Mr. T. G. Law, Librarian, Signet Library; Mr. W. Black, Librarian, S.S.C. Library.

The report of the meeting at Manchester, edited by Messrs. Tedder and Thomas, will shortly be in the hands of members. The delay in the production of the volume has been caused by the preparation of some interesting descriptions of the libraries visited by the Association on that occasion.

JULY MONTHLY MEETING.

THE ninth Monthly Meeting of the third year of the Association was held at the London Institution on Friday, July 2, 1880, at 8 p.m., Mr. R. HARRISON, Treasurer, in the chair.

The minutes of the previous meeting having been read and confirmed, the Chairman called on the Secretary to read the following paper by Mr. W. E. AXON, entitled

THE POETRY OF THE BIBLIOMANIA.

Of Books I sing. Of all that greets the eye,
Or warms the fancy, and delights the heart,
And touches, by a thousand secret springs,
Congenial, the enraptured soul, in shape
Of FOLDED LEAVES IMPRINTED, the coy muse,
Willing, yet anxious, now essays to sing.

DIBDIN.

Love, love is the song which the Poet ever singeth,
Of which the listening world is never weary.

So sings Alexander Smith, but, like many other beautiful and poetical assertions, it requires to be taken cum grano salis, for the poets have sung almost of every subject beneath the sun. Not only have they sung of love but of war, of the glories and triumphs, the groans and agonies of the bloody battle-field. The same hand which wrote the " Economy of Love," indited also the "Art of Cookery." The American epic poet, Joel Barlow, not only celebrated his country's glories in the "Columbiad," but also sung the praise of hasty-pudding. Garth sang of the Dispensary, and Tusser of Husbandry; in short, poets have ransacked heaven and earth for the subjects of their rhymes, and have even ventured into the nethermost world.

What wonder, then, that we should find men who have in song expressed the feelings which arise in the mind on entering the place where

Old books and manuscripts the age command,
Row above row the precious volumes stand,
In every language, and on every theme,
The mind bewildering as an airy dream.*

What wonder that singers should have arisen to interpret the joys of the Bibliomania! The disease is a widespread one, and many of those who have wooed the muse, have been more or less infected

"Review of various Schemes of Happiness." By Thomas Cook. London :

with it. Scott and Southey were hard and eager book-hunters, and the enthusiasm of Jonathan Oldbuck in his antiquarian raids is only a good-humoured satire on one of the chief passions of the author of Waverley. Look at the noble Abbotsford Library; it is a model of book-hunting energy on many and very different hunting grounds: here a black-letter romance, there a bundle of pedlar's ballads; here a "dapper Elzevir," there a folio of Aldus or Stephens. That Scott was not amenable to the vulgar reproach of not reading the books which he bought, may be seen from the curious and varied learning which he has thrown into the notes to his varied works. These notes alone, if reprinted, would form a very curious commonplace book. We mention these honoured names to show that the Book Disease is one which infects great minds; all literary men-De Quincey to the contrary notwithstanding-are more or less subject to it. Even Johnson, who was barbarously careless in his usage of books, fully estimated the importance of book-collecting."Un bibliophile après tout n'est qu'un homme perfectionné," and the poet who sublimates into song the joys and sorrows of those earnest students of bibliography, the Book-Hunters, may claim to stand at the head of the tribe.

"The Book-Hunter's Garland "would be a curious addition to our poetical anthologies, if it contained all worth preserving on the pleasures of collecting and possessing books; and it may afford a few moments' amusement to indicate some few articles that could not well be omitted from such a collection. We need not occupy the time by quoting those passages from our great authors in which they have spoken of the value and beauty of the love of books, but will confine ourselves solely to the "Poetry of the Bibliomania."

One of the first victims of that dread disease in its more modern form was Dr. John Ferriar, a worthy of whom the cotton metropolis may be justly proud.

