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Title: The Book-Hunter

A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author

Author: John Hill Burton

Release Date: July 24, 2007 [eBook #22136]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK-HUNTER***

 

E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

 

 

 

 

The Book-Hunter

Yours truly, J.H. Burton

The Book-Hunter

The Book-Hunter etc. BY JOHN HILL BURTON D.C.L., LL.D. Author of 'A History of Scotland,' 'The Scot Abroad,' 'The Reign of Queen Anne,' &c.

A NEW EDITION
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXXII

All Rights reserved

PUBLISHER'S NOTE.

The learned Author of 'The Book-Hunter,' very shortly before his death, gave his consent that the Work should be reprinted.

This has now been done from his own copy, with any slight additions or emendations which it, or the notes of literary friends, supplied, and in a form which, it is hoped, will be acceptable to all lovers of choice books.

A Memoir of Dr Burton, by his Widow, has been prefixed, and a copious Index added.

The portrait of the Author has been reproduced from a characteristic photograph, and etched by Mr W.B. Hole, A.R.S.A. The View in the Library, and the Vignettes of Craighouse and Dalmeny, have been drawn by Miss Rose Burton, and engraved by Miss E.P. Burton.

45 George Street,
Edinburgh, May 1882.

decorative illustration

THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The Author, in again laying his little book before the public, has taken advantage of some suggestions kindly contributed by the critics who reviewed the previous edition, and he has thus been enabled to correct a few inaccuracies which they have courteously characterised as mere errors of the press. Productions of this indefinite kind are apt to grow in the hands of an author; and in the course of his revision he was unable to resist the temptation to throw in a few additional touches here and there, as to which he can only hope that they will not deteriorate the volume in the eyes of those who thought well of it in its old shape.

1863.

decorative illustration

decorative illustration

CONTENTS.
PAGE MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, i THE BOOK-HUNTER. Part I.—His Nature. INTRODUCTORY, 1 A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS, 14 REMINISCENCES, 59 CLASSIFICATION, 62 THE PROWLER AND THE AUCTION-HAUNTER, 88 Part II.—His Functions. THE HOBBY, 101 THE DESULTORY READER OR BOHEMIAN OF LITERATURE, 108 THE COLLECTOR AND THE SCHOLAR, 115 THE GLEANER AND HIS HARVEST, 124 PRETENDERS, 161 HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CREATION OF LIBRARIES, 168 THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE, 205 LIBRARIANS, 227 BIBLIOGRAPHIES, 233 Part III.—His Club. CLUBS IN GENERAL, 243 THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK CLUBS, 251 THE ROXBURGHE CLUB, 265 SOME BOOK-CLUB MEN, 283 Part IV.—Book-Club Literature. GENERALITIES, 311 JOHN SPALDING, 330 ROBERT WODROW, 338 THE EARLY NORTHERN SAINTS, 352 SERMONS IN STONES, 404 INDEX, 419 List of Illustrations.
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, Frontispiece. THE AVENUE, CRAIGHOUSE, i CRAIGHOUSE, lix DALMENY CHURCHYARD, civ A NOOK IN THE AUTHOR'S LIBRARY, 1

The Avenue, Craighouse

The Avenue, Craighouse.

MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. CHAPTER I. ABERDEEN.

Parentage—Patons—Grandholm—Jersey—"Peninsular War"—School and schoolmasters—Flogging—College—Competition for bursaries—Home life—Aunt and grand-aunt—Holiday rambles—Letter.

John Hill Burton, the subject of this notice, was born on the 22d of August 1809, in the Gallowgate of Aberdeen. He was wont to style himself, as in his childhood he had heard himself described, "The last of the Gallowgate bairns;" the Gallowgate being an old part of Aberdeen devoted chiefly to humble trade, no one, in modern times at least, even distantly connected with gentility living there.

His father, William Kinninmont Burton, is believed to have been an only son, and no kith or kin of his were ever seen or heard of by his children. The only relic of their father's family possessed by them is a somewhat interesting miniature on ivory, well painted in the old-fashioned style, representing a not beautiful lady in antique head-dress and costume, and marked on the back "Mary Burton." William Kinninmont Burton held a commission in the army, though he had not been originally intended for a military life. He was, it is supposed, engaged in trade in London when the military enthusiasm, excited by the idea of an invasion of Great Britain by Napoleon, fired him, like so many other young men, into taking up arms as a volunteer. In the end of last century he came to Aberdeen as a lieutenant in a regiment of "Fencibles," or some such volunteer title, and there captivated the affections of a beautiful young lady, Miss Eliza Paton, a daughter of the laird of Grandholm, an estate four miles distant from Aberdeen. Of this lady and of her family a few words must be said.

