The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗

fugitive pieces of his own day, and of the generation immediately preceding. These are things easily obtained in their freshness, but the term fugitive is too expressive of their nature, and after a generation or two they have all flown away, save those which the book-hunter has exorcised into the vaults of some public collection. There is perhaps too little done in our own day in preserving for posterity these mute witnesses of our sayings and doings. They are too light and volatile to be caught by the Copyright Act, which so carefully deposits our quartos and octavos in the privileged libraries. It is pleasant, by the way, at this moment, to observe that the eminent scholar who has charge of the chief portion of Wodrow's gatherings, as keeper of the Advocates' Library, is following his example, by preserving a collection of the pamphlets of the present century which will keep our posterity in employment, if they desire to unwind the intricacies of all our civil and ecclesiastical sayings and doings.

Wodrow carried on an active correspondence about matters of contemporary policy, and the special inquiries connected with his History: selections from this mass have furnished three sturdy volumes. Besides pamphlets, he scraped together quantities of other people's manuscripts—some of them rising high enough in importance to be counted State papers. How the minister of the quiet rural parish of Eastwood could have got his hands on them is a marvel, but it is fortunate that they were saved from destruction; and it is nearly equally fortunate that they have been well ransacked by zealous club-book makers, who have by this time probably exhausted the better part of their material. In the next place, Wodrow left behind several biographies of eminent members of his own Church, its saints and martyrs; and goodly masses out of this storehouse have also been printed.

But by far the most luxurious morsel in the worthy man's intellectual larder was not intended to reach the profane vulgar, but destined for his own special rumination. It consists in the veritable contents of his private note-books, containing his communings with his own heart and his imagination. They were written on small slips of paper, in a hand direly cramped and minute; and lest this should not be a sufficient protection to their privacy, a portion was committed to certain ciphers, which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to be utterly impregnable. In stenography, however, the art of lock-picking always keeps ahead of the art of locking, as that of inventing destructive missiles seems to outstrip that of forging impenetrable plates. Wodrow's trick was the same as that of Samuel Pepys, and productive of the same consequences—the excitement of a rabid curiosity, which at last found its way into the recesses of his secret communings. They are now printed, in the fine type of the Maitland Club, in four portly quartos, under the title, Wodrow's Analecta. Few books would hold out so much temptation to a commentator, but their editor is dumb, faithfully reprinting the whole, page by page, and abstaining both from introduction and explanatory foot-note.

Perhaps in the circumstances this was a prudent measure. Those who enjoy the weaknesses of the enthusiastic historian have them at full length. As to others partially like-minded with him, but more worldly, who would rather that such a tissue of absurdities had not been revealed, they are bound over to silence, seeing that a word said against the book is a word of reproach against its idolised author—for as to the editor, he may repeat after Macbeth, "Thou canst not say I did it."

Mr Buckle's ravenous researches into the most distant recesses of literature revealed to him this pose. He has taken some curious specimens out of it, but he might have made his anthology still richer had he been in search of the picturesque and ludicrous, instead of seeking solid support for his great theory of positivism. What he chiefly amuses one with in this part of the world, however, is the solemn manner in which he treats the responsibility of giving increased publicity to such things, and invokes the Deity to witness that his objects are sincere, and he is influenced by no irreverence. This feeling may arise from a very creditable source, but a native of Scotland has difficulty in understanding it. In this country, being, as many of us have been, within the very skirts of the great contests that have shaken the realm—Jacobitism on the one hand and Covenantism on the other—we are roughened and hardened, and what shocks our sensitive neighbours is very good fun to ourselves.

It appears that Wodrow had intended to publish a book on remarkable special providences—something of a scientific character it was to be, containing a classification of their phenomena, perhaps a theory of their connection with revealed religion. The natural laws by which they are ruled, he could not, of course, have sought to discover, since the principle on which he set out predicated the non-existence of such laws. The advantage of the peep enjoyed into his private note-book is, that we have his incompleted inquiries containing the stories as to which even he—a very poor adept at scepticism—required some confirmation. It is quite evident that we thus have something more valuable to philosophy, and infinitely more amusing, than his completed labours would have been. Here, for instance, is one of his break-downs—an interesting phenomenon, but not irrefragably proved.

