their guide and his gone from
him. He has described his sufferings at this time to the writer as fully
realising to him the common phrase, "a broken heart." As each day
passed, and each night returned, he rose and lay down with the feeling
that his heart was broken. He of course shunned all society, and never
again recovered any real zest for it. He sometimes thought of imitating
his grandfather under like circumstances with a difference--he thought
of flying, not to London, but to the backwoods of America, or some place
where he should never see a white face, and becoming a "wild man," a
savage--a personage of whom he always believed himself to share many of
the characteristics. Only consideration for his little girls deterred
him from such a course. Although an excessively affectionate parent, Dr
Burton had no pleasure in the company of children, owing to his want of
any system with them. He could not, according to the common phrase,
"manage" children at all--a necessary art for any one who has much of
their company. He secured the services of a former governess of his
wife, a Miss Wade, as care-taker of his children; and, as soon as he
could, removed from the house in Royal Crescent to a small one in Castle
Street, and afterwards, from a wish to let his children amuse themselves
with little gardens of their own, to one in Ann Street. He has told the
writer's father, Cosmo Innes, then his most intimate friend, that the
first relief to his oppressed spirits was obtained from the nearest
realisation of the "wild man" life to be found within his own country.
He took long walks in all weathers, sometimes walking all night as well
as all day, at times with a companion, oftener with none. The late
Alexander Russel, then editor of the 'Scotsman,' was his companion in
some of these rambles, Joseph Robertson in others, and Cosmo Innes in
others. It was Mr Russel who accompanied him in the run across Ireland,
which took place about this time, and of which his printed sketch is one
of the liveliest of his minor writings. His pace was so rapid, and his
powers of walking so inexhaustible, that with the lapse of years it
became more and more difficult to find a companion who could keep up
with him. He has described to Mr Innes one particular walk taken alone
to the waterfall called the Grey Mare's Tail. The whole excursion was
performed in pitiless rain and wind, which gave the waterfall every
advantage, and it was while battling with the elements in climbing the
hill to view it that Dr Burton felt the first return of his natural
elasticity of spirit. He soon found also the best medicine of all in
hard work. The years between the death of his first wife and his second
marriage were the most active of his literary life, at least in the line
of periodical literature. He contributed regularly to 'Blackwood's
Magazine,' besides other periodicals. In 1852 he published narratives
from Criminal Trials in Scotland. In 1853 a 'Treatise on the Law of
Bankruptcy in Scotland,' and in the same year his 'History of Scotland
from the Revolution to the extinction of the last Jacobite Rebellion.'
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND STAGE OF LITERARY LIFE.
_Appointed Secretary to the Prison Board--Second marriage--Daily
life--Death of infant child--First volunteers--Removal to Craighouse._
In 1854 Dr Burton was appointed Secretary to the Prison Board, at a
salary of £700 per annum, and was thus relieved of the necessity, which
had pressed on him for more than twenty years, of maintaining himself by
his pen. On his appointment to this office he removed from Ann Street to
the house then 27 Lauriston Place, the site of which is now occupied by
the Simpson Memorial Hospital. In 1854 the situation was half rural. The
house stood in a good old-fashioned garden of its own, beyond which lay
a field containing some old trees; and the house possessed good offices,
stables, &c., which were soon adapted to a workshop for Dr Burton
himself, and rabbit and pigeon houses for his children.
The productiveness of the garden was marred by incursions of
rabbits,--_not_ the children's pets, but wild rabbits, however
incredible that may appear, now that the situation has got so entirely
separated from the country by new buildings. At that time there was no
building between Lauriston Place and Morningside.
Dr Burton, while a widower, had become a more and more frequent visitor
at the house of Cosmo Innes in Inverleith Row. The writer does not
recollect ever seeing him there along with other company--he preferred
finding the family alone. She has met him occasionally in company in
other houses--memorably in that of the late Mrs Cunningham, Lord
Cunningham's widow--but never, so far as she can remember, in that of
her father. He was at that time considered a good talker--his company
was sought for the sake of his conversation. His defect in conversation
was that he was a bad listener. His own part was well sustained.
His enormous store of varied information poured forth naturally and
easily, and was interspersed with a wonderful stock of lively anecdotes
and jokes. But he always lacked that greatest power of the
conversationalist, that subtle ready sympathy which draws forth the best
powers of others.
He was invaluable at a dull dinner-table, furnishing the whole _frais
de la conversation_ himself; but he never probably appeared to quite
such advantage as in the family party at 15 Inverleith Row. His long
walks with Mr Innes, sometimes on a Saturday, often on a Sunday,
generally ended by his accepting the proffered invitation to dinner on
his return. As he was the only guest, nothing could be more suitable or
delightful than his amusing the whole circle during the whole time of
his stay; and he has himself stated that his attention was first drawn
to a shy and particularly silent girl by her irresistible outbursts of
laughter at his stories, which outbursts in their turn encouraged him to
pour forth story after story of his vast repertory in that sort.
On the 3d of August 1855 John Hill Burton married Katharine Innes as his
second wife. He had by that time become accustomed to combine office
with literary work, and, with the extraordinary activity and
adaptability of his intellect, found them helpful to each other. About
the time of his second marriage he conceived the project of his complete
'History of Scotland,' and directed his studies and investigations
towards its execution, continuing, as his manner was, to throw off
slight foretastes of his greater work as articles for 'Blackwood,' &c.
His mode of life at that time was to repair to the office of the Prison
Board, in George Street, about eleven. He remained there till four, and
made it matter of conscience neither to do any ex-official writing, nor
to receive ex-official visits during these hours. He gave his undivided
attention to the duties of his office, but has often said that these
made him a better historian than he could have been without them. He
conceived it highly useful for every literary man, but especially for a
historian, to get acquainted with official forms and business. He has
himself expressed this opinion fully in his printed works. Returning
from his office to dinner at five, he would, after dinner, and after a
little family chat in the drawing-room, retire to the library for twenty
minutes or half an hour's perusal of a novel as mental rest. His taste
in novels has been already described. Although he would read only those
called exciting, they did not apparently excite him, for he read them as
slowly as if he was learning them by heart. He would return to the
drawing-room to drink a large cup of extremely strong tea, then again
retire to the library to commence his day of literary work about eight
in the evening. He would read or write without cessation, and without
the least appearance of fatigue or excitement, till one or two in the
morning.
Always an excellent sleeper, he would go to bed and to sleep till nine
or ten of the same morning, seldom joining the family breakfast, but
breakfasting by himself immediately before going to his office.
In Lauriston Place three more children were born to Dr Burton, a son and
two daughters. When the elder of the two little girls was hardly a year
old the whole nursery sickened, first of measles, then of hooping-cough.
Little Rose, the baby, being recommended change of air, the family went
to South Queensferry, and there the baby died, and was buried in Dalmeny
churchyard. Some earlier associations had attached both Dr Burton and
his wife to the neighbourhood; and during his latter years Dr Burton
frequently alluded to this little baby, the only child he lost, being
laid there,--and expressed a wish that when their time came, his wife
and he should lie there also. His wish was carried out in his own case.
In July of the following year the first company of volunteers formed in
Scotland exercised in the field at 27 Lauriston Place. Dr Burton
sympathised strongly in the volunteer movement, and joined the
Advocates' corps. Though never seriously apprehensive of an invasion of
our coasts, he considered it proper that we should increase our military
strength while foreign nations were so enormously augmenting theirs. He
drilled regularly with the volunteers while they continued to assemble
in his field, and until an accident had temporarily lamed him. He
marched past the Queen on the brilliant sunny day of the first great
Volunteer Review in the Queen's Park in 1860, his wife looking on in the
company of his old friend Sir John Kincaid, then an Inspector of
Prisons.
27 Lauriston Place was considered sufficiently rural to obviate the
necessity of going to the country, and during the six years of its
occupancy the family seldom left it. Dr Burton gave his wife a little
pony-carriage, by means of which sea-bathing could be had, when desired,
from Lauriston Place.
During the year 1860, the new buildings in the neighbourhood spoiled the
situation of the house, so as to render it hardly habitable. The field
where the volunteers had drilled was built upon almost up to the windows
of the house. To escape these disagreeables, a cottage at Lochgoilhead
was taken for August and September, and much enjoyed by the whole
family. A complete removal was also determined on for the following
Whitsuntide.
An old house near the Braid Hills had been a childish haunt of his
wife's, and it had been a childish dream of hers to repair that house,
then a ruin, and live in it. The situation of the place seemed, and
seems to her, the finest in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and the
house was a historical one of no small interest.
The greatest part of it had been built in the year Queen Mary married
Darnley (1565), but part of the building was very much older; a
subterranean passage especially, of considerable length, well arched,
too narrow for a sally-port, unaccountable therefore by any other
theory, Dr Burton always believed as old as the Romans. Craighouse had
been besieged by Queen Mary's son in person, and had stood the siege and
resisted the king.[11] The then laird of Craighouse, whose name was
Kincaid, ran away with a widow, who was a royal ward, and married her in
spite of the king; whether with or without the lady's own consent no
record condescends to specify. The laird was afterwards nearly ruined
by a fine, of which a part consisted of a favourite _nag_, which it
would appear King Jamie had been personally acquainted with and coveted.
[Footnote 11: See Pitcairn's Criminal Trials.]
The distance of Craighouse from the town was not great--nothing as a
walk to such walkers as Dr Burton and all his family; but it was enough
to interfere seriously with evening engagements. Once home from
business, it was an effort to return again to the town to dine or attend
any sort of social gathering. The thing was not impossible, but its
difficulty served as too good an excuse for Dr Burton's increasing
unsociability. For a time, while some of the old circle still survived,
Dr Burton saw them with pleasure at his own table, but he too early
adopted a determination--which no one should ever adopt--to make no new
friends. Almost all his old friends predeceased him, and he found
himself thrown entirely on the society of his own family.
But to return. From a romantic wish to give his wife what he imagined
she desired, Dr Burton returned from Lochgoilhead, leaving his family
there, took all the steps for obtaining a lease of Craighouse in their
absence, and on their return presented his wife, as her birthday gift,
with the keys of Craighouse--a huge bunch of antique keys, some of them
with picturesque old handles. Mrs Burton and all her family loved their
beautiful home as much as any home ever was loved. They occupied it for
seventeen years.
During the exceptionally severe winter of 1860-61, the most essential
repairs were executed on the old house, and the family moved into it in
March.
The 5th of March was long kept by them as a festival--the anniversary of
the day on which they drove out to take possession of Craighouse in a
spring snowstorm. They had resolved to get possession before the
snowdrops, with which the beautiful avenue was carpeted, should be over;
and they did--but the snowdrops were buried in snow.
[Illustration: _Craighouse._]
CHAPTER V.
THIRD STAGE OF LITERARY LIFE.
