BOOK III. Chapter XXIV. Libraries. Library at A very agreeable writer in the Quarterly Review,1British Private one of those whose contributions would please many readers still more than they do, if they came at shorter The Robartes intervals, has recently given us a notice of a curious Lanhydrock. old Library, nearly contemporaneous with Evelyn's, but formed from quite another point of view. The staunch Cornish Presbyterian, Lord Robartes, built Lanhydrock House just before the outbreak of the great Civil Wars. Until the time of the present possessor, no one, it seems, has cared to disturb its grey walls, its primitive decorations and furniture, or its old books, collected by Lord Robartes himself, and by a chaplain of his (to whom the Reviewer is pleased very gravely to assign the portentous name of 'Hannibal Gammon'). The venerable tomes of Divinity and Philosophy, the controversial tracts of that stirring time, the "uncut" Acts, Proceedings, and Proclamations of the Long Parliament, stand yet in their original places on the shelves of the Library, as though the old Roundheads who delighted in them, had laid them down but yesterday, and might be expected to take them up to-morrow. The Holkham Library. Early in the last century, an accomplished member of a famous family, Thomas Coke, Lord Lovel, and (afterwards) Earl of Leicester, collected, during his lengthened travels on the Continent, and more particularly in Italy, a choice assemblage of MSS., on vellum, of the Latin Classics, of Dante and Boccaccio, and of the medieval Chroniclers; and also some valuable printed books. When they reached Holkham, some 1 Quarterly Review, Oct. 1857 (Art. Cornwall, cii, 309). casualty seems to have prevented their proper arrange BOOK III. Chapter XXIV. Libraries. ment. A century later, William Roscoe paid a visit to British Private his old friend, its then master; and, on some wet morning, I suppose, hearing that there was a whole room full of old books, "at the top of the house," made a voyage of discovery thither, and, to his great wonderment, after some little excavation, found himself in presence of a series of the finest MSS. he had ever beheld. The casual amusement of a vacant hour led (as it has so often done, in many a life,) to the busy and protracted labours of many months. Roscoe found himself on familiar ground. The Classics belonged to the Italian revival. One of the many fine MSS. of Livy had been the gift of Cosmo, Pater Patriæ, to Alfonso, King of Naples. Another volume which he had eagerly disinterred contained a series of original drawings, by Raffaelle, of the architectural antiquities of Rome. Here lay the vivid historical and controversial MSS. of Paolo Sarpi; there, the elaborate treatise of Leonardo da Vinci on the movement of water, illustrated with numerous drawings by his own hand. Such discoveries falling to the lot of the biographer of the Medici, might well find memorial in some graceful verses: BOOK III. Chapter XXIV. British Private Libraries. I trace the weakness of the great, "How Poggio's tale attention drew "With joy the rescued volume see Shot from beneath the monkish cowl." Many of these fine books had been stripped of their covers prior to importation. Roscoe undertook to superintend their binding, and entrusted them to a Liverpool binder (John Jones) who acquitted himself with great credit of the task. He also undertook an elaborate descriptive Catalogue, and carried it far towards completion. But he had under-estimated the amount of labour which such a work entails, and it ultimately had to be completed (in 1827) with the help of the eminent attainments in such matters of Sir Frederick Madden. "I am now," wrote Roscoe, at the date lastnamed, "revising for the last time the Catalogue of the MSS. at Holkham, with Mr. Madden's numerous additions, which have more than doubled the size of the work, .... so that instead of being comprised in one or two quarto volumes, it appeared that if printed it would extend to five or six." Sir Frederick Madden, it seems, dissuaded Mr. Coke from giving the work to the Public by printing it. Although Roscoe doubtless regretted this conclusion, he bore emphatic testimony to "the great learning, industry, and ability with which Mr. Madden had executed his task. .... It will make an inconceivable addition to the value of the MSS." Amongst the English part of these MSS. are some important papers of Sir Edward Coke.1 BOOK III. Chapter XXIV. British-Private Libraries. The Library of Lancashire. If, in order to the undisputed possession of the proud title "a British poet," it be necessary to dwell in the Kersall Cell, in memories of a crowd of readers, and to occur as often on the tongues of talkers, as on the shelves of collectors, assuredly John Byrom would have but a doubtful claim to that designation. Such a rule, however, would strike off from the Indexes of our National Poets many good names besides his, and amongst them not a few far more worthy to appear on the roll than those of many of the favorites of the hour who have cleverly caught the passing breeze of popularity. To Byrom belongs the merit of much strong and felicitous thought on weighty and enduring topics; thought which he usually clothed in verse from natural impulse, rather than from personal vanity. His lighter rhymes, graceful as they are, have been eclipsed by like productions from other pens. But be his fate, as a poet, what it may, he will owe to the reverent affection of a descendant and representative, a permanent place amongst those Diarists and Letter-writers who have depicted for us, with almost photographic verisimilitude, the modes and garnishings of English life in days that are gone. The shorthand Diaries and Correspondence which Miss Atherton has caused to be deciphered, and has liberally given to the world through the Chetham Society, form a charming contribution to our knowledge, both of Town and Country, in the earlier part of the Georgian 1 Life of Roscoe, ii, 86-95; 256-264; 370-373. BOOK 111. Chapter XXIV. Libraries. æra. They place before us, too, the faithful portrait of British Private a scholar and a gentleman,—a lover of books, but one who did not permit learning to impede living;-frankhearted, yet possessing a full measure of northern shrewdness; the portrait, in a word, of a man who united genial conviviality with true piety;— who, at home, could both "giggle and make giggle;"―be happy and make his family happy;-yet could not (had he tried) have made himself other than contented and joyous during his frequent and protracted sojourns in the debonnaire atmosphere of those London taverns and coffee-houses, the 'Pontac's' and the 'Abington's,' in which so many of our forefathers delighted a century ago. Character of What more may need to be remembered of him, may be pleasantly learnt by glancing at the contents of a Library which is preserved (almost as he left it), in the unpretending, but pretty little countryhouse, called Kersall Cell, situated on the edge of what in Byrom's day was a wild and romantic moor, but is now little more than a suburb to the smoke-polluted mart of the Cotton trade. The main bent of Byrom's mind turned, on the one hand, towards the transcendental regions of Mystical Divinity, and, on the other, towards the more beaten track of the study of languages. In both channels (together), he found active employment for all his faculties; both enliven his correspondence; both are extensively reflected in his Library. To his aptitude as a linguist, conjoined with his earnest solicitude about the spiritual life, it is owing that this small and obscure |