D'ISRAELI'S CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE,

REVISED.

Ix this bold speculation of Mr. MoxoN, we have another instance of the tendency of the times towards cheap literature. Hitherto the cheapness has been confined to works which relied upon some-

thing else besides their mere literary merit. The Library of Entertaining Knowledge appealed to the eye by its profusion of

cuts, as well as to the mind by its information. In the reprints of our standard authors, the national vanity, instilled into us from childhood, the fame of the writers, the genius they have displayed, the popular subjects on which many were engaged, and the practi-

cal use considered to attach to the productions of a graver nature, may all have influenced purchasers. BYRON, in addition to the force of his composition, had fashion in his favour. SCOTT, besides his wonderful genius, possessed the advantage of exciting one of our strongest emotions—an interest in the future. The success of CRABBE is yet a matter of speculation ; but the strength and truth of his characters and descriptions, the homely common sense of his Views and observations, as well as the case with which the most tin-

tutorial intellect can comprehend, relish, and appreciate him, seem

to render success certain. But D'I sa AE 1. I'S work is a literary luxury, an elegant encyclopiedia of curiosities in letters, addressed to the gentleman of taste : refined, gossipy, pleasant, variaus, full

of curious anecdotes of learning and its devotees—telling the scholar little which be did not know, the people not much which they care to know—peculiarly adapted to that class

of' persons who possess curiosity and delicacy of taste, but want learning, leisure, or industry, to hunt for " the curiosities

of literature" amongst the rubbish in which they were hidden.

We suspected that this race of readers was rather limited. Mr. Moxost's undertaking leads us to suppose that we are mis- taken. We trust that we are, for his sake; and we very heartily wish him success. We look upon his speculation as something more than an individual matter. By the circulation of his new edition, we should be tempted to measure the numbers of the ele- gant " lovers of literature ;" and shall rejoice to find that their name is legion. The publisher—as might have been expected of

Mr. MoxoN—bas done his part towards their gratification. If the binding be equal to the letterpress (and we say if, only be- cause our copy is in sheets), the volumes will be at once elegant and handy ; typical of the event they will commemorate—the transference of the library to the boudoir.

The history of' the Curiosities of Literature, as we learn from the new preface, is not incurious. The first volume was published

nearly half a century ago, and the second a year or two after; the third required a gestation of twenty years, six years sufficed for the three last. "Of volumes produced at such distinct intervals," says the author, "it may be worth notice that they reflect three =as of the author's life. In the first stage of investigation, we are eager to acquire and arrange knowledge; in the second, our curiosity becomes more critical, and more varied; and in the third, knowledge and curiosity opening the virgin veins of original research, and striking out new results in the history of human nature, we combine philosophy with literature." On a work which has been so long before the public, and has passed through so many editions, a lengthened criticism is need- less. To quote from a volume of fifty years' standing, seems ab- surd. Yet, to those who have never read the book and may feel inclined to buy it, a specimen will be acceptable. Those who have, may not object to reperusal, on the score of merit, putting all associations of ideas aside. Yet these will not be without in- terest. A purchaser of the original edition must have seen, of late

years, curiosities of literature as singular as any that Mr. Dis- RAELI describes. We will take a forcible contrast to our own times. It presents a state of things quite as mischievous to the " utility " of letters, whatever we may say of their "dignity," as the decried cheapness of the present day.

There have been ages when, for the possession of a manuscript, some would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and

when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance

as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was Louis the Eleventh, he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, to make a copy, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, without pledging a hundred golden crowns ; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver ; which was refused, because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna. These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile at an anterior period, when a countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of wheat and rye.

In these times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce ; they were excessively acarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn. A student of Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly di- rected to this point ; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked ; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and pro- fuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing ; and their raptures, their congratulations, or at tunes their condolence, and even their censoles, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would nut have given so much satisfaction as the discovery of an author little known, or not known at all.

Oh, great gain ! Oh, unexpected felicity ! I intreat von, my Pogg'o, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die !" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, am joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and SOIlle paid high for manuscripts not authentic ; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse. But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed ; he who had been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less fortu- nate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that in these vast importa- tions into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought. many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he had chosen more profane than sacred writers ; which circumstance he tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with theological works, but they did not highly value profane writers!

These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries ; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. A universal igno- rance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial or Maximus is uncertain; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six hundred volumes was then considered as an extraordinary collection.

Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, Poggio, the Floren- tine, stands distinguished ; but he complains that his zeal was not assisted by the great. Ile found under a heap of rubbish in a decayed coffer, in a tower belong- ing to the monastery of Sr. Gallo, the work of Quintilian. He is indignant at its forlorn situation; at least, he cries, it should have been preserved in the li- brary of the monks ; but I found it in teterrimo (ma'am ct obscuro carcere- and to his great joy drew it out of its grave ! The monks have been compli- mented as the preservers of literature; but, from facts like the present, their real affection may be doubted.

The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is wanting, was like- wise discovered in a monastery of Westphalia. It is a curious circumstance in literary history, that we should owe Taeitus to this single copy ; for the Roman Emperor of that name had copies of the works of his illustrious ancestor placed

in all the libraries of the empire, and evert- year had ten copies transcribed ; but the Roman libraries seem to have been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed nothing against the teeth of time.

It sometimes happened that manuscripts were discovered in the last agonies of existence. Papirius Masson found, in the house of a bookbinder at Lyons, the works of Agobart ; the mechanic was on the point of using the manuscripts to line the covers of his books. A page of the second decade of Livy, it is said, was found by a man of letters in the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore— but arrived too late ! The man had finished the last page of Livy—about a week before!

Many works have undoubtedly in in this manuscript state. By a peti- tion of Dr. Dee to Queen Mary, n the Cotton Library, it appears that Cicero's

treatise Be Republica was once extant in this country. Huet observes that

Petronius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury ; who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of the Roman bard. Raianond

Soranzo, a lawyer in the Papal court, possessed two books of Cicero on Glory, which he presented to Petrareh, who lent them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by extreme want, the old man pawned them ; and returning home, died suddenly, without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ectaay, and tells us that he had studied them perpetually. Two centuries afterwards, this treatise on Glory by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books be- queathed to a monastery of nuns ; but when inquired after, was missing. It was supposed that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that household, purloined it, and after transcribing as much of it as he could into his own wiitings, had destroyed the original. Alcyonius, in his book De Exilio, the critics observed, had many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work, and were quite above his genius. the beggar, or in this case the thief, was detected by mend- ing his rags with patches of purple and gold. In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown work, he did not make the fairest use of it, and cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries. Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having found a Greek manuscript of Procopius, Be Bello Gothico, translated it into Latin, and pub- lished the work ; but concealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed among his works a treatise, obtained by one of his domestics bringing in a fish

i rolled n a leaf of written paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish-market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had been torn. He published it under the title

De Officio Episcopi.