_Craighouse--Birth and marriages--Office and literary work--"Perth
days"--Captain Speke--Library--Athenæum--Historiographership--Unsociability
and Hospitality--St Albans--Strasburg--London--Stories, jokes, and
nonsense-verses._
At Craighouse a second son was born to Dr Burton; his seventh and
youngest child. There also his eldest and his third daughters married;
the younger, Matilda Lauder, in June 1877, becoming the wife of William
Lennox Cleland, of Adelaide, South Australia; the elder, Isabella
Jessie, that of James Rodger, M.D., of Aberdeen, in April 1878.
The whole of the period at Craighouse was one of active literary as well
as official life. Dr Burton walked daily to the Office of Prisons, no
longer to perform the duty of secretary, but that of manager, at the
same salary he had enjoyed as secretary. The transference of the
principal part of the duty to London altered his position but slightly.
Both before and after this change a monthly visit to the General Prison
at Perth was part of his duty. His wife occasionally accompanied him in
these excursions, and by experience can judge of the fatigue, or rather
the exertion without fatigue, which he underwent in them. At home Dr
Burton was never an early riser, but in travelling he willingly
performed a first stage before breakfast.
On his "Perth days," in going from Craighouse he was obliged to be astir
by four in the morning. His wife usually drove him to the railway
station in time to catch a train starting at six. Sometimes he would
consent to be met again on the arrival of the latest return train at
night and driven home; generally he preferred walking home, after a call
at his office, to see if anything there required his attention. He thus
arrived at Perth by breakfast-time; spent the whole day in passing from
cell to cell of the many hundred prisoners there confined, interrogating
each of them, and taking notes of anything requiring notice; and reached
home not till nearly midnight, yet never appearing at all fatigued.
Latterly he gave up this great effort and did not return till the
following day, sleeping in a hotel at Perth on the occasions of his
official visits.
In 1867 he published the first four volumes of his 'History of Scotland,
from Agricola's Invasion to the Revolution of 1688,' and in 1870 other
three volumes, completing the work, and, together with the portion
published in 1853, forming a complete narrative of Scotch history from
the earliest times down to the suppression of the Jacobite insurrection
of '45.
As offshoots from his great work, he published, first in 'Blackwood's
Magazine,' and then, with some additions, in volume shape, two pleasant
books--the 'Book-Hunter' and the 'Scot Abroad,'--besides many other
slighter works. During these years he was often obliged to refuse his
pen for fugitive writing, from unwillingness to interrupt his more
serious tasks.
The following is a note declining, very characteristically, an
application of the kind from his valued friend, Mr Russel, editor of the
'Scotsman':--
"_11th August 1862._
"MY DEAR RUSSEL,--What am I expected to do with the Cat Stane? Not
to review it, I hope. I have had a sniff of it already in the
proceedings of the Antiquarian Society. It is a brilliant specimen
of the pedantic pottering of the learned body which enables me to
append to my name the A.S.S., fraudulently inverted into S.S.A.
Such twaddle always excites me into feverishness. I haven't nerve
for it.
"I see the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa is made out very
clearly, but there seem insuperable difficulties in proving Hengist
and Horsa themselves. This strikes me as a characteristic of the
author's[12] profession. He has to deal with parents actual and
possible, but the offspring are seen evanescently, often loom in
the distance, and sometimes can't be got to exist even when most
desired.--Yours truly, J.H. BURTON."
[Footnote 12: The late Professor Simpson.]
Dr Simpson's really universal genius led him pretty deeply into
archæology, in which he sometimes, as on the present occasion, showed
more zeal than knowledge.
One of the first summers at Craighouse was enlivened by a long visit
from the African traveller, Captain Speke. Dr Burton met with him in the
hospitable house of his friendly publisher, the late John Blackwood, at
Strathtyrum. Captain Speke was then preparing, or endeavouring to
prepare, for the press, his book, the 'Discovery of the Source of the
Nile.' The truly gallant Captain being more practised in exploring than
in writing, Mr Blackwood suggested his going home with Dr Burton, that
he might have the benefit of his advice in the formation of his
materials into a book. The family at Craighouse became warmly attached
to their guest. He endeared himself by his simple unassuming character,
and a peculiar sweetness of temper. The sorrow at Craighouse was great
on hearing, during the following autumn, of his most lamentable death.
He who had escaped so many dangers--was so well accustomed to
firearms--accidentally shot by his own gun while partridge-shooting near
his paternal home!
While at Craighouse, Dr Burton's library gradually increased from being
an ordinary room full of books, to a collection numbering about 10,000
volumes. From his earliest years Dr Burton had been a collector of
books, and Craighouse led to the increase of his collection in two ways.
The distance from the town was an impediment to the use of the
Advocates' Library in his historical studies, and there was space at
Craighouse for any number of books. There were always rooms which could
be taken into occupation when wanted; and to his life's end it was a
favourite amusement of Dr Burton's to construct and erect shelves for
his books.
In an article in 'Blackwood's Magazine' for August 1879, there occurs
the following lively description of the impression made by the library
on the mind of a visitor. Before the passage quoted was published, Dr
Burton had left Craighouse for Morton House, but the description
evidently refers to Craighouse:--
"We have had the privilege of dropping in upon him [Dr Burton clearly
being meant, though not named] in what we might call his lair, if the
word did not sound disrespectful. It was in a venerable,
half-castellated, ivy-grown manor-house, among avenues of ancient trees,
where the light had first to struggle through the foliage before it fell
on the narrow windows, in walls that were many feet in thickness. And
seldom, surely, has so rich a collection been stowed away in so strange
a suite of rooms. Rooms, indeed, are hardly the word. The central point,
where the proprietor wrote and studied, was a vaulted chamber, and all
around was a labyrinth of passages to which you mounted or descended by
a step or two; of odd nooks and sombre little corridors, and tiny
apartments squeezed aside into corners, and lighted either from the
corridor or by a lancet-window or a loophole. The floors were of
polished oak or deal; the ceilings of stone or whitewashed; and as to
the walls, you could see nothing of them for the panelling of shelves
and the backs of the volumes. It was books--books--books--everywhere;
the brilliant modern binding of recent works relieving the dull and far
more appropriate tints of work-worn leather and time-stained vellum. To
the visitor it seemed confusion worse confounded; though wherever his
glance happened to fall, he had assurance of the treasures heaped at
random around him. But his host carried the clue to the labyrinth in his
brain, and could lay his hand on the spur of the moment on the book he
happened to want. And with the wonders he had to offer for your
admiration, you forgot the flight of time, till you woke up from your
abstraction in the enchanted library, to inquire about the manuscript
that was in course of publication."
In spring Dr Burton generally spent some time in London, partly on
official business, partly in literary research at the British Museum.
He was elected a member of the Athenæum Club without application or
ballot, an honour which he valued highly. He delighted in the dignified
and literary tone of the Club, and frequented it much when in London.
About 1867 the office of Historiographer-Royal becoming vacant, it was
bestowed on Dr Burton, with a salary of £190 per annum, thus bringing
his annual income to nearly £900, instead of £700. The compliment was
enhanced by the fact of a Conservative Ministry being then in office.
Dr Burton was a decided, though not aggressive, Liberal in politics.
Though personally more and more unsociable as years advanced, Dr Burton
was excessively hospitable. He could not bear that any person, rich or
poor, should leave his house unrefreshed, and he made both servants and
children welcome to see their friends if these did not trespass on his
time. A nervous inquiry in later years, if he heard of any guest being
expected, was, "He, or she, will not meddle with me, will he?" Assured
that the privacy of his library would be respected, any one was free to
the rest of the house; and if they showed no disposition to intrude, Dr
Burton would gradually become tame to them, and in some few instances
appear to enjoy a temporary addition to the family circle. Such
instances were, however, rare and ever rarer. He was strongly attached
to his home and home circle, and preferred having no addition to it. A
very partial parent to all his children, his sons were his special pride
and happiness.
During the first years of Craighouse, his wife was able to accompany him
in those long rambles on the Pentlands which were his favourite
amusement. Afterwards, when she was unable for the exertion, he found
pleasant companions in his sons.
Several times during those years he spent some weeks on the Continent.
He generally wrote daily during all absences, but his letters, as
already said, were for the most part brief,--chiefly craving for news
from home, which was also written for him daily. If any accident
prevented his receiving his daily letter, he expressed agonies of
apprehension about all possible or impossible ills. In regard to the
health of his family he was painfully anxious and apprehensive.
The subjoined letters are offered as specimens of his correspondence.
"ATHENÆUM CLUB,
_29th June 1871_.
"MY DEAR WILLIE,[13]--As you and I have often gone geologising
together, I'll tell you how I got on at St Albans, where, I suppose
you know, I saw cousin William.[14] You know the conglomerates.
They are generally hard little stones in a casing of sandstone,
lime, or other soft matter. I have known for thirty years, in a
lapidary's window in Perth, a large piece of conglomerate, where
all is hard and flinty, taking a beautiful polish. After much
inquiry I found that this was got in Hertfordshire, where St Albans
is. I could get no account of any rock of it, however. But as there
was a committee of agriculturists smoking in the inn every evening,
I joined them, and got my information.
[Footnote 13: Dr Burton's eldest son, then a boy of fifteen.]
[Footnote 14: William Burton, artist, son of Dr Burton's eldest
brother.]
"It always occurs in cakes under the soil, and is very troublesome
in ploughing. It is called the 'Mother stone,' or the 'Breeding
stone,' from a supposition that it is the nursery of all the
flints. When its nodules grow large enough, they set up as flints
on their own account. There is therefore a great desire to
extirpate it from the fields, and it might be found by their sides,
or, as one man said, 'You may foind it anywheres, and you maint
never foind it nowheres.' So I prowled about and got plenty,
chipping off as much as I could conveniently carry.
"Tell Tucky and Cos[15] all this. I'm sure it will amuse
them.--Your affectionate papa."
[Footnote 15: His two younger children.]
* * * * *
"STRASBURG, _8th August 1875_.
"MY DEAR COSMO,[16]--You have been very industrious, and have
earned your holidays, so I hope you will have a good swing of them
before we begin our Latin exercises. Meanwhile I am going to give
you a little lesson in history and geography suggested by my
travels.
[Footnote 16: Dr Burton's youngest son, eleven or twelve years
old.]
"Look at some map containing Holland. You find me land at
Rotterdam, and go round by Arnheim to Nymegen. This town used to be
strongly fortified. I rambled in the remains of the fortifications,
like small hills and valleys covered with bright grass. I saw a
quantity of fine mushrooms growing in them, and the tall yellow
flowers known as Samson's rod. The reason of the fortification is
this. The Hollanders were an industrious, frugal people, who made a
fruitful country out of swamps and sand. Nymegen is in the border.
It is the gate, as it were, to Holland, and the fortifications kept
the gate shut against enemies.
"In the year 1704 there reigned in France Louis XIV., called Louis
the Grand. He had greatly enlarged his dominions, taking one
country after another. He possessed the whole between Holland and
France, and now he was to besiege Nymegen and take Holland. The
Hollanders said to the British: 'We have been good friends; you are
strong. Surely you will not let this cruel king rob us of the
fruits of our industry? Besides, if Louis takes one country after
another he will be so strong that you will not be able to resist
him--it is your interest as well as ours. Come and help us in our
sore distress.'
