it-in the intimate connection of these treasures with famous men, and particularly with the famous literary personages with whom he had been associated all his life. His own admirable literary work-always of the best and most finished kind-brought him into further connection with literary memorials of every description; and there was no greater treat than to turn over one of his well-stored portfolios. His artistic friends seemed to have delighted in recording their connection with the many social hours he furnished them, by pleasant, spirited sketches-perhaps the happiest souvenirs that could be devised. Among his books he delighted to have such as had been in the possession of famous writers, and were enriched with signatures and inscriptions. He possessed most of the correspondence of Garrick, filling many great tomes; and his more precious volumes were bound in a solidly sumptuous style, to do honour to the subject.

There is another class of amateur not so inviting or acceptable. He is figured in the worm which feeds on books. This "prowler" scans the catalogues carefully for anything in his line, and there are dealers who purvey for this taste.

In certain booksellers' catalogues this department is often labelled "Facetiæ," supposed by the innocent readers to stand for books of a humorous or Rabelaisian character. In this class might be included "Macaronic" poetry. It is lamentable to relate, however, that there is a demand for books written in Latin and French, and often in very elegant Latin and French, of such a character as to forbid them the freedom of the drawing-room table. There are many such, belonging chiefly to the seventeenth century, and one, a notorious one, by a professor. There have been collectors of these odious things. Selwyn men

tions a noble lord of his acquaintance who imported some thirty or forty copies of one of Crebillon's loose stories, which he disposed of to his loose friends—an instance of rare good nature.

One person not long since dead was held to possess "one of the finest collections" of these things conceivable, and which he later sent to the Continent for sale. “Facetiæ!” Heaven save the mark! We should like to hear the burning tongue of Thomas Carlyle on this abomination. There was an English earl who in 1789 "privately" reprinted the works of one Baffo, an Italian writer, styled Le Rimeur le plus obscène et le plus sale de son temps, to give away for presents! It is now, we are told, very scarce. Mr. Beckford enjoyed the privilege of a copy, which was sold for £11, solely upon its claim to saleté.

As to the insect book-worm, few have an idea of the ravages caused by these deadly enemies of books. Their performances excite amazement, as when we see some huge folio-a St. Thomas or Bellarminusbored straight through with a tiny tunnel, the material in each leaf being cut out and carried off. One such tunnel literally destroys a book. There is something painful in finding leaf after leaf unto the end thus pierced. These depredators are so tiny as to escape detection, though not so long since one was captured flagrante delicto, and exhibited to the curious.

§ DE the Shakespeare Folios and

Duartos.

HAKESPEARE, so philosophical and occult-so inexhaustible, almost, in repaying the student's labours-so overlaid with speculation and commentaries, has naturally furnished a vast contribution to the "libraries of the curious." He stands alone in this fruitfulness; Racine, Molière, and other great classics offering their text without exciting much controversy. But we inust add to this fruitfulness the strange dispensation which attends the greater genius: that sense of mystery and obscurity which prevents us ever reaching, with anything approaching assurance, to the knowledge that we have what Shakespeare really wrote. Depending on various and conflicting versions, we are forced to hold the general sense, as in the case of the oracles, but the literal and exact form escapes us. There is no authorised canon of Shakespeare; and, strangest of all, the writer of these immortal pieces, unlike other authors, seems to have been least concerned with their publication and editing. He who wrote for all time seems not to have cared to bring his work before the British public, nor to have bethought him of editing, printing, or correcting for the press,

nor of any of the welcome incidents that attend on authorship.

This curious fate has naturally had extraordinary results. The works given to the press by others than the author, as they were found, picked up, or copied, naturally reflected their disorderly origin; each shape being different, and often opposed to the other. The plays were clearly printed from notes or recollections, and rude playhouse copies. Further to complicate the matter, the compositor did his best to add to the disorder, and every page of the first folio "teems with errors." In truth, it is with the works of Shakespeare as with the Scriptures; there is no original text, but only the best, or what is thought to be the best. In the case of the Scriptures there are the various recognised MSS., the Vatican and others, while of Shakespeare there are the little quartos and the four folios. None of these can be shown to have been in relation with the author or with his original MS. Hence no one has more special claim to authority than its fellows. Round the quartos and the four folios there floats a cloud of almost romantic details. An army of laborious commentators has given days and nights, and their whole lives, to the comparing of copies, the counting of lines, the searching for analogous passages, in other authors, until a flood of light has been shed upon the question. Behind these are ranged the collectors and their searchings-the story of the rare quarto, the restorations, and, above all, the fearsome" prices. These, it may be conceived, will rise with every year, owing to the demand in America and the Colonies.

Nothing is more mysterious than the fate that seems to pursue this comparatively modern volume : works a hundred and a hundred and thirty years

older have fared infinitely better, and have swept down the rapids of time without damage or wreckage. But this work is usually found frayed, maimed, soiled, smeared, imperfect, leaves and sheets torn out in the middle, the beginning, and end. Almost every copy, save two or three that can be named, is "made up —that is, the defects of one are supplemented from others.

George Steevens supplies a fair, sensible reason. "Of all volumes," he says, "those of popular entertainment are soonest injured. It would be difficult to name four folios that are oftener found in dirty, mutilated condition than this first assemblage of Shakespeare's plays, 'God's Revenge against Murder,' 'The Gentleman's Recreation,' and Johnson's 'Lives of the Highwaymen.' The folio Shakespeare," goes on Steevens, was generally found on the hall tables of mansions, and that a multitude of his pages 'have this effect of gravy' may be imputed to the various eatables set out on the same boards. I have repeatedly met with flakes of pie-crust between the leaves of our author. These unctuous fragments, remaining long in close confinement, communicated their grease to several pages deep on each side of them. Since our breakfasts have become less gross, our favourite authors have escaped with fewer injuries. I claim to be the first commentator who strove with becoming seriousness to account for the frequent stains that disgrace the earliest folio edition, which is now become the most expensive book in our language. For," asks the astonished Steevens, "what other English volume, without plates, and printed since the year 1600, is now known to have sold more than once for thirty-five pounds fourteen shillings?" There is a pleasant quaintness in all this. He tells us, moreover, that most of the first folios then