His learning and taste are very strikingly shown in his "Illustrations of Sterne"'—a collection of interesting essays under a not very attractive title. Among other claims upon our gratitude, Dr. Ferriar is the author of a small pamphlet of fourteen quarto pages; the title is here transcribed "The Bibliomania, an epistle, to Richard Heber, Esq. by John Ferriar, M.D. inquis, veto quisquam faxit oletum. Pinge duos angues.-Pers. Sat. 1.1. 108. London: Printed for T. Cadell, and W. Davies, in the Strand; by J. Haddock, Warrington. 1809." Our bibliomaniacal poet first paints the woes of the

What wild desires, what restless torments seize
The hapless man, who feels the book disease,
If niggard Fortune cramp his gen'rous mind,

Hic,

poor collector:

And Prudence quench the Spark by heaven assign'd!
With wistful glance his aching eyes behold

The Princeps-copy, clad in blue and gold,
Where the tall Book-case, with partition thin,
Displays, yet guards the tempting charms within:
So great Facardin view'd, as sages tell,

The picture of destitution is rendered all the more terrible by a glowing description of the pleasures and advantages of the rich collector. Then follows this passage on one of the characteristics

of the tribe :

Or English books, neglected and forgot,
Excite his wish in many a dusty lot:
Whatever trash Midwinter gave to day,
Or Harper's rhiming sons, in paper gray.
At ev'ry auction, bent on fresh supplies,
He cons his Catalogue with anxious eyes :
Where'er the slim Italics mark the page,
Curious and rare his ardent mind engage.
Unlike the Swans, in Tuscan Song display'd,
He hovers eager o'er Oblivion's Shade,
To snatch obscurest names from endless night,
And give Cokain or Fletcher back to light.
In red morocco drest he loves to boast
The bloody murder, or the yelling ghost;

Or dismal ballads, sung to crowds of old,

Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.
Yet to th' unhonour'd dead be satire just;

Some flow'rs "smell sweet and blossom in their dust."

'Tis thus ev'n Shirley boasts a golden line,

And Lovelace strikes, by fits, a note divine.

Th' unequal gleams like midnight-lightnings play,
And deepen'd gloom succeeds, in place of day.

And, if by this agency some works of merit are rescued from oblivion, if some figures which Time had overturned, are reinstated in their proper niches in the temple of literature, shall we not return due honour to those who have performed the kindly office?

Here is another passage, in which the poet sings of the devastations of the cook and her assistants. It may be remarked that Ferriar speaks not of that bugbear of modern authors, the trunkmaker :

The menial train has proved the Scourge of wit,
Ev'n Omar burnt less Science than the spit;
Earthquakes and wars remit their deadly rage
But ev'ry feast demands some fated page.
Ye Towers of Julius, ye alone remain

Of all the piles that saw our nation's stain,
When Harry's sway opprest the groaning realm,
And Lust and Rapine seiz'd the wav'ring helm.
Then ruffian-hands defaced the sacred fanes,
Their saintly statues, and their storied panes ;
Then from the chest, with ancient art embost,
The Penman's pious scrolls were rudely tost;
Then richest manuscripts, profusely spread,
The brawny Churl's devouring Oven fed;
And thence Collectors date the heav'nly ire,
That wrapt Augusta's domes in sheets of fire.

One more quotation from Dr. Ferriar will suffice. He preaches fatalism in this charming strain :—

Like Poets, born, in vain Collectors strive
To cross their Fate, and learn the art to thrive.
Like Cacus, bent to tame their struggling will,
The tyrant passion drags them backward still:

Ev'n I, debarr'd of ease, and studious hours,
Confess, 'mid anxious toil, its lurking pow'rs,
How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold
The small rare volume, black with tarnish'd gold!
The Eye skims restless, like the roving bee,
O'er flowers of wit, or song, or repartee,

While sweet as Springs, new-bubbling from the stone,

Glides through the breast some pleasing theme unknown.

The perusal of this brochure suggested to Dr. Dibdin the idea of his "Bibliomania," a book still dear to those who are engaged in the pursuit of books.

Dibdin aspired to be not only the historian, but the poet of bibliography. In 1812 he printed a tract of twenty-four pages, containing 554 lines of verse on Bibliography. The edition was restricted to fifty copies. This is amongst the "books I have not seen," and also amongst the "books I should like to see."