"So Queen Anne sent over an army under Marlborough. Not only did he
save Nymegen, but he took from King Louis the chief fortified town
he had in the neighbourhood--Venlo,--and many others along the
river Maas or Meuse. There was an alliance with the Germans, and
when King Louis heard that a German army was going to join the
British he said, 'Together they will be too strong for me, let us
destroy the German army in the first place.' For this purpose he
sent an army to the Danube.
"For reasons I may tell you afterwards, all great battles are
fought on flat ground. Marlborough thought that if he could get his
army over the hills and into the plains of the Danube, he could
fight the French before they destroyed the Germans. Accordingly he
crossed what is called the 'watershed' between the Rhine and the
Danube. You will find it at Geislingen, between Heidelberg and
here. There is always high ground, and generally a valley in it at
the sources of streams running in different directions. You may see
this in the Pentlands, where the burns on one side run into the
Water of Leith, and those on the other into the Esk."
The end of this letter has unfortunately been lost.
The fragment above quoted serves to illustrate Dr Burton's strong
interest in military history. His accounts of battles and battle-fields
are allowed to be the most striking parts of his Histories. His interest
in such subjects arose partly from the faint infantile recollections
already described. He purchased and studied works on fortification and
military strategy.
"ATHENÆUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W.,
_25th April 1877_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,[17]--I got this morning your letter of Tuesday; very
pleasant and refreshing, and more than once read over. But the
exile can't hear too much from home, especially when the conditions
are critical,[18] and I must not yet count that all critical
conditions are at an end; so pray don't let a day pass without
something being posted to me, though it should be but a card with
the briefest inscription.
[Footnote 17: This letter is addressed to the writer.]
[Footnote 18: His youngest daughter had had a mild attack of
scarlet fever, from which she was completely recovered before he
left home.]
"I dined yesterday with the Vindicator,[19] when Horne, who you
know is now Dean of Faculty, was in all his glory. On Monday I
dined with Everest, dined also with Ellice and Colonel Mure, the
member for Renfrewshire--rather too much gaiety, but I have no
other engagement. I don't yet see when I shall get away, but will
let you know whenever I myself know.
[Footnote 19: Mr Hosack, author of an ingenious and exhaustive
work, 'Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers,' in which he
vindicates the character of Queen Mary. Notwithstanding their
difference of opinion on that fruitful subject of dispute, the two
authors were fast friends.]
"I sent Will an engineering work yesterday, which I hope will
profit and please him.--Love to all from your affectionate J.H.
BURTON."
Constitutionally irritable, energetic, and utterly persistent, Dr Burton
did not know what dulness or depression of spirits was. With grief he
was indeed acquainted, and while such a feeling lasted it engrossed him;
but his spirits were naturally elastic, and both by nature and on
principle he discouraged in himself and others any dwelling on the sad
or pathetic aspects of life. He has said that the nearest approach he
had ever felt to low spirits was when he had finished some great work,
and had not yet begun another.
Such blanks in his life were short, and ever shorter and fewer. He found
necessary excitement in his work, and, when he joined his family, needed
no particular encouragement or inducement to lead him to talk either
about what he was doing or something else. As he advanced in years his
family learned more and more to leave the choice of subjects of
conversation entirely to him. Any subject not chosen by himself was apt
to prove irritating. Sometimes even his own did. Often his irritations
were amusing. If his wife, or some one else, chose to affect a ludicrous
degree of ignorance on some of his special subjects, they might probably
elicit a volley of information which would not have been vouchsafed to
them in answer to a serious question. Old reminiscences sometimes led on
to those laughable sayings in which Dr Burton's talk was rich. For
instance,--He had once rented an old inn at Pettycur as summer
quarters, and a favourite amusement, both at the time and afterwards,
was to imagine and describe the visitors who might have called on him
there in ignorance of the changed destination of the house. He would
imagine and mimic the tones of a drouthy Highland drover demanding
refreshment,--which, by the way, he would have been sure to get had he
so applied to Dr Burton; of an entirely drunk Lowlander, persisting in
representing himself as a _bonâ fide_ traveller; of a highly
Conservative old nobleman, posting up to town with his carriage-and-four
in spite of railways: this story ended with, "A wicked and perverse
generation shall come seeking a _Sign_, and no sign shall be given
them."
He delighted in a sort of practical bull, or confusion of ideas, such
as--"One may never have a _widow_ all his _life_."
A favourite story was of a too hospitable elder in a country parish,
who invited his minister to sup and spend the night in his house without
his wife's consent. The wife sees a male figure in the darkish entrance
of the house, and in her anger deals him a violent blow on the head with
the family Bible, ejaculating, "That's for asking him to stay a' nicht."
The husband, from an inner room, exclaims, "Eh, woman, ye have felled
the minister!" On which the virago says _to her victim_, "My dear, I
thocht it was yersel'!"
Ministers and clergy of all denominations are often the text of jokes.
Another story referred to an Episcopal clergyman, who was frequently too
late in reaching his church, and whose curate on such occasions began to
read the morning service instead of him, and had reached in one of the
lessons the well-known verse, St John xiv. 6, "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life," when his ecclesiastical superior, panting with
exertion, reaches the reading-desk, pushes his curate from his place,
and intones, "_I_ am the way, and the truth, and the life," adding a
strictly private aside to his curate, "_You_ the way, and the truth, and
the life, indeed!"
Another minister arriving at church drenched with rain, and claiming
sympathy from his wife, is told by her to "Gang up into the pu'pit;
ye'll be dry eneuch there."
A story in a different spirit, said to have been reported to him by Lord
Cockburn, is ascribed to a Scotch shepherd. A set of gentlemen were
imprecating the prevailing east wind, and asked the shepherd if he could
in any way defend that prevalent evil of his country. "Ay, sirs," said
he; "it weets the sod, it slocks the yows [_i.e._, quenches the thirst
of the ewes], and it's God's wull."
Many Aberdeenshire stories are valueless without Dr Burton's Aberdeen
accent, which he could intensify at pleasure.
A reminiscence of college days at Aberdeen was of one of the professors
there trying to discipline his unruly class, who came tumbling in while
the professor was opening proceedings by reciting the Lord's Prayer in
Latin, according to custom, and wound up his "In secula seculorum,
amen," with "Quis loupavit ower the factions [Aberdeen for forms or
benches], ille solvit doon a saxpence."
Two neat little _mots_ relate, the one to the familiar subject of London
eggs, the other, to the name of his youngest son. London grocers--as all
Londoners know--label their eggs _Fresh Eggs_, and _New-laid Eggs_, only
the respective prices of the different sorts or hard-bought experience
pointing to the signification of the two appellations. Dr Burton on
hearing this, said, "Oh, of course the _New-laid Eggs_ become _Fresh_ in
time."
The writer wished to bestow the name of David on her youngest son, in
addition to that of Cosmo, in memory of her husband's young brother
David, whom she had heard described as an interesting child at the time
of his early death. Dr Burton opposed this wish, not desiring to
diminish the compliment to the child's grandfather and name-father,
Cosmo Innes. The child was ultimately christened Cosmo Innes--thus, as
his father said, remaining _entirely Cosmetic_.
Two legal stories were told respectively of Lord ----and Lord
Corehouse:--
Lord ---- is pronouncing sentence on an assassin who had stabbed a
soldier: "You did not only maliciously, wickedly, and feloniously stab
or cut his person, thereby depriving him of his life, but did also sever
the band of his military breeches, which are her Majesty's."
Lord Corehouse is listening to the pleading of an advocate who describes
some performance which, as he says, "could be done as easily as your
Lordship could leap out of your breeches." Lord Corehouse interrupts:
"Mr ----, the saltatory feat which you are pleased to ascribe to me is
not one which I have ever attempted, and I do not feel sure that if I
did I could perform it with any of that ease which you suppose."
Enough, perhaps, of such reminiscences, which, written, may fail
altogether of their effect when spoken.
The writer recollects vaguely an immense number, of which confused
images present themselves. Crocodiles with their hands in their
breeches-pockets. Persons throwing off their coats and waistcoats like
Newfoundland dogs. A master and man sleeping; master on the boards
a-top, and the man in the bed; master remarking in the morning he would
have preferred the lower station, but for the concetty o' the thing.
Coming down early one morning in great spirits at the prospect of a
long day's outing with his son, he said to the boy--
"I am not an early riser,
As you may surmise, sir;
But when I'm on a ploy, sir,
I feel just like a boy, sir."
No chance rhyme or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however
much taking it up might interrupt the subject under discussion.
The following childish little poem seems worth preservation now. It was
presented to his daughter Matilda on the death of her little dog. She
happening to visit a relative, who was physician in a lunatic asylum,
and showing the little poem, it was printed in the 'Asylum Magazine,'
from which it was copied into the 'Animal World:'
LAMENT FOR FOXEY.
Poor little Foxey,
With your coaxy
Little way,
You're gone for aye.
I'll no longer hark
To your garrulous bark,
See the fleeching grimace
Of your comical face,
Nor be touched by your yelping
When you get a skelping.
You had no orthodoxy
Poor Foxey,
Nor a commanding spirit,
Nor any great merit.
The reason for sorrow, then, what is it?
Just that you're missed,
And that's all
That shall befall
The rest of us,
Even the best of us.
An empty chair
Somewhere,
To be filled by another
Some day or other.
Sick cur or hero in his prime,
It's a matter of time.
The world is growing, growing,
The blank is going, going,
And will be gone anon.
CHAPTER VI.
LITERARY LIFE (_continued_).
_Illness--Resignation of office--Sale of Craighouse--Morton--Domestic
life--'Queen Anne'--Letters about ballad-lore--Singular incident
connected with it--Letters from abroad._
In the end of the year 1877 Dr Burton had the first severe illness of
his life. On the 18th day of December of that year, Mrs Cunningham,
widow of Lord Cunningham, died at Morton House, which had been the
summer home of her twenty years of widowhood, and at which illness had
detained her during the winter of 1877. The editor of the 'Scotsman'
applied to Dr Burton for an obituary notice of Mrs Cunningham--an old
friend of his, and still older of his wife. He was then too ill to be
applied to on any subject, or to be told of his old friend's death.
For several days at that time he was alarmingly ill from bronchitis,
accompanied by unusually high fever. This passed off but slowly. The
bodily health and strength appeared to be fully restored at the end of a
few weeks, but there was an undefinable change. Shortly after this
illness, though not in consequence of it, Dr Burton resigned his office
of Prison Manager. He retired on an allowance of two-thirds of his
former salary, remaining chairman of the Board of Prisons and
Statistics, of which he was an honorary member.
He had not fully regained strength when, to the unspeakable sorrow of
its inmates, they learned that Craighouse was sold to the Committee of
the Lunatic Asylum, was to be immediately adapted to the purposes of an
asylum, and that they must quit it at Whitsuntide.
