THE ART OF BOOK-MAKING.
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<span style="crey">If that severe doom of Synesius be true,--"It is a greater offeo steal dead mens labor, than their clothes,"--what shall bee of most writers?</span><span style="crey">BURTONS ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.</span>
I HAVE often wo the extreme fedity of the press, and how it es to pass that so many heads, on whiature seems to have in?icted the curse of barrenness, should teem with voluminous produs. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is tinually ?nding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I ced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a se whifolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft, and at o ao my astonishment.
I was one summers day l through the great saloons of the British Museum, with that listlessness with whie is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather; sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometimes studying the hieroglyphi aian mummy, and some times trying, with nearly equal success, to prehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. Wh<bdi>.９9ｌiｂ.</bdi>ilst I was gazing about in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant door, at the end of a suite of apartments. It was closed, but every now and then it would open, and some strange-favored being, generally clothed in black, would steal forth, and glide through the rooms, without notig any of the surrounding objects. There was an air of mystery about this that piqued my languid curiosity, and I determio attempt the passage of that strait, and to explore the unknions beyond. The door yielded to my hand, with all that facility with which the portals of ented castles yield to the adventurous knight-errant. I found myself in a spacious chamber, surrounded with great cases of venerable books. Above the cases, and just uhe ice, were arranged a great number of black-looking portraits of a authors. About the room were placed long tables, with stands for reading and writing, at which sat many pale, studious personages, p ily over dusty volumes, rummaging among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of their tents. A hushed stillness reighrough this mysterious apartment, excepting that you might hear the rag of pens over sheets of paper, and occasionally the deep sigh of one of these sages, as he shifted his position to turhe page of an old folio; doubtless arising from that hollowness and ?atulent to learned research.
Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small slip of paper, and ring a bell, whereupon a famil<cite>.</cite>iar would appear, take the paper in profound silence, glide out of the room, aurn shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi, deeply engaged iudy of occult sces. The se reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher shut up in an ented library, in the bosom of a mountain, which opened only once a year; where he made the spirits of the place bring him books of all kinds of dark knowledge, so that at the end of the year, when the magic portal once more swung open on its hinges, he issued forth so versed in forbidden lore, as to be able to soar above the heads of the multitude, and to trol the powers of Nature.
My curiosity being now fully aroused, I whispered to one of the familiars, as he was about to leave the room, and begged an interpretation of the strange se before me. A few words were suf?t for the purpose. I found that these mysterious personages, whom I had mistaken fi, were principally authors, and were in the very aanufacturing books. I was, in fact, in the reading-room of the great British Library, an immense colle of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now fotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or "pure English, unde?led," wherewith to swell their own sty rills of thought.
Being now in possession of the secret, I sat down in a er, and watched the process of this book manufactory. I noticed one lean, bilious-looking wight, who sought the most worm-eaten volumes, printed in black letter. He was evidently strug some work of profound erudition, that would be purchased by every man who wished to be thought learned, placed upon a spicuous shelf of his library, or laid open upon his table--but never read. I observed him, now and then, draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his pocket, and gnaw; whether it was his dinner, or whether he was endeav to keep off that exhaustion of the stomach, produced by much p over dry works, I leave to harder students than myself to determine.
There was one dapper little gentleman in bright-colored clothes, with a chirping gossiping expression of tenance, who had all the appearance of an author on good terms with his bookseller.
After sidering him attentively, I reized in him a diligeer-up of miscellaneous works, which bustled off well with the trade. I was curious to see how he manufactured his wares. He made more stir and show of busihan any of the others; dipping into various books, ?uttering over the leaves of manuscripts, taking a morsel out of one, a morsel out of another, "line upon line, precept upo, here a little and there a little." The tents of his book seemed to be as heterogeneous as those of the witches cauldron in Macbeth. It was here a ?nger and there a thumb, toe and blind worms sting, with his own gossip poured in like "baboons blood," to make the medley "slab and good."
After all, thought I, may not this pilfering disposition be implanted in authors for wise purposes? may it not be the way in which Providence has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved from age to age, in spite of the iable decay of the works in which they were ?rst produced?
We see that Nature has wisely, though whimsically provided for the veyance of seeds from clime to clime, in the maws of certain birds; so that animals, which, in themselves, are little better than carrion, and apparently the lawless plunderers of the orchard and the -?eld, are, in faatures carriers to disperse auate her blessings. In like mahe beauties and ?houghts of a and obsolete authors are caught up by these ?ights of predatory writers, and cast forth, again to ?ourish and bear fruit in a remote and distant tract of time. Many of their works, also, undergo a kind of metempsychosis, and spring up under new forms. What was formerly a ponderous history, revives in the shape of a romance--an old legend ges into a modern play--and a sober philosophical treatise furhe body for a whole series of boung and sparkling essays. Thus it is in the clearing of our Ameri woodlands; where we burn down a forest of stately pines, a progeny of dwarf oaks start up in their place; and we never see the prostrate trunk of a tree mouldering into soil, but it gives birth to a whole tribe of fungi.