So small was the value of land in Scotland in the beginning of the century, that it is safe to suppose the estate of Grandholm yielded less than one-third of its present rental. The circumstances and social position of the family were, besides, seriously lowered by the extraordinary character of the then laird. John Paton, grandfather of Dr Burton, was a man not devoid of talent, and of a strikingly handsome gentlemanly appearance and manner. He married, early in life, a beautiful Miss Lance, an Englishwoman, who, after bearing him ten children in about as many years, fell into a weak state of health, of mind as well as body. The laird nursed his wife devotedly for a long period of years, cherishing her to the exclusion of all other persons or interests. His children he regarded as the enemies of his adored wife, and consequently of himself, and his conduct to them from first to last was little less than brutal. When the enfeebled wife at last died, the husband's grief verged on madness.

He would not allow her body to be buried in the ordinary manner, but caused a tomb to be erected in a wood near the house of Grandholm, where the corpse was placed in an open coffin, and where the bereaved husband could go daily to bewail his loss. The distracted mourner rejected all attentions from children, relatives, or friends, yet apparently dreaded being left alone, for he advertised for a male companion or keeper to bear him company. The writer has often heard Dr Burton amuse himself and his audience by describing the extraordinary varieties of struggling humanity who applied for the situation. Ultimately, it is believed, none of them was selected, and the laird fled from his natural home, and from that time till his death lived chiefly in London, leaving his large young family to take care of themselves as they best could.

The three sons went successively to India or other foreign parts, and died there, one of them leaving a son, whose family are the present possessors of Grandholm.

Of the seven daughters—several of whom were very handsome—two only were married, namely, Eliza, who became Mrs Burton, mother of the historiographer; and Margaret, who espoused rather late in life a Dr Brown, and continued as a widow to inhabit an old house belonging to the Grandholm family in Old Aberdeen till June 1879, when she died at the age of ninety-eight.

The young family, thus deserted by their natural protector, fell chiefly under the authority of his eldest daughter, Mary—said, of all his children, to most resemble the laird himself.

Among this lady's nephews and nieces there linger strange traditions of the violence of her temper, and of the intensity of her loves and hates. It is hardly necessary to say that none of the females at least of the family received any particular education.

Mary was a woman of strong natural abilities, and of an excellent business faculty. She managed the very small resources left at her command with consummate skill, and in her later years made of Grandholm a hospitable, cheerful, old-fashioned home for those whom it pleased her to receive there. Her sister Eliza's marriage had not pleased her. There was much to justify her objection to it; William Burton, not then holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary resources.

His strongest talent seems to have been for painting, and by such occupation as he could get in drawing and painting in London he was barely able to maintain himself. The old grandfather and his lieutenant, aunt Mary, have been described to the writer in the darkest colours as having constantly interposed between the true lovers, William Burton and his beloved Eliza Paton, who, in spite of all advice to the contrary, soon became his wife. What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter Mary did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it impossible to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into her paternal home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder brother. The wife, of course, earnestly and constantly desired to rejoin her husband. The father and sister declined to facilitate her doing so by paying the expense of her return journey, concluding that if her husband was unable to meet that outlay, he was not in a position to maintain her beside himself.

After some six or eight years of mutual longing for each other's society, separated by the distance of London from Aberdeen, William Burton succeeded in exchanging his position in the Fencibles for a lieutenancy in a line regiment under orders for India. There also he went unaccompanied by his wife. After brief service in India he had to return home in ill health. Then at last the husband and wife were reunited; first to live together for a time in Aberdeen—afterwards to go with their two sons to Jersey.

The eldest son, William, ten years older than John, afterwards went into the Indian army, and died in India, leaving a son and daughter.

John Hill Burton's earliest recollections dated from his stay with his parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811 or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who showed some slight kindness towards him and other garrison children.

The greatest adventure of Dr Burton's unadventurous life occurred when he was returning with his parents from Jersey, in a troop-ship. The vessel was chased by a French privateer, and for some time the little family had reason to fear becoming inmates of a French prison. It was this incident which Dr Burton used in his later life to say entitled him to assert that he had been in the Peninsular War. The homeward journey from Jersey was to Aberdeen, which it is believed Lieutenant Burton and his family never left again till his death. His failing health obliged him to retire from active service on

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