They had held it first on a lease, then on a second short lease, but
afterwards had merely rented it from year to year, not imagining that
any other tenant would covet it with all its pretty heavy
responsibilities. Dr Burton had, from his natural irritability,
sometimes said he would prefer to be elsewhere; but when it came to
finding some other place which would hold his books--some place not too
far to move them to--to the abandonment of his own carpentery, &c.,--he
lamented the departure as much as others. His one proviso as to the new
abode was, that it was not to be in the town, or nearer the town than
Craighouse.
The whole spring Dr Burton's family sought in all directions for a
suitable abode, and at last pitched on that left vacant by Mrs
Cunningham's death as most nearly combining all the various requisites.
On the 20th of May 1878 the flitting from Craighouse to Morton was
completed. Morton is fully two miles farther from Edinburgh than
Craighouse, the approach to it from the town being a continuous ascent
on to a shoulder of the Pentlands. Its situation is pretty and entirely
rural, but with nothing of the unrivalled beauty of that of Craighouse,
which commanded a view extending from North Berwick Law to Ben Lomond,
yet lay well sheltered among its lovely hills and splendid trees. The
great drawback of Morton House, for Dr Burton's family, lay in the
greater distance from the town. The time spent in travelling the up-hill
road was a serious loss, to say nothing of the fatigue. Dr Burton never
would allow this to be a disadvantage, so far as he was concerned, but
the writer is persuaded it was seriously prejudicial to his health.
During the summer of this year Dr Burton was invited to Oxford to
receive the honour of a D.C.L. degree. He went, and was highly delighted
with his visit. He had some years previously received a similar
compliment from the University of Edinburgh.
Dr Burton, by way of setting a good example to his family, who continued
to lament the loss of Craighouse, attached himself excessively to
Morton. He was farther attached to it by the recollection of having been
Mrs Cunningham's guest there. It was one of the very few houses at which
he occasionally dined after he went to Craighouse. Soon after he had
gone to Craighouse, he formed a resolution against dining out _in the
town_. His neighbours in the country were so few that he had no reason
to dread too frequent invitations from them; and he occasionally dined,
as has been said, with Mrs Cunningham at Morton, and with his nearest
neighbour, equally at Craighouse as at Morton, Mr John Skelton, at the
beautiful Hermitage of Braid. Dr Burton was generally invited by the
latter to meet his distinguished friend, the historian, Mr Anthony
Froude. He may during these years have been once or twice a guest at
Colinton House, then inhabited by Lord Dunfermline, and as often at
Bonally, the house of his old friend the late Professor Hodgson. During
his residence at Morton, Dr Burton and his family dined with their
neighbours, Mr and Mrs Stevenson, at Swanston Cottage, once. On one
occasion he was persuaded to actually _drive_ with his wife as far as
Duddingston, where he dined and enjoyed a pleasant summer evening with
Professor and Mrs Laurie and their family. Once he went still farther
and dined with his old friend Mr Jenner, at Easter Duddingston. Mr
Jenner and he had been associated with Lord Murray, Angus Fletcher, and
others, in the foundation of the First Ragged School, as it was then
called, in Edinburgh, and had remained friends ever since. On the
Committee of the Ragged School splitting up on the question of religious
instruction, all the gentlemen named had espoused the principle carried
out in the United Industrial School--that of combined secular and
separate religious instruction.
With these exceptions, and that of a very few visitors at home, the life
at Morton was entirely domestic. During the whole of his three years'
stay at Morton, Dr Burton always hoped to induce the remains of his
circle of old friends to dine with him once more. They had become few
indeed--were limited to Professor Blackie and Dr John Brown. He never
succeeded in persuading these gentlemen to come. Insuperable
difficulties on one side or other always intervened. During these three
years there never was any social gathering at Morton except
entertainments which Dr Burton's family gave to the country people, and
which sometimes included a few young friends as assistants. Dr Burton
was no longer called on to visit his office daily. To attend the Board
meetings once a-week was sufficient.
As soon as he had finished his 'History of Scotland' in 1870, he
conceived the project of writing a 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne.'
It was an ambitious attempt. Lord Macaulay's too early death had
prevented his performing the task, and Mr Thackeray was understood to
have contemplated it, but to have shrunk from its vastness. Dr Burton
had been collecting material for this work in all his summer tours
during the past ten years, and in all his visits to the British Museum
while in London. He had written a great part of it before he was
interrupted by his illness in the end of '77, and the removal from
Craighouse early in '78. The most marked change in Dr Burton after that
illness was in his impaired power of mental application. His general
health was good, even strong; he still enjoyed long rambles with his
sons, and walked to town and back at his former rapid rate; but now that
he had no longer any office work, now that he might sit and read or
write all day if he would, he did not do so. Instead of, as formerly,
resenting all interruption while engaged in his library, he seemed to
seek every excuse for leaving it and his literary occupation. Though
not rising earlier than formerly, he would go to bed comparatively
early, and several times a-day would propose to his wife to go to visit
her flowers, to do a little gardening, to go and feed the fowls--in
short, to share in any little diversion going.
A visit of the writer's to her sister in Argyleshire gave occasion for
the following notes on ballad-lore, in which Major Mackay of Carskey,
Mrs Burton's brother-in-law, was also strong:--
"MORTON, _2d May 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I recollect having come across the ballad incident
you mention upwards of fifty years ago, when I was zealous in
ballad-lore. If it had been in one of those accepted as genuine and
poetical I would have remembered the ballad, but my impression is
that it was condemned as a fabrication for this and other
neologies. The _button_ is not a conspicuous item of female attire
as of the male, and Shakespeare has been attacked for the vulgarity
of even making Lear say, 'Prithee, undo this button,' though I
think it fine.
"If the Major is curious in ballad-lore, I can give him abundant
information in it. For the musical item, the best collection I know
is Motherwell's, both for good poetic taste in selection, and the
tunes accompanying some of the contents....--Your affectionate
"J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"MORTON, _Wednesday Evening_, _8th May 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--Looking for the ballad you want, and not finding it
by recollection, I came by accident to the very line--
'When she cam' to her father's land
The tenants a' cam' her to see;
Never a word she could speak to them,
But the buttons aff her claes would flee.'
The ballad is known by the title of The Marchioness of Douglas, but
better known by the--
'O waly, waly, up yon bank,
And waly, waly, doon yon brae.'
It was printed first in Jamieson's collection--1806; again in
Chambers's, p. 150. The 'waly' has been by Cockney critics called
Scotch for 'wail ye.' The word may come from the same etymological
source as 'wail,' but it is a Scots adverb, indicative of the
intensity of sorrow.
"It will be hard to find any one who is my master in ballad-lore
(though other things have of late taken the preponderance). My
services in the cause are certified by Robert Chambers in his
collection, published in 1829--fifty years ago.
"I had then collected several versions from old people in
Aberdeenshire. While writing this it dawns on my recollection that
I lost the bulk of the collection, and that some years ago I got a
letter from America, written by some one publishing Scots ballads,
asking me to help him. Making a search for any remnant of the old
collection, I found one ballad only, and sent it. Then came the odd
conclusion--he had the rest of the collection, as he found by
comparison of handwriting.
"This little affair coming in upon others of so much more moment to
me--I can't tell exactly how many years ago--was forgotten utterly
until your inquiry about the 'buttons' brought it up. When I am
through with 'Queen Anne' I may look back on it and other
trifles....
"I do not think I have any news for you. Mary says the violet roots
were sent on Monday.--Your affectionate
"J.H. BURTON."
In the summer of 1879 Dr Burton went abroad for the last time, for the
purpose of tracing the course of Marlborough's campaigns. From his daily
letters home a few passages may be selected:--
"MONS, _18th June 1879_.
"MY DEAR WILL,--I think you may well write to Ratisbon after
receiving this.
"I leave the Low Country when I have completed my inquiries.
"What little remains belongs to the Danube district, which I shall
haunt for the remainder of my time. It got its name because the
Romans found it a _ratis-bona_, or good pier for crossing. It is by
the Germans called Regensberg, or the town of rain.--_N.B._ I went
through the old Scots College there when its inmates had been
driven out, and the only article I found left behind was a large
umbrella. After three days' cessation the thunder and torrents have
returned yesterday. I walked three hours in rain, which soused me,
and then I had as long of sunshine to dry me, and arrived in very
comfortable condition, but I had been starved and was afraid to
make up by a heavy supper; I had consequently, after a long sleep,
such an appetite, that though I had breakfast, I joined the _table
d'hôte_ dinner at one o'clock.
"Yesterday and the day before I went over the marching grounds of
our army in 1709, especially the battle-field of Malplaquet. If you
look into any of the histories of the period, or lives of
Marlborough in the library, you will see all about it. They are
concentrated in the room which I latterly used, and are
concentrated opposite to the fireplace.
"I have had extreme interest in pursuing my inquiries, yet don't I
long to go about in some country where one can get a drink of pure
water by the roadside, such as you and I have enjoyed on occasion.
The country people only get it in deep draw-wells. They have plenty
of water for their agriculture--too much; it is like the Ancient
Mariner's complaint--'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to
drink.' The peasantry are amply provided with brandy. I passed
yesterday about thirty houses where they get it for two sous, not
quite a penny a glass. I wonder all your friends at Brown
Brothers' do not swarm to such a land....
"I have no doubt everything is beautiful, I hope also fruitful,
about Morton. I feel sure of one thing, that mamma has abundance of
her favourite flowers.--Love to all from your affectionate papa,
J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"REGENSBERG, _21st June 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I have but a scrap of paper available....
"Fine weather at last. Eating cherries. Last night I got a
comfortable sleep for nothing. For reasons good no doubt, but
unknown, the train stopped from 9 P.M. to 5 A.M., at a country
station. I lay on a bench, with my head on my small bag, and never
had a sounder sleep.--Your affectionate
J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"DONAUWÖRTH, _27th June 1879_.
"MY DEAR COS,--This afternoon I expect to be at Blenheim, and so at
the farthest limits of my battle-fields. I spoke of not going to
the Alps, in consideration of the depressing of our neighbours the
Pentlands; but being so close to them, I can't resist a step
farther, and then the Pentlands are not so very ill used, for they
are put much on a level with the Grampians. At the beginning of
next week I expect to be moving homewards, and I still think, as I
wrote to mamma, the last place to catch me at, before taking to the
water, is Antwerp.
"This is a very fishy place, not of the Danube rolling majestically
not many yards from where I am writing, but of the sea. The inn I
am in is called the Krebs or Crab, round the corner is the
Crawfish, and somewhere else the Shrimps.
"I wonder what you are now all doing in the Belvidere,[20] and what
projects you are all making for the summer, and whether you have
ripe strawberries, and there is good promise of cherries and
apples; and so, with kind love to all, adieu from your affectionate
papa, J.H. BURTON."
[Footnote 20: A tower within the grounds of Morton, used by his
sons as a workshop.]