Let us now examine a brochure of four pages, and of a different character altogether, and as a sample of bibliomaniacal conviviality, I will reproduce this jovial ballad in full.

RATIONAL MADNESS.

A Song, for the Lovers of Curious and Rare Books: adapted to the popular tune of "Liberty Hall."—Only fifty printed for private circulation.

I.

Come, boys, fill your glasses, and fill to the brim,
Here's the essence of humour, the soul too of whim!
Attend and receive (and sure this is no vapour),
A "hap'worth of wit on a pennyworth of paper."

II.

Strange songs have strange songsters, thus madness to praise,
A man must be mad ere his voice he can raise ;

By our madness alone then, without more pretence,
We'll prove to the world that we're all men of sense!

III.

Those joys which the Bibliomania affords,

Are felt and acknowledged by Dukes and by Lords!
And the finest estate would be offer'd in vain,

For an exemplar bound by the fam'd Roger Payne !

IV.

To a proverb goes madness with love hand in hand,
But our senses we yield to a double command:
The dear frenzy in both is first rous'd by fair looks,-
Here's our sweethearts, my boys! not forgetting our books!

V.

Though all ruled by one wish, and though beauty is rare,

If we miss a tall copy, we find one that's fair;

Our delight may this prove, and though often reprinted,
To one copy alone the impression be stinted.

VI.

By learning ennobled, we're careless of gain;
Of envy or malice we ne'er know the pain:
Take away the world's prize, we remain still unvext,
We've our "meadow of margin and river of text."

VII.

Thus our time may we pass with rare books and rare friends,
Growing wiser and better, till life itself ends:

And may those who delight not in black-letter lore,
By some obsolete act be sent from our shore!

VIII.

May some worthy brother his finger soon put
On a Caxton unique, or a Wynkyn uncut!
Yet pardon, I pray, the offence of my pen,-

May a soft "Pricke of Conscience" occur now and then!

IX.

Thus bless'd with possessions unrivalled on earth,
May each coming day to new pleasures give birth!
And our joys be unmixt and secure to the last,
If we look to the future or think on the past!

J. M.

These are the initials of John Major, the publisher of the most magnificent edition of Izaak Walton's "Complete Angler" ever issued from the press. Major was a man of exquisite taste in matters typographical, but the world did not smile on him, and though he bore a brave heart through it all, and wrote and sang jovial songs, of which the above is a specimen, he could not win the favour of Dame Fortune, and at last sought refuge from the storms of adverse fate in the Charter House, where he died on the 9th of January, 1849.*

"The Bibliomaniac Ballad, by Cristofer Valdarfer," we learn from Mr. Olphar Hamst's Handbook of Fictitious Names, is a production of Joseph Haslewood.

It is dedicated

And

To the Roxburghe Club, by way of dedication,

And all blackletter dogs who have passed initiation : These.

My late good-natur'd Eame oft would preach long and sage,
Censure idling of youth, extol virtues of age:

For he lov'd his old acres, old woods, and old rooks,
And his old easy chair, with old wine, and old books.
As he's dead, it were well in his library seat,
Conning technical phrases that he'd oft repeat,
And old printers names from their colophons catch,
To write life, bibl'ographic :-take scrip of the sketch.
Though born Georgii Primo he a Caxton would prize,
'Bove ten full-bottom'd Caxons to curl round his eyes;
And the spell of black letter he ne'er thought absurd,
For Young bibliomaniacs love Wynkyn the Worde.
In a rebus no lady was half so deep read,

Or statesman with devices e'er cramm'd so his head;

He his creed thought unknown, but for Whitchurch would pray,
And in dark Winter's morn, cry:"Arise, it is Day!"

Thus his heart was unbound, as love's Bower gave room,
Widow Yetsweirt was there, and the widows Joan Broome,
Joan Wolfe and Joan Orwin, and while soft things he'd utter,
Of famous Joan Jugge, he would melt for Joan Butter.

*Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1849, p. 322.