ARTICLE XVII.

PITCAIRN'S CRIMINAL TRIALS.

[The last piece of criticism which came from the pen of Sir Walter Scott was this, on the first six parts of the Collection, entitled "Trials, and other Proceedings, in matters Criminal, before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland; selected from the Records of that Court, and from original Manuscripts preserved in the General Register House, Edinburgh. By ROBERT PITCAIRN, Writer to his Majesty's Signet, F.S.A." This Article was in the Quarterly Review for February 1831. MR PITCAIRN has since completed his work in four quarto volumes, published under the auspices of the BANNATYNE CLUB at Edinburgh, of which SIR WALTER SCOTT was the founder and first President.]

THIS has been called "the age of clubs;" and certainly the institution of societies which, under no more serious title than that of a festive symposium, devote themselves to the printing of literary works not otherwise likely to find access to the press, will hereafter be numbered among not the least honourable signs of the times. The two Scotch clubs of this class have of late been doing so much and so well, that we venture to introduce a few general remarks on the circumstances under which their exertions have been called forth.

It is a frequent subject of complaint among young authors that they experience difficulty in bringing their works before the public, under a general shyness which the TRADE, as they are usually called (we suppose par excellence), or, in plain language, the booksellers, entertain with respect to MSS. which do not bear either a well known name, or, at least, the announcement of some popular and attractive subject in the titlepage. In fact, there is real ground, on some occasions, for complaining of this species of impediment. The bookseller, though a professed trader in intellect, cannot be in every case an infallible judge of the vendibility of the wares submitted to him, the only circumstance, it is plain, which his business requires him to attend to. The name of a veteran author is one, though by no means an infallible, insurance against loss; just as a knowing jockey, destitute of other foundations for his betting system, will venture his money upon a descendant of Eclipse. Failing this kind of recommendation, the bookseller is often, and naturally enough, determined by considering the style of those works which have been successful about the same time. If he finds the new comer adopting the sort of topic, or form of composition, actually much in vogue, he is very apt to indulge the hope, that although it may intrinsically fall short of

less, fall in with the reigning taste, and take advantage of the popular gale. This may not be thought, on the part of the bookseller, a very intellectual method; we are inclined, nevertheless, to suspect that it is one of the safest which he could adopt. We have had considerable opportunities of observation in these matters, and undoubtedly the result is, that whenever we hear of a young bookseller, as laying high pretensions to critical skill and acumen, we augur badly of his career. Among the unsuccessful booksellers whom we have chanced to know, the majority have been men who relied upon their own taste, and so ventured on speculations which would not have been hazarded by more cautious men, who confine themselves to the more mechanical part of the concern, and seldom look beyond a titlepage. We are not so absurd as to suppose that the bookseller, who adds to complete acquaintance with the commercial parts of his trade, a liberal and enlightened familiarity with literature, is to be considered the less fit for his calling from such an acquisition. On the contrary, such a publisher must not only rise to the top of his profession, but become an ornament to his country, and a benefactor to letters, while his fortune increases in proportion to his fame. His name, imparted with a mixture of liberality and caution, adds a consideration to the volumes on which it stands, and is in itself a warrant for their merit. But to rise to such a pitch of eminence requires an unusually sound judgment—and a long train of observation and experience-and he that attains it will seldom if ever be found to have acted, in the earlier stages of his business, under the impulses of pure literary enthusiasm. His object and rule is, and should be, to buy and publish what bids fairest to be withdrawn from the counter by a steady and rapid sale; and no capacity for estimating what favour a given MS. ought to meet with, will compensate for the want of tact to judge of the degree of favour which the public are likely to bestow on it. Let us take a memorable instance, though a hackneyed one. We will suppose Samuel Simmons, a respectable member of the Stationers' Company, of London, leaning over his counter in some dark street, to the eastward of Temple-bar, in the year 1667; an aged, grave, and reverend person, led by a female decently attired, enters and places in his hands a voluminous manuscript, which he requests him to purchase. Now, suppose our friend Simmons to have been himself a man of pure taste and high feeling of poetry, it is extremely probable that he would have offered money to the extent of the whole value of his stock for the copyright of the "Paradise Lost." But what would have been the event? it was full two years before one thousand three hundred copies were sold, and poor Samuel Simons, supposing him, in his just confidence in his own discrimination, to have overstepped the bounds of commercial caution must have" marched in the rear of a Whereas,"

ment and feeling of poetry which had moved him in other words, to the proportion in which the copy-money offered by him had approached to the real intrinsic value of the English epic.