* * * * *
"DEGGENDORF, BAYERISCHER WALD,
_1st July 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I had a misgiving that I had given a false prospect
of reaching me at Regensburg, so I came round that way again, and
was rewarded by yours of the 24th, and Willy's of what he calls the
_22d July_.
"I did not pursue the plan I spoke of to Cos, of getting a peep of
the Alps, my investigations cutting off the time assigned to it.
But I have gone into a siding here to see the much-boasted, and, it
would seem, newly discovered touring ground of the Wald.
"I have got through my work now, but I can still find some in the
neighbourhood of Antwerp,--so that is my point, and there I shall
hope for letters.
When I last went to Blenheim, some five years ago, the railway only
reached a point some fifteen miles from it, and I could not get
back to my inn until its opening at five o'clock. Now there is
train all the way. It must be supported by agricultural produce.
Such wealth of fertility I never saw. I think, standing at any
point in the great haugh of the Danube, I could see as much grain
as all Scotland could produce. This had a curious social influence,
causing me some hardships.
"The towns are all conglomerates of farm-steadings. The country was
of old so cursed by war, that a steading in the fields was a lost
affair. The old habit still rules, and in a town the size, say, of
Linlithgow, there is not a shop or an inn except the store, whence
the farmers draw their oceans of beer in great jugs, or sometimes
meet to quaff it on the premises. I had to bribe the owner of such
an establishment to give me brown bread and cheese; hard living of
this kind, however, suits my constitution. Luckily, in
consideration, I suppose, of there being no refuge for belated
travellers, the station-master had a nice clean bedroom, which he
was entitled to let.
"I propose remaining here till to-morrow, that I may have a glimpse
of the much-lauded Wald.--Love to all from your affectionate
goodman, J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"EGER, _4th July 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--The best account I can give you of where I am is,
that I expect to reach Leipzic this evening. But it will still be
some time ere I reach Antwerp, and you may as well write me
somewhat. If any letters I get there prompt me to return with the
least possible delay, I shall do so, but otherwise I shall wait,
occupying myself in the Netherlands for the Antwerp steamer on
Saturday, the 12th I think it is, to-morrow week.
"In going into the Bayerischer Wald I went where it was not easy to
get speedily out, though I found a railway right through just
opened. The night before last I slept, I suppose, some 4000 or 5000
feet above the sea, in a huge garret with some twenty beds in it.
Somebody was sound asleep in one, but disappeared before I awoke. I
supposed the house to have been temporary, for accommodating the
workers making the railway, but I found it to be the _hospice_ of
the old road across the mountains. It has been a sort of
pilgrimage, I think--_gasthaus zur Landes Grenze_.
"The scenery is naught in comparison with the Scots Highlands, or
even our Pentlands. It is only in Scotland and the Lakes that hills
of humble height look Alpine. The Wald is something like your Harz,
but higher; so adieu.--Love to all from J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"THALE, _Monday, 5th July 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I think you know this place. I found that if
anything out of the direct line to Antwerp, it was only so to the
extent of its short side line, some ten miles or so. When scenery
is good, I enjoy a second visit to it more than the first, and this
was specially so in the present instance; for in my visit from
Grund, I took the most difficult and least profitable course, by
climbing laterally to the level of the Ross Treppe, instead of
going along the stream, and seeing the variety of cleft granite,
unexampled, I think, elsewhere in that class of rock....
"I am longing to see your beautiful gardens, and all--but have
nothing to grumble at--health never better.--Affectionate
remembrances to the rest, from your affectionate gudeman, J.H.
BURTON."
* * * * *
"ANTWERP, _11th July 1879_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--To my great contentment I received here this
morning your three letters, the latest dated on the 9th. I expect
to-morrow, at 8 p.m., to sail by the steamer Windsor.
"I have had a grand time of it--everything going right with me, and
yet I have a longing for home.
"From sultry, the weather has drifted into cold and rain. Yesterday
the rain poured powerfully all morning, and having some arrears of
sleep to make up, I slumbered as long as it continued. Adieu, my
dear.--Yours,
"J.H. BURTON."
During this summer, Dr Burton and his eldest son walked from Morton to
North Berwick and back in the same day, a walk of at least fifty miles.
In former years sixty was an ordinary day's work. Once during Captain
Speke's stay at Craighouse, Dr Burton traversed a distance within
twenty-four hours, which Captain Speke computed at seventy miles.
CHAPTER VII.
THE END.
_Sale of library--Letters from Shetland and Aberdeen--Winter
illness--Charities--Recovery--Magazine articles again--Literary
executorship of late Mr Edward Ellice--Rev. James White of
Methlick--Last illness and death--Concluding remarks--Burial at
Dalmeny._
Would that in biography, as in romance, the story might end at its
brightest point! But the true tale must follow its subject through the
valley of the shadow of death, and on to his grave.
The remainder of '79 and beginning of '80 were spent at Morton in
finishing the 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne;' but the work did not
go on with the ease and pleasure of former works, and on its conclusion,
Dr Burton formed the resolution to sell his library. This determination
was combated by his family and friends, as well as by his friendly
publisher, with all the arguments in their power, but in vain. Dr Burton
never would allow that parting with his treasured volumes, the
collection of which had been the pride of his life, cost him a pang. He
had done with his books, he said. They were no book-hunter's library,
but a collection made for use, and, that use over, had better be again
turned into money. Dr Burton did not contemplate undertaking any other
great work; and the possession of so extensive a library forced him to
live in a larger house than was convenient, and rendered leaving it very
troublesome. In the proceeds of its sale Dr Burton was again
disappointed. But before it could be brought to sale, while he was
engaged in the laborious task of cataloguing his books for sale, he
refreshed himself by a summer trip to Shetland, taking Aberdeen on his
return journey, where he had the gratification of being present at the
baptism of his little grandchild, the daughter of Dr and Mrs Rodger.
He wrote from Lerwick, 8th July 1880:--
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am not in what might be called an interesting
country--low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty--but a new
country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I
saw a valuable archæological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads
were all paved, and went straight over hill and across
valley--never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where
the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have
been fully identified. But there, as well as in other places, where
it has been questioned if the Romans ever were--any road strewn or
surfaced with stones that have been laid down in the paving of the
road, is adopted as a Roman road. I have often supposed that this
conclusion was too readily adopted. And to-day I walked for some
distance on a road that has all the requisites--yet no one is wild
enough to say that the Romans were in Shetland. The weather to-day
was warmer than I have yet known it, the sun, such as he is, having
nearly the whole twenty-four hours to do his work in. The next
stage will be Kirkwall, then Wick.
"I shall intimate my motions as I find them coming up for
consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind
demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne'
pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather
too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came
immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very
severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to
grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and
idleness.--Yours, my dear love, J.H. BURTON."
The next is dated merely _Sunday_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... The weather here has been divine, with
daylight, one may say, for twenty-four hours. The people are kind
and cleanly, and all the necessaries of life are abundant. I do not
know when I have enjoyed better health. There is nothing abnormal
about me, except the extent of my appetite. Walking thirty miles
here, is less fatiguing than from Morton to Edinburgh.
"Love to all the household, and remembrances to guests, from yours
affectionately, J.H. BURTON."
* * * * *
"DOUGLAS HOTEL, ABERDEEN,
_14th July 1880_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of
people I detest--those who, because a man has been studious, and
has written books, count that he is public property, who may be
hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.
"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the
tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge
Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of
smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and
I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the
bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good
cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of
school and college friends.--Love to all, from your affectionate
"J.H. BURTON.
"_P.S._--On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went
a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled
some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse
Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs;
her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on
about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."
[Footnote 21: A rather amusing comment on this letter is conveyed
in the following extract from one addressed to Dr Burton's
publishers, by Mr George M'Crie, a grandson of the eminent Scotch
divine of the same name:--
"In the month of July last year, I happened to be travelling
southward, in the steamer St Magnus, from Orkney. Before calling at
Wick, and while the tourists on board were gazing at John o'
Groat's House, I was spoken to by an elderly gentleman, on the
'bridge,' regarding some of the steamer's arrangements. I satisfied
his curiosity as well as I was able, and thought no more of the
matter. We had a large number of passengers, and I did not notice
him again until we were coming out together in a boat, after a
ramble on shore at Pulteneytown. A fellow-passenger, who had
previously noticed the elderly gentleman and myself in
conversation, then whispered to me, 'A celebrated literary man
that, sir, with whom you were speaking before we went ashore; no
other than the famous Judge Haliburton of America, the author of
"Sam Slick."' Some doubt, I must confess, crossed my mind at this
stage. I surely had heard of the Judge's death some years before,
but thinking, very pardonably, that I must be mistaken, I replied,
'Oh, indeed!' and viewed my late acquaintance with some curiosity.
I am imaginative, but it was difficult, in truth, to connect this
staid and sober personage with the idea of the American satirist,
however proverbially dissimilar authors may be to their own
creations. However, I am no hunter after celebrities, literary or
otherwise, and I would not, in all likelihood, have taken any steps
to further conversation with the one in question, had he not, by
chance, been seated close beside me on the quarterdeck when we
resumed our journey south. The steamer was rolling heavily, and his
seat was not a comfortable one. I gave him a camp-stool which I had
secured, and in return he kindly again entered into conversation
with me. We talked about many things, but I could not help thinking
that the American author seemed well informed, for a transatlantic
stranger, regarding the coast, the route generally, and, singularly
enough, regarding Scottish antiquities. At last an observation,
which I timidly hazarded regarding the United States, showed me, in
the reply it received, that I was hopelessly at sea regarding my
fellow-passenger's identity. Before we came to Aberdeen he had told
me that his name was John Hill Burton. The similarity of the sound
of the names had misled my too easily persuaded informant and my
own credulous self. I had taken the author of the 'Book-hunter' for
the author of the 'Clockmaker'!
"Dr Hill Burton most kindly continued to converse with me for
several hours after we had exchanged cards. My own is a name not
unconnected with Scottish ecclesiastical history, and this, to him,
was a sufficient topic. Being an Edinburgh man by birth, I ought to
have known him by sight, but I have been absent from my native city
for many years, and may be excused for not recognising one of
Edinburgh's most distinguished dwellers, now unhappily lost to us.
"G.M. M'C."]
* * * * *
"BANCHORY, _16th July 1880_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am here in the scene of many recollections going
back to boyhood, and the interest of them takes a zest from knowing
that you, too, must have stored up associations with the spot,
though of a later period. I think the avenue trees at Blackhall
were cut down before your day. They are not now much missed in the
general landscape. The lapse of half a century has given such a
growth to the surrounding plantations, that where I remember bare
hills, or freshly planted and uglier than bare, there are now great
stretches deserving to be called forest land."
* * * * *
Dr Burton returned from this pleasant little trip well, and in good
spirits, but the winter was one of illness.