"This day I have an accompt from Marion Stevenson, who says she had it from one who was witness to it, that near Dunglass there was a child found upon the highway by some shearers, to their uptaking lately born; and they brought it to the next house, where the woman putting on the pan to make some meat for it, the pan filled full of corn; and when she turned it out and put it on the second time, it filled full of bear; and when put on the third time, it filled full of blood; and upon this the child began to alter its shapes some way, and to speak, and told them this year should have great plenty, and the next year also, but the third the land should be filled with blood and fire and sword! and the child desired it might be taken to the place where it was found, and left there. I hear not yet what was done with it. This is so incredible, that I set it down only for after trial and inquiry about it—no confirmation."

His wife tells him a story which in her youth she had heard narrated by Mr Andrew Reid, minister of Kirkbean. It is a case of true love crossed by the interference of cruel relations. The swain leaves the country for several years—gets on—remembers the old love, and returns to fulfil his vows. It happens that on the day of his return the loved one dies. He is on his way to her house in the dusk of eve when he meets an old man, who tells him that he is going on a bootless errand—he will find a dead corpse for the warm living heart he expected. The stranger, however, pitying his distress, tells him there is a remedy—hands to the lover certain pills, and says, "If you will give her these, she will recover." So it turned out, and they were happily married. A certain visitor at the house, however, "a very eminent Christian," refused to salute the lady with the usual courtesies. He takes the husband aside, "and tells him that he was very much persuaded his wife was a devil, and indeed he could not salute her; and after some discourse prevailed so far with him as to follow his advice, which was to go with her and take her to that room where he found her, and lay her down upon the bed where he found her, and quit her of a devil. Which he did, and immediately she became a dead corpse half consumed." "This had need," says cautious Wodrow, "to be weel attested, and I have writ to Mr Reid anent it." Curiosity urged me to look for and find among Wodrow's manuscripts Mr Reid's answer. He says he often heard the story from his father as a truth, but had been unaccountably negligent in noting the particulars of it; and then he favours his correspondent with some special providences anent himself, which appear not to have been sufficiently pungent for Wodrow's taste.

A philosophical investigator of the established national superstitions would find excellent types of all of them in the Analecta. In the department of second-sight, for instance, restricted, with due observance to geographical propriety, within the Highland line, a guest disturbs a convivial meeting at Blair-Athol by exclaiming that he beholds a dirk sticking in the breast of their entertainer. That night he is stabbed to the heart; and even while the seer beheld the visionary dagger, a bare-legged gilly was watching outside to execute a long-cherished Highland vengeance. The Marquess of Argyle, who was afterwards beheaded, was playing with some of his clan at bowls, or bullets, as Wodrow calls them, for he was not learned in the nomenclature of vain recreations. "One of the players, when the Marquess stooped down to lift the bullet, fell pale, and said to them about him, 'Bless me! what is that I see?—my Lord with the head off, and all his shoulders full of blood.'"

In the department of fairy tricks, the infant of Thomas Paton, "a very eminent Christian," in its first use of speech, rattles out a volley of terrific oaths, then eats two cheeses, and attempts to cut its brother's throat. This was surely sufficient evidence to satisfy the most sceptical that it was a changeling, even had it not, as the result of certain well-applied prayers, "left the house with an extraordinary howling and crying."

Ghost and witch stories abound. The following is selected on account of the eminence of its hero, Gilbert Rule, the founder and first Principal of the University of Edinburgh: He was travelling on the dreary road across the Grampians, called the Cairn o' Mont, on which stood a lone desolate inn. It has now disappeared, but I remember it in its dreary old age, standing alone on the moor, with its grim gables and its loupin'-on stane,—just the sort of place where, in the romances, the horrified traveller used to observe a trap-door in his bedroom floor, and at supper picked the finger of a murdered man out of a mutton-pie. There Rule arrived late at night seeking accommodation, but he could get none—the house was crammed. The only alternative was to make a bed for him in an empty house close by; it had been unoccupied for thirty years, and had a bad repute. He had to sleep there alone, for his servant would not go with him. Let Wodrow himself tell what came to pass.

"He walked some time in the room, and committed himself to God's protection, and went to bed. There were two candles left on the table, and these he put out. There was a large bright fire remaining. He had not been long in bed till the room door is opened, and an apparition, in shape of a country tradesman, came in and opened the curtains without speaking a word. Mr Rule was resolved to do nothing till it should speak or attack him, but lay still with full composure, committing himself to the Divine protection and conduct. The apparition went to the table, lighted the two candles, brought them to the bedside, and made some steps toward the door, looking still to the bed, as if he would have Mr Rule rising and following. Mr Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further cleared.