William Carew Hazlitt

“ To put forward as the author of all good things a poor fellow who could not make a joke, or even see it when it was made by a friend, was an idea as happy as if some speculative genius were to announce a jest-book [198] by Mr. Spurgeon or the philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury. But the most popular of preachers or philanthropists would not have answered the purpose so well at the moment as a defunct theatrical performer, equally impervious to humour, but to the play-going public infinitely more familiar, not as a wit, nor even as the cause of it in others, but on purely negative grounds. ”

“ He is not asked to take any trouble; his library is an object of solicitude to everybody who has anything to sell; the order on his bankers is all that his humble servants desire. He finds himself, after the lapse of a decade or so, the master of a splendid collection, without having once known what it was to get disagreeably warm or anxious in the pursuit of a volume, to deliberate whether he could afford to buy it, or to submit to the ordeal of attending an auction, one of a motley throng in a fetid atmosphere. ”

“ It is characteristic of the nature of our nationality, however, that while the Anglo-Saxons and their successors refused to confine themselves to the fare which was more or less adequate to the purposes of archaic pastoral life in this island, they by no means renounced their partiality for farm and garden produce, but by a fusion of culinary tastes and experiences akin to fusion of race and blood, laid the basis of the splendid cuisine of the Plantagenet and Tudor periods. Our cookery is, like our tongue, an amalgam. ”

“ We are too grossly subservient to habit and use. We naturally accustom ourselves, unless we reflect, to figure the clown with his tongue perpetually in his cheek and the wit discharging his shafts without cessation or repose—just as, on the contrary, no one would be prepared to believe, without the strongest proof, that a tailor had made a pun, or that a railway porter had written a Greek epigram. ”

“ The man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. On the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. It is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year’s end to year’s end. ”

“ Even an approximately accurate appreciation in a commercial sense of books of various classes can only be reached by one who is behind the scenes, who can feel the pulse of the market, and who follows the incessant changes in its temperature and feeling. It is absurd for a simple amateur, who passes his time in a study or an office, to attempt or presume to instruct us on this subject. He knows what he has given for his own library, and what some of his friends have given for theirs, and he reads the accounts in the papers of periodical sales. ”

“ The dish so deftly constructed by King Arthur, according to one of his numerous biographers, exhibited that wedlock of fruit with animal matter—fat and plums—which we post-Arthurians eye with a certain fastidious repugnance, but which, notwithstanding, lingered on to the Elizabethan or Jacobaean era—nay, did not make the gorge of our grandsires turn rebellious. It survives among ourselves only in the modified shape of such accessories as currant jelly and apple sauce. ”

“ The fruitful outpourer of good sayings may have ceased to rank among living celebrities, and the scintillations of his genius are gathered into the workshop; or, if he scatters his treasures during his life, like a prodigal, among his familiars, it is a marvel if there are not one or two deft hands waiting to dress the nuggets for the market, and even to wrap them up so adroitly, that their own father would scarcely recognise them! ”

“ The analogy arises and grows possible when we compare such writers as Montaigne, Molière, Corneille, or again, certain of the Elzevir series, with our corresponding foremost names. If we meet with the latter in vellum or in sheep, we only too gladly preserve them as we find them, provided that the outward garb is irreproachable. Of how many gems do we not know, in all the peerless glory of their pristine life, tenderly ensconced in morocco envelopes. Let them never be acquainted with another existence! Let no binder's unholy hand come near them! ”

“ The man with the hammer views his commission as the elixir of life, as the sole object, for which men and women are born and exist; he has no other motive or seeing-point; and he does not expect others to have it. Your friends, as a rule, estimate you according to the house, in which you live, and the undertaker by the order, which he gets for your funeral; but the auctioneer appraises you by your value to him as a bidder at his table and by the marketable quality of the property, which you leave behind. ”

“ Under May he furnishes us with a second and not less appetising menu:—
"Butter and sage are now the wholesome Breakfast, but fresh cheese and cream are meat for a dainty mouth; the early Peascods and Strawberries want no price with great Bellies; but the Chicken and the Duck are fatted for the Market; the sucking Rabbet is frequently taken in the Nest, and many a Gosling never lives to be a Goose."
Even so late as the succeeding reign, Breton speaks of the good cheer at Christmas, and of the cook, if he lacks not wit, sweetly licking his fingers. ”

“ Entire and large impressions of books, pamphlets, and broadsides have succumbed, not to the sacrilegious hand of the spoiler, but to the too affectionate, and not too cleanly, fingering of the multitude of men and women who read and then cast the sources of entertainment away. If we remember that certain of the Bibles ordered to be kept in churches for general use chiefly survive in crumbling fragments, or at best woefully dilapidated copies, we cease to be surprised at the easy prey which more fugitive compositions have formed to a succession of careless and indifferent owners. ”

“ For while during centuries the feeling for the grotesque or absurd, together with the almost inborn propensity for the exposure of foibles and vices in an enemy, a rival, or an obnoxious public character, had its outlets only through the agency of art, and the sculptor or draughtsman was the sole resource of those who loved caricature and farce, the introduction of caligraphy by no means diminished the call for the graphic delineators of comedy and satire. ”

“ Whatever may be true of books, manuscripts, coins, or stamps, paintings and prints are the greatest snare and pitfall of all. I have frequently gazed with private misgivings, which I might have found it difficult to explain or justify, at a portrait in a broker’s shop, and as I passed and re-passed the place have speculated on the real history of the production. I know full well that the preposterous sums realised for the artist in fashion—at present it is Romney—are explainable on principles, which would make me hesitate to enter the field as a competitor under any circumstances. ”

“ Do we not under existing conditions view with too uncharitable sentiments the marvellous good fortune of the book-hunters of the last century, at the very outset of a revival of the taste for our own vernacular literature? Does it not seem tantalising to hear that Warton the historian could pick up for sixpence a volume containing Venus and Adonis, 1596, and seven other precious morçeaux, off a broker's counter in Salisbury, when the British Museum gave at the Daniel sale £336 for the Shakespeare alone? ”

“ Greek Anthology, the Noctes Atticæ, and the Lives of the Philosophers, which, like Lucian and Athenæus, are simply of value as the foundations and pioneers of the class of literature which I am examining, and as introductory to the leading purpose in view. It must become evident that the sources of the vein of wit which pervades modern literature and society is to be sought elsewhere—in circumstances and conditions of life altogether different—in our political development, climate and blood. ”

“ From the very limited nature of my resources I have been forced to content myself with being a casual buyer. I have witnessed the dispersion of all the finest assemblages of coins, which have come to the hammer or into the market in the course of nearly twenty years, and have involuntarily played the part of a spectator and note-maker, where it would have delighted me to compete for the best with the best. ”

“ No one should be too positive whether it is to the rich or to the poor book-collector that the romantic element chiefly or more powerfully attaches itself. It has been our lot to enjoy the acquaintance of both classes, and we hesitate to pronounce any decided opinion. There is the unquestionable triumph of the man with a full purse or an inexhaustible banking account, who has merely to resolve upon a purchase or a series of purchases, and to write a cheque for the sum total. ”