On the 8th of November it was found necessary to call in medical advice
on account of a severe exoema affecting chiefly one leg. The doctor
ordered confinement to bed, besides other remedies. On the 8th of
December these had proved successful, and Dr Burton was able to be up,
and, at Christmas, to assist his wife in carrying gifts to all their
poor neighbours--a plan substituted that year for the first time instead
of a Christmas-tree for the same class of people.
Dr Burton was always much interested in the Christmas-tree, and used to
contribute largely to it what he called _trash_--_i.e._, cheap fancy
articles, if he happened to be in London before Christmas-time, or money
if he did not. His mode of visiting poor people was peculiar. He no
sooner heard of any plan of benevolence towards them than he was
determined it should be immediately carried out, and utterly impatient
of all preparations. He chose to carry a basket, the heavier the better,
but would on no account enter a cottage, still less speak to an inmate.
He preferred such expeditions in the dark, that he might successfully
hide himself outside while his wife went in to distribute his bounty.
On the 8th of January 1881 a recurrence of the former symptoms again
obliged him to take to bed. On the 8th of February he was able to rise
and go down to the library.
On the 8th of March he again became ill, and towards the end of that
month had an alarming attack of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs.
Slight hope was entertained of his recovery for some days, but this
illness appeared a turning-point, and by the 8th of April he was able to
come down-stairs. No more 8ths were marked by disaster or recovery till
again the 8th of August.
During the summer Dr Burton appeared to have recovered completely. He
wrote several articles for 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and took regular
walks, first with his wife, and, when his walking power improved so as
to exceed hers, with his son. He also began to edit the literary remains
of the late Mr Edward Ellice, to whom he was joint literary executor
along with Mrs Ellice.
At the time of the General Assembly Dr Burton had the pleasure of seeing
once more his valued friend, the Rev. James White, minister of Methlick.
This gentleman had been his schoolfellow at the Grammar School in
Aberdeen. The two old friends spent a pleasant summer evening together
at Morton. On the Saturday before his own death Dr Burton learned that
of Mr White. "Ah! so Jamie White's gone," he said, "and _without the
catalogues_." The last part of his sentence referred to old class lists
in which Joannes Burton and Jacobus White's names appear next each
other. They believed themselves the last survivors of their Grammar
School class.
On Tuesday, 2d August, he walked into Edinburgh and out again as usual,
though his family drove in at the same time that he walked, and drove
out again also at the same time, in the hope that he would avail himself
of a seat in the pony-carriage, at least for part of the way. His
aversion to driving clung to him. He did not appear fatigued, declared
himself the better for the walk, and even next day still boasted of the
advantage which he thought he always gained from a long walk. On
Thursday, 4th August, he became very hoarse, and complained of sore
throat. On Friday these complaints were better. On Saturday, 6th, he
slept almost the whole day, rousing himself to take food when required,
and always intending to rise, but as the shades of evening fell
announcing his intention of "making a day of it," and being very active
and down in good time next day.
On Sunday, 7th, he did come down as early as usual, and did not
complain, but appeared languid, lying on the sofa the greater part of
the day,--a thing he had never done before. He read and talked as usual.
He sat at table with his family at dinner for the last time. It was
observed that he looked ill, so ill that his wife resolved to send for
the doctor as soon as possible next day, which was Monday, again the
8th, of August. The night had passed quietly, but on the doctor's
arrival he pronounced the case very grave. The lungs were much
congested, and the heart's action weak. The day brought no aggravation
of the symptoms; again the night was quiet.
On Tuesday, 9th August, there was a slight improvement, which continued
throughout the night.
On Wednesday, 10th, the improvement seemed more marked till about ten
A.M. About that time a change in the countenance was observed. On the
doctor's visit about twelve he pronounced the case all but hopeless, and
five hours later life was extinct. Consciousness remained till almost
the last moment. The illness was attended by no bodily pain, little even
of uneasiness, and the mind was calm and placid throughout.
Since the beginning of illness, nine months before, the natural
irritability, or impatience of temper, had been diminishing. Dr Burton
was by no means, as all his friends seemed to suppose, a fretful or
unreasonable invalid. With but few exceptions he was gentle and grateful
to his attendants, especially to his wife. He was perfectly aware of his
own condition, though never directly told it. His friend Mr Belcombe,
the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Morningside, called for him on
Tuesday, 9th August, was received by him with pleasure, and spent some
time with him. Dr Burton had been brought up an Episcopalian, and
continued attached to the Moderate party in that Church through life.
It can hardly be expected that the writer should offer a critical
estimate of one so lately dead, and so nearly related to her. In the
preceding sketch she has endeavoured to inform the public on all
particulars in which they might be supposed interested in the life of a
man who served them during life with considerable acceptance. His
voluminous works may speak for themselves, or find a more competent
exponent than the present writer. She has endeavoured to give a picture
of himself.
John Hill Burton can never have been handsome, and he so determinedly
neglected his person as to increase its natural defects. His greatest
mental defect was an almost entire want of imagination. From this cause
the characters of those nearest and dearest to him remained to his
life's end a sealed book.
He was fond of talking, and still fonder of writing, about character;
but even his liveliest pictures, such as that of De Quincey the
opium-eater, are but a collection of external habits or peculiarities,
not necessarily bearing at all on the real nature--the inner man. His
was the sort of mind which more naturally classifies than
individualises, in this agreeing with the late Mr Buckle, who
appreciated Dr Burton's historical labours, and was in his turn
appreciated by him. To both, individual character seemed a small subject
not worth study.
The characters of women, especially, were by Dr Burton all placed in the
same category. He conceived of them all as baby-worshippers,
flower-lovers, &c.--all alike.
Dr Burton was excessively kind-hearted within the limits placed by this
great want. To any sorrow or suffering which he could understand he
craved with characteristic impatience to carry immediate relief; and the
greatest enjoyment of his life, especially of its later years, was to
give pleasure to children, poor people, or the lower animals. Many
humble folks will remember the bunches of flowers he thrust silently
into their hands, and the refreshment he never failed to press on their
acceptance in his own peculiar manner.
He was liberal of money to a fault. He never refused any application
even from a street beggar. He quite allowed that these ought not to be
encouraged, but he urged that the municipality ought to take charge of
them, and prevent their appealing to the compassion of the public, who
could not, as he said, be expected to perform the disagreeable task of
disciplining vagrants at the wages of a penny a case. No printer's devil
or other chance messenger failed to receive his sixpence or shilling,
besides a comfortable meal. It was his constant custom to ask his sons
if any of their wants were unsupplied, if they required money for
furnishing their workshop or laboratory, or for any of their studies or
amusements. It is but just to them to add that the question was almost
always answered in the negative.
Many of the "motley crew" along with whom Dr Burton received his
education fell into difficulties in the course of their lives. An
application from one of them always met with a prompt response. To send
double the amount asked on such occasions was his rule, if money was the
object desired. In his earlier life he would also spare no trouble in
endeavouring to help these unfortunates to help themselves. As he grew
old he was less zealous, probably from being less sanguine of success,
in this service.
On Saturday the 13th of August the mortal remains of John Hill Burton
were laid beside those of his infant child in the lovely little
churchyard of Dalmeny. It had been at first intended that he should be
buried in the Dean Cemetery, where his mother and his first wife were
interred, and where his valued friend William Brodie[22] had erected a
beautiful monument over their graves; but after orders had been given to
this effect, his wife became strongly possessed by the wish to carry out
his repeatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.
[Footnote 22: Since deceased--October 30, 1881--and also buried there.]
KATHARINE BURTON.
MORTON, _20th September 1881_.
[Illustration: _Dalmeny Church._]
[Illustration: A Nook in the Author's Library.]
[Illustration]
THE BOOK-HUNTER.
_PART I.--HIS NATURE._
Introductory.
Of the Title under which the contents of the following pages are ranged
I have no better justification to offer than that it appeared to suit
their discursive tenor. If they laid any claim to a scientific
character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established
department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear
under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities
conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not
only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but
am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to
have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections
and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek
an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead
language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common
talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are
scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you
are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits;
and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not
naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster sauce.
Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much
abused. The very reverence it is held in--the strong disinclination on
the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under
the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who
does it--makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of
fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and
handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student
once into palæozoology, and he takes your other hard names--your
ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron--for
granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or
devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is
categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be
described as _sun_categorematic, one may take up a very absolute
positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.
Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit,
has sought this all-powerful protection, and called itself Archæology.
An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and
the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect
stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the
faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the
people who placed it there, seems as it were to be rescued from the
heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the
community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If it be
large and shapeless, it may take rank as an amorphous megalith; and it
is on record that the owner of some muirland acres, finding them
described in a learned work as "richly megalithic," became suddenly
excited by hopes which were quickly extinguished when the import of the
term was fully explained to him. Should there be any remains of
sculpture on such a stone, it becomes a lithoglyph or a hieroglyph; and
if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the
adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of
title of honour, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if
any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and
destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.
The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of
Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or
other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used
frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly
adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists
ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of
Greek designations lately reached its climax, in an attempt to save
thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.
It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify the class of men to
whom the following sketches are devoted by an appropriate scientific
title, a difficulty would start up at the very beginning. As the reader
will perhaps see, from the tenor of my discourse, I would find it
difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad--to
speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should
characterise them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic.
On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and continue to stick to
the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all the more assurance that it has
been tolerated, and even liked, by readers of the kind I am most
ambitious of pleasing.[23]
[Footnote 23: To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at
a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets
of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions,
as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux
Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avisés of Jean Joseph Rive:--
"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and
colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses
whence issued; and all the minutiæ of a book."--"A bibliographe is a
describer of books and other literary arrangements."--"A bibliomane is
an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys,
cock-brained and purse-heavy."--"A bibliophile, the lover of books, is
the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own
pleasure."--"A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock,
or framing them in glass-cases."
The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high
admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his
supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe,
explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that
the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive,
is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer
of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a
classifier of books; and bibliopée, "_l'art d'écrire ou de composer des
livres_," or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author. Of
the dignity with which this writer can invest the objects of his
nomenclature, take the following specimen from his description of the
bibliographe:--
"Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and nothing
more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it.
"Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all sciences, it
would appear that all subjects should come under the consideration of
the bibliographe; languages, logic, criticism, philosophy, eloquence,
mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are no strangers to him;
the history of printing and of celebrated printers is familiar to him,
as well as all the operations of the typographic art. He is continually
occupied with the works of the ancients and the moderns; he makes it his
business to know books useful, rare, and curious, not only by their
titles and form, but by their contents; he spends his life in analysing,
classifying, and describing them. He seeks out those which are
recommended by talented authors; he runs through libraries and cabinets
to increase the sum of his knowledge; he studies authors who have
treated of the science of books, he points out their errors; he chooses
from among new productions those which bear the stamp of genius, and
which will live in men's memories; he ransacks periodicals to keep
himself well up to the discoveries of his age, and compare them with
those of ages past; he is greedy of all works which treat of libraries,
particularly catalogues, when they are well constructed and well
arranged, and their price adds to their value. Such is the genuine
_Bibliographe_." This reminds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly
defined their own science as the knowledge of things human and divine.]