Let us not then, lament over the decay and oblivion into whit writers desd; they do but submit to the great law of Nature, which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their duration, but which decrees, also, that their element shall never perish. Geion after geion, both in animal aable life, passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and the species tio ?ou></a>rish. Thus, also, do authors beget authors, and having produced a numerous progeny, in a good old age they sleep with their fathers, that is to say, with the authors who preceded them--and from whom they had stolen.
Whilst I was indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the sopori?c emanations for these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously af?icted, so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my imagination tinued busy, and ihe same se tinued before my minds eye, only a little ged in some of the details. I dreamt that the chamber was still decorated with the portraits of a authors, but that the number was increased. The long tables had disappeared, and, in place of the sage magi, I beheld a ragged, threadbare throng, such<u>?.</u> as may be seen plying about the great repository of cast-off clothes, Monmouth Street. Whehey seized upon a book, by one of those ingruities on to dreams, methought it turned into a garment of fn or antique fashion, with which they proceeded to equip themselves. I noticed, however, that no one preteo clothe himself from any particular suit, but took a sleeve from one, a cape from another, a skirt from a third, thus deg himself out piecemeal, while some of his inal rags would peep out from among his borrowed ?nery.
There ortly, rosy, well-fed parson, whom I observed ogling several mouldy polemical writers through an eyeglass. He soon trived to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old fathers, and having purloihe gray beard of another, endeavored to look exceedingly wise; but the smirking onplace of his te at naught all the trappings of wisdom. One sickly-lookileman was busied embr a very ?imsy garment with gold thread drawn out of several old court-dresses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another had trimmed himself magly from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a nosegay in his bosom, culled from "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," and having put Sir Philip Sidneys hat on one side of his head, strutted off with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third, who was but of puny dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing front, but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that he had patched his small-clothes with scraps of part from a Latin author.
There were some well-dressed gentlemen, it is true, who only helped themselves to a gem or so, which sparkled among their own ors, without eclipsing them. Some, too, seemed to plate the es of the old writers, merely to imbibe their principles of taste, and to catch their air and spirit; but I grieve to say, that too many were apt to array themselves, from top to toe, ianner I have mentioned. I shall not omit to speak of one genius, in drab breeches and gaiters, and an Arcadian hat, who had a violent propensity to the pastoral, but whose rural wanderings had been ed to the classic haunts of Primrose Hill, and the solitudes of the Regents Park. He had decked himself ihs and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets, and, hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical, lackadaisical air, "babbling about green ?eld." But the persohat most struck my attention ragmatical old gentleman in clerical robes, with a remarkably large and square but bald head. He ehe room wheezing and puf?ng, elbowed his way through the throng with a look of sturdy self-?dence, and, having laid hands upon a thick Greek quarto, clapped it upon his head, and swept majestically away in a formidable frizzled wig.
In the height of this literary masquerade, a cry suddenly resounded from every side, of "Thieves! thieves!" I looked, and lo! the portraits about the walls became animated! The old authors thrust out, ?rst a head, then a shoulder, from the vas, looked down curiously for an instant upoley throng, and then desded, with fury in their eyes, to claim their ri?ed property. The se of scampering and hubbub that ensued baf?es all description. The unhappy culprits endeavored in vain to escape with their plunder. On one side might be seen half a dozen old monks, stripping a modern professor; on ahere was sad devastation carried into the ranks of modern dramatic writers. Beaumont and Fletcher, side by side, raged round the ?eld like Castor and Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonsoed more wohan when a volunteer with the army in Flanders. As to the dapper little piler of farragos mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colors as harlequin, and there was as ?erce a tention of claimants about him, as about the dead body of Patroclus. I was grieved to see mao whom I had been aced to look up with awe and reverence, fain to steal off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness. Just then my eye was caught by the pragmatical old gentleman in the Greek grizzled wig, who was scrambling away in sore affright with half a score of authors in full cry after him. They were close upon his haunches; in a twinkling off went his wig; at every turn some strip of raiment eeled away, until in a few moments, from his domineering pomp, he shrunk into a little, pursy, "choppd bald shot," and made his exit with only a few tags and rags ?uttering at his back.
There was something so ludicrous iastrophe of this learheban that I burst into an immoderate ?t of laughter, which broke the whole illusion. The tumult and the scuf?e were at an end. The chamber resumed its usual appearahe old authors shrunk bato their picture-frames, and hung in shadowy solemnity along the wal<u>?９９lｉｂ.</u>ls. In short, I found myself wide awake in my er, with the whole assemblage of hoazing at me with astonishment. Nothing of the dream had been real but my burst of laughter, a sound never before heard in that grave sanctuary, and so abhorrent to the ears of wisdom, as to electrify the fraternity.
The librarian now stepped up to me, and demanded whether I had a card of admission. At ?rst I did not prehend him, but I soon found that the library was a kind of literary "preserve," subjee-laws, and that no one must presume to hunt there without special lise and permission. In a word, I stood victed of being an arrant poacher, and was glad to make a precipitate retreat, lest I should have a whole pack of authors let loose upon me.
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