Few wiser things have ever been said than that remark of Byron's, that
"man is an unfortunate fellow, and ever will be." Perhaps the
originality of the fundamental idea it expresses may be questioned, on
the ground that the same warning has been enounced in far more solemn
language, and from a far more august authority. But there is originality
in the vulgar everyday-world way of putting the idea, and this makes it
suit the present purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be dealt
with, there is no intention to be either devout or philosophical about
it, but to treat it in a thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in
this temper to judge of its place among the defects and ills to which
flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, if we human creatures sometimes
did this, and discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking
of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the
clouds of theology or of ethics, according as our temperament and
training are of the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there
are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail
mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology,
than the greatest of criminals. But such has been my own unfortunate
experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these
self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of
intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who has floundered a
little out of the straight path, and being all too conscious of his
errors, is not prepared to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms
which come so readily to the lips of the censors, who at heart believe
themselves spotless,--just as complaints about poverty, and inability to
buy this and that, come from the fat lips of the millionaire, when he
shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, and his forcing-frames.
No; it is hard to choose between the two. The man who has no defect or
crack in his character--no tinge of even the minor immoralities--no
fantastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet--no preposterous
hobby--such a man, walking straight along the surface of this world in
the arc of a circle, is a very dangerous character, no doubt; of such
all children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that have the
instinct of the odious in their nature, feel an innate loathing. And
yet it is questionable if your perfectionised Sir Charles Grandison is
quite so dangerous a character as your "miserable sinner," vociferously
conscious that he is the frailest of the frail, and that he can do no
good thing of himself. And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of
these two characteristics have been known so to alternate in one
disposition as to render it evident that each is but the same moral
nature under a different external aspect,--the mask, cowl, varnish,
crust, or whatever you like to call it, having been adapted to the
external conditions of the man--that is, to the society he mixes in, the
set he belongs to, the habits of the age, and the way in which he
proposes to get on in life. It is when the occasion arises for the mask
being thrown aside, or when the internal passions burst like a volcano
through the crust, that terrible events take place, and the world throbs
with the excitement of some wonderful criminal trial.[24]
[Footnote 24: It has often been observed that it is among the Society of
Friends, who keep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that
these make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey, in
one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man of
great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded by
insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the system
of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, which I am not
prepared either to support or contradict. After describing the system of
restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is not equally known
that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at
once--the force of passion and of youth--not unfrequently records its
own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of
nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. And, further, I have been
assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases--strange and
elaborate affections of the nervous system--are found _exclusively_
among the young men and women of the Quaker Society; that they are known
and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in
great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham; that
they assume a new type and a more inveterate character in the second or
third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted;
and, finally, that if this class of nervous derangements does not
increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because
the community itself--the Quaker body--does not increase, but, on the
contrary, is rather on the wane."
There exist many good stories which have for their point the passions of
the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a
shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a
north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in his Description
of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that
Barclay family which produced the apologist and the pugilist. He was a
colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen wild work in his day; but
in his old age a change came over him, and, becoming a follower of
George Fox, he retired to spend his latter days on his ancestral estate
in Kincardineshire. Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought
the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his
marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and
their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the
encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest
that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and
therefore thou art endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine,
because thou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I
cannot hinder thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist; for
shouldst thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he
may prove too strong, not only for me, but for _thee_." There was no use
of attempting to answer such an argument.]
The present, however, is not an inquiry into the first principles either
of ethics or of physiology. The object of this rambling preamble is to
win from the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards the human
frailty which I propose to examine and lay bare before him, trusting
that he will treat it neither with the haughty disdain of the
immaculate, nor the grim charity of the "miserable sinner:" that he may
even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet kindly remember that, in
comparison with many others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's
side. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid
fathers are permitted to exercise by the licence of the existing school
of French fiction.[25] Neither will it exact such extensive toleration
as that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her sister
lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad
descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her
own "was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, daedlin,
drucken body--wi' nae ill practices aboot him ava!" But all things in
their own time and place. To understand the due weight and bearing of
this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to remember that its happy
owner had probably spent her youth in that golden age when it was deemed
churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest filled his stoup at the
fountain of the flowing hogshead; and if the darker days of dear claret
came upon her times, there was still to fall back upon the silver age of
smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a really hospitable country-house
were an anker of whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on the
bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar with a spade in it,--all
for the manufacture of toddy.
[Footnote 25: In the renowned Dame aux Camélias, the respectable, rigid,
and rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous
ayez une maîtresse, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un galant
homme doit payer l'amour d'une fille entretenue, c'est on ne peut mieux;
mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour elle, que vous
permettiez que la bruit de votre vie scandaleuse arrive jusqu'au fond de
ma province, et jette l'ombre d'une tache sur le nom honorable que je
vous ai donné--voilà ce qui ne peut être, voilà ce qui ne sera pas."
So even the French novelists draw the line "somewhere," and in other
departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than many good
uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one very popular novel
the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming-table, leaves her to
starve, lives with another woman, and, having committed forgery, plots
with the Mephistopheles of the story to buy his own safety at the price
of his wife's honour. This might seem bad enough, but worse remains. It
is told in a smothered whisper, by the faithful domestic, to the
horrified family, that he has reason to suspect his master of having
indulged, once at least, if not oftener, in brandy-and-water!]
The habits of that age have passed away, and with them the drunken laird
and the widely tolerant wife. The advancing civilisation which has
nearly extinguished this class of frailties among those who have the
amplest means of indulgence in them, is, no doubt, doing for other
frailties, and will come at last to the one in hand, leaving it an
object of admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened
posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such
results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a
consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous
ground--dangerous, I mean, to the frail but amiable class to whom my
exposition is devoted. Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to
call attention to a special type of human frailty, since the world is
full of people who will be prepared to deal with and cure it, provided
only that they are to have their own way with the disease and the
patient, and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of locking him
up, dieting him, and taking possession of his worldly goods and
interests, as one who, by his irrational habits, or his outrages on the
laws of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other neology, has
satisfactorily established his utter incapacity to take charge of his
own affairs. No! This is not a cruel age; the rack, the wheel, the boot,
the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks, have disappeared;
death-punishment is dwindling away; and if convicts have not their full
rations of cooked meat, or get damaged coffee or sour milk, or are
inadequately supplied with flannels and clean linen, there will be an
outcry and an inquiry, and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage
of his influence, and learn to look better after the administration of
patronage. But, at the same time, the area of punishment--or of
"treatment," as it is mildly termed--becomes alarmingly widened, and
people require to look sharply into themselves lest they should be
tainted with any little frailty or peculiarity which may transfer them
from the class of free self-regulators to that of persons under
"treatment." In Owen's parallelograms there were to be no prisons: he
admitted no power in one man to inflict punishment upon another for
merely obeying the dictates of natural propensities which could not be
resisted. But, at the same time, there were to be "hospitals" in which
not only the physically diseased, but also the mentally and _morally_
diseased, were to be detained until they were cured; and when we reflect
that the laws of the parallelogram were very stringent and minute, and
required to be absolutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole
machinery of society would come to pieces, like a watch with a broken
spring,--it is clear that these hospitals would have contained a very
large proportion of the unrationalised population.
There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of communism now among
us, and it is therefore with some little misgiving that one sets down
anything that may betray a brother's weakness, and lay bare the
diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeed, the bad name that proverbially
hangs the dog has already been given to the one under consideration, for
bibliomania is older in the technology of this kind of nosology than
dipsomania, which is now understood to be an almost established ground
for seclusion, and deprivation of the management of one's own affairs.
There is one ground of consolation, however,--the people who, being all
right themselves, have undertaken the duty of keeping in order the rest
of the world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford time for
idle reading. There is a good chance, therefore, that this little book
may pass them unnoticed, and the harmless class, on whose peculiar
frailties the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle and kindly
exposition, may yet be permitted to go at large.
So having spoken, I now propose to make the reader acquainted with some
characteristic specimens of the class.
A Vision of Mighty Book-Hunters.
As the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend
Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now--tall,
straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms
into benignity as he inspects a pretty little clean Elzevir, or a tall
portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a
peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important
announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive
types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel
to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbours
is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members
of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency--or,
it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief--to
have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as
the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through
their favourite taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget
that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of
the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in
his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon containing 372
copies of rare editions of the Bible? All were fish that came to his
net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a
stall--and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, and
secures with frantic impetuosity, "at any price," a great fish he has
been patiently watching year after year. His hunting-grounds were wide
and distant, and there were mysterious rumours about the numbers of
copies, all identically the same in edition and minor individualities,
which he possessed of certain books. I have known him, indeed, when
beaten at an auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so be
it--but I daresay I have ten or twelve copies at home, if I could lay
hands on them."
It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a
well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector
buys his first _duplicate_. It is like the first secret dram swallowed
in the forenoon--the first pawning of the silver spoons--or any other
terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no
hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum
spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his
friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his
previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for
professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and
hardened; and it is observable in the career of this class of
unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by
an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandonment to its
propensities. The Archdeacon had long passed this stage ere he crossed
my path, and had become thoroughly hardened. He was not remarkable for
local attachment; and in moving from place to place, his spoil, packed
in innumerable great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain unreleased
during the whole period of his tarrying in his new abode, so that they
were removed to the next stage of his journey through life with modified
inconvenience.
Cruel as it may seem, I must yet notice another and a peculiar vagary of
his malady. He had resolved, at least once in his life, to part with a
considerable proportion of his collection--better to suffer the anguish
of such an act than endure the fretting of continued restraint. There
was a wondrous sale by auction accordingly; it was something like what
may have occurred on the dissolution of the monasteries at the
Reformation, or when the contents of some time-honoured public library
were realised at the period of the French Revolution. Before the affair
was over, the Archdeacon himself made his appearance in the midst of the
miscellaneous self-invited guests who were making free with his
treasures,--he pretended, honest man, to be a mere casual spectator,
who, having seen, in passing, the announcement of a sale by auction,
stepped in like the rest of the public. By degrees he got excited,
gasped once or twice as if mastering some desperate impulse, and at
length fairly bade. He could not brazen out the effect of this escapade,
however, and disappeared from the scene. It was remarked by the
observant, that an unusual number of lots were afterwards knocked down
to a military gentleman, who seemed to have left portentously large
orders with the auctioneer. Some curious suspicions began to arise,
which were settled by that presiding genius bending over his rostrum,
and explaining in a confidential whisper that the military hero was in
reality a pillar of the Church so disguised.
The Archdeacon lay under what, among a portion of the victims of his
malady, was deemed a heavy scandal. He was suspected of reading his own
books--that is to say, when he could get at them; for there are those
who may still remember his rather shamefaced apparition of an evening,
petitioning, somewhat in the tone with which an old schoolfellow down in
the world requests your assistance to help him to go to York to get an
appointment--petitioning for the loan of a volume of which he could not
deny that he possessed numberless copies lurking in divers parts of his
vast collection. This reputation of reading the books in his collection,
which should be sacred to external inspection solely, is, with a certain
school of book-collectors, a scandal, such as it would be among a
hunting set to hint that a man had killed a fox. In the dialogues, not
always the most entertaining, of Dibdin's Bibliomania, there is this
short passage: "'I will frankly confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am
an arrant _bibliomaniac_--that I love books dearly--that the very sight,
touch, and mere perusal----' 'Hold, my friend,' again exclaimed
Philemon; 'you have renounced your profession--you talk of _reading_
books--do _bibliomaniacs_ ever _read_ books?'"
Yes, the Archdeacon read books--he devoured them; and he did so to full
prolific purpose. His was a mind enriched with varied learning, which he
gave forth with full, strong, easy flow, like an inexhaustible perennial
spring coming from inner reservoirs, never dry, yet too capacious to
exhibit the brawling, bubbling symptoms of repletion. It was from a
majestic heedlessness of the busy world and its fame that he got the
character of indolence, and was set down as one who would leave no
lasting memorial of his great learning. But when he died, it was not
altogether without leaving a sign; for from the casual droppings of his
pen has been preserved enough to signify to many generations of students
in the walk he chiefly affected how richly his mind was stored, and how
much fresh matter there is in those fields of inquiry where compilers
have left their dreary tracks, for ardent students to cultivate into a
rich harvest. In him truly the bibliomania may be counted among the many
illustrations of the truth so often moralised on, that the highest
natures are not exempt from human frailty in some shape or other.
Let us now summon the shade of another departed victim--Fitzpatrick
Smart, Esq. He, too, through a long life, had been a vigilant and
enthusiastic collector, but after a totally different fashion. He was
far from omnivorous. He had a principle of selection peculiar and
separate from all other's, as was his own individuality from other
men's. You could not classify his library according to any of the
accepted nomenclatures peculiar to the initiated. He was not a
black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge
man, or an early-English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider,
or a pasquinader, or an old-brown-calf man, or a Grangerite, or a
tawny-moroccoite, or a gilt-topper, a marbled-insider, or an _editio
princeps_ man; neither did he come under any of the more vulgar
classifications of collectors whose thoughts run more upon the
usefulness for study than upon the external conditions of their library,
such as those who affect science, or the classics, or English poetic and
historical literature. There was no way of defining his peculiar walk
save by his own name--it was the Fitzpatrick-Smart walk. In fact, it
wound itself in infinite windings through isolated spots of literary
scenery, if we may so speak, in which he took a personal interest. There
were historical events, bits of family history, chiefly of a tragic or a
scandalous kind,--efforts of art or of literary genius on which, through
some hidden intellectual law, his mind and memory loved to dwell; and it
was in reference to these that he collected. If the book were the one
desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable price, was to be grudged
for its acquisition. If the book were an inch out of his own line, it
might be trampled in the mire for aught he cared, be it as rare or
costly as it could be.
It was difficult, almost impossible, for others to predicate what would
please this wayward sort of taste, and he was the torment of the
book-caterers, who were sure of a princely price for the right article,
but might have the wrong one thrown in their teeth with contumely. It
was a perilous, but, if successful, a gratifying thing to present him
with a book. If it happened to hit his fancy, he felt the full force of
the compliment, and overwhelmed the giver with his courtly thanks. But
great observation and tact were required for such an adventure. The
chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift-maker were thousands to
one; and those who were acquainted with his strange nervous temperament,
knew that the existence within his dwelling-place of any book not of his
own special kind, would impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy
horror which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes into its cell.
Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his
existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on
his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring
out all his sarcasm, which was not feeble or slight, on the odious
object, and wondering why an author could have entertained against him
so steady and enduring a malice as to take the trouble of writing and
printing all that rubbish with no better object than disturbing the
peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such _dona
ferentes_ cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep--for what
could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he
was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid
exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had
established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities
were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in
existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods.
These gods were a pantheon of a lively and grotesque aspect, for he was
a hunter after other things besides books. His acquisitions included
pictures, and the various commodities which, for want of a distinctive
name, auctioneers call "miscellaneous articles of vertu." He started on
his accumulating career with some old family relics, and these, perhaps,
gave the direction to his subsequent acquisitions, for they were all,
like his books, brought together after some self-willed and peculiar law
of association that pleased himself. A bad, even an inferior, picture he
would not have--for his taste was exquisite--unless, indeed, it had some
strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward fancies, and then
he would adopt the badness as a peculiar recommendation, and point it
out with some pungent and appropriate remark to his friends. But though,
with these peculiar exceptions, his works of art were faultless, no
dealer could ever calculate on his buying a picture, however high in
artistic merit or tempting as a bargain. With his ever-accumulating
collection, in which tiny sculpture and brilliant colour predominated,
he kept a sort of fairy world around him. But each one of the mob of
curious things he preserved had some story linking it with others, or
with his peculiar fancies, and each one had its precise place in a sort
of _epos_, as certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of a
pantomime or a farce has his own position and functions.
After all, he was himself his own greatest curiosity. He had come to
manhood just after the period of gold-laced waistcoats, small-clothes,
and shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a living memorial of
these now antique habits. It happened to be his lot to preserve down to
us the earliest phase of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while the rest of
the world were booted or heavy shod, his silk-stockinged feet were
thrust into pumps of early Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was
the surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make before it came to
be called a frock. Round his neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite
neckerchief (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a great
poultice--and so he took his walks abroad, a figure which he could
himself have turned into admirable ridicule.
One of the mysteries about him was, that his clothes, though unlike any
other person's, were always old. This characteristic could not even be
accounted for by the supposition that he had laid in a sixty years'
stock in his youth, for they always appeared to have been a good deal
worn. The very umbrella was in keeping--it was of green silk, an
obsolete colour ten years ago--and the handle was of a peculiar
crosier-like formation in cast-horn, obviously not obtainable in the
market. His face was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth; and,
bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light-brown hair which had long
ago legitimately shaded his brow, when he stood still--except for his
linen, which was snowy white--one might suppose that he had been shot
and stuffed on his return home from college, and had been sprinkled with
the frowzy mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals and other
things, in which a semblance to the freshness of living nature is vainly
attempted to be preserved. So if he were motionless; but let him speak,
and the internal freshness was still there, an ever-blooming garden of
intellectual flowers. His antiquated costume was no longer grotesque--it
harmonised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred gentleness of
manner, which he had acquired from the best sources, since he had seen
the first company in his day, whether for rank or genius. And
conversation and manner were far from exhausting his resources. He had a
wonderful pencil--it was potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the
ridiculous; but it took a wayward wilful course, like everything else
about him. He had a brilliant pen, too, when he chose to wield it; but
the idea that he should exercise any of these his gifts in common
display before the world, for any even of the higher motives that make
people desire fame and praise, would have sickened him. His faculties
were his own as much as his collection, and to be used according to his
caprice and pleasure. So fluttered through existence one who, had it
been his fate to have his own bread to make, might have been a great
man. Alas for the end! Some curious annotations are all that remain of
his literary powers--some drawings and etchings in private collections
all of his artistic. His collection, with its long train of legends and
associations, came to what he himself must have counted as dispersal. He
left it to his housekeeper, who, like a wise woman, converted it into
cash while its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a great
auction-room, its several catalogued items lay in humiliating contrast
with the decorous order in which they were wont to be arranged. _Sic
transit gloria mundi._
Let us now call up a different and a more commonplace type of the
book-hunter--it shall be Inchrule Brewer. He is guiltless of all
intermeddling with the contents of books, but in their external
attributes his learning is marvellous. He derived his nickname, from the
practice of keeping, as his inseparable pocket-companion, one of those
graduated folding measures of length which may often be seen protruding
from the moleskin pocket of the joiner. He used it at auctions and on
other appropriate occasions, to measure the different elements of a
book--the letterpress--the unprinted margin--the external expanse of the
binding; for to the perfectly scientific collector all these things are
very significant.[26] They are, in fact, on record among the craft, like
the pedigrees and physical characteristics recorded in stud-books and
short-horn books. One so accomplished in this kind of analysis could
tell at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under the hammer
was the same that had been knocked down before at the Roxburghe
sale--the Askew, the Gordonstoun, or the Heber, perhaps--or was
veritably an impostor--or was in reality a new and previously unknown
prize well worth contending for. The minuteness and precision of his
knowledge excited wonder, and, being anomalous in the male sex even
among collectors, gave occasion to a rumour that its possessor must
veritably be an aged maiden in disguise.
[Footnote 26: Of the copy of the celebrated 1635 Elzevir Cæsar, in the
Imperial Library at Paris, Brunet triumphantly informs us that it is
four inches and ten-twelfths in height, and occupies the high position
of being the tallest copy of that volume in the world, since other
illustrious copies put in competition with it have been found not to
exceed four inches and eight, or, at the utmost, nine, twelfths.
"Ces détails," he subjoins, "paroitront sans doute puérils à bien des
gens: mais puisque c'est la grandeur des marges de ces sorts de livres
qu'en détermine la valeur, il faut bien fixer le _maximum_ de cette
grandeur, afin que les amateurs puissent apprécier les exemplaires qui
approchent plus ou moins de la mésure donnée."]
His experience, aided by a heaven-born genius tending in that direction,
rendered him the most merciless detector of sophisticated books.
Nothing, it might be supposed on first thought, can be a simpler or more
easily recognised thing than a book genuine as printed. But in the
old-book trade there are opportunities for the exercise of ingenuity
inferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's and the
horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously interesting. Sometimes entire
facsimiles are made of eminent volumes. More commonly, however, the
problem is to complete an imperfect copy. This will be most
satisfactorily accomplished, of course, if another copy can be procured
imperfect also, but not in the same parts. Great ingenuity is sometimes
shown in completing a highly esteemed edition with fragments from one
lightly esteemed. Sometimes a colophon or a decorated capital has to be
imitated, and bold operators will reprint a page or two in facsimile;
these operations, of course, involve the inlaying of paper, judiciously
staining it, and other mysteries. Paris is the great centre of this kind
of work, but it has been pretty extensively pursued in Britain; and the
manufacture of first folio Shakespeares has been nearly as staple a
trade as the getting up of genuine portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. It
will establish a broad distinction to note the fact, that whereas our
friend the Archdeacon would collect several imperfect copies of the
same book, in the hope of finding materials for one perfect one among
them, Inchrule would remorselessly spurn from him the most voluptuously
got-up specimen (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it tainted
by the very faintest suspicion of "restoration."
Among the elements which constitute the value of a book--rarity of
course being essential--one might say he counted the binding highest. He
was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the
uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical
department of book-making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's
Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, devoted to
bindings. There are binders who have immortalised themselves--as
Staggemier, Walther, Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian,
Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayda
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/22136