But Samuel Simmons was a man of the world, and judged with reference to the extrinsic probabilities attending the publication of the poem in question. If he did not know Milton by person, he could not fail to discover that he had been the secretary of Cromwell, and the violent defender of the regicides; that his was therefore a name highly unlikely to command popular success when the tide of politics set in a different direction. Nor were the style and subject of the poem, grave, serious, and theological, more apt to recommend it to the light and giddy paced times, when Butler and Waller headed the world of fashionable writers. A shrewd trader, therefore, was likely to do, as in fact Simmons did, namely, to offer to the author such a price, and no more, as was calculated upon the probability of sale which attached to a grave work in a light age, and written by an author hostile to the triumphant party. Under the influence of such reflections he made with the author of Paradise Lost the wellknown bargain "for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition; and five pounds after the same sale of the third;" and when it is considered, that before 1680, Simmons, already twenty pounds out of pocket, transferred the whole right of Paradise Lost for twenty-five pounds, it can scarcely be alleged that he made a Jewish bargain with the great poet. The circumstances are shameful, but the shame must rest with the agenot with the bookseller.

It is not to be dreamed that the caution of the present trade has excluded from the public any volumes worthy to be named in the same day with the divine poem to which the wicket of Samuel Simmons's shop so reluctantly opened. On the contrary, our own observations authorize us to say, that the circumstances of unpopularity are very few which will preclude the possibility of publication on the part of any author, who exhibits even the most moderate chance of success. There are always booksellers enough, though, perhaps, not the most respectable, who are willing to encounter the risk of placing their names in the imprint of works the most extravagant and the most hazardous, under the idea that their very extravagance and singularity may have a chance of captivating the public favour; and we cannot but add, that, considering the quality of many volumes which yearly find their way to the press, we are rather puzzled to conjecture what must be the nature of those which cannot in some corner find a patronising bookseller. Nevertheless,

totally obdurate; and we well remember, that during the year of projects, what seemed to us the most inauspicious of all its brood was the scheme of a proposed jointstock company, intended to redress the wrongs of those authors who could not find their way to the public by the legitimate channel of Paternoster Row, or the equally patent north-west passage of Albemarle Street. What would have been the consequences of this project, had it been carried into execution, may be easily guessed. The press employed by such a company would have had little cause to complain of want of custom, and the trunkmakers and pastrycooks would have had cheaper bargains of waste paper than have been yet known in the vicinity of Grub Street.

The ancient mode of relief in such cases, where the booksellers were slow in reposing faith in the good works of their authors, was wont to be the intervention of subscription. But although many persons, highly deserving better fortune, have been obliged to have recourse to a mode of publication inferring too much personal solicitation to be agreeable to a generous mind, yet it has become now so infrequent, that, as a means of facilitating the access of authors to the world, it may be almost left out of consideration.

There are still, however, a certain class of works interesting to a certain class of readers, which cannot, in the usual mode of publication, find their way to the press. We allude to the numerous class of what the public at large call mere curiosities. Such are, ancient poems, ancient chronicles, ancient legends, and the proceedings in ancient law cases; antiquities in general, whether in history, law, literature, drama, or polemics. Tracts connected with most of these curious topics lie hidden in rare manuscripts, scarce pamphlets, large and unwieldy collections, broadsides and stall or cheap copies, placed either so far above the eye of the common observer, as to be out of his sight, or so much beneath it as to be overlooked. Such morsels of literature, mere baubles in the estimation of the multitude, bear yet an intrinsic value of their own, and a large or rather an extravagant one; but this is only in the little world of the bibliomaniacs, and the particular knot of booksellers who devote themselves to supply these gentlemen's hobby-horses with forage, or, in other words, to fill their shelves with the

"Small rare volumes, dark with tarnish'd gold

(CRABBE),

which are the Dalilahs of their imagination. These pursuits have no charms for the world at large; and, passing over a very few splendid exceptions, the volumes in which such things have been reproduced to the public have met with no encouraging reception. Such reprints, in fact, do not exactly suit the humour of either class of purchasers; they are too easy of acquisition to have much merit

orthography, and, to speak fairly, the slender proportion which they in most cases contain of what is truly valuable or instructive, render them caviare to the common purchaser. The many repositories of antique tracts in verse and prose, valuable state papers, and collections relating to the history of the country, both in arts and arms, which may at this hour be had at a rate hardly sufficient to cover the expense of the printing, indicate plainly what bad subjects of speculation even the best of this class must have proved to the publishers. We need only mention the highly meritorious undertaking of the London booksellers for the republication of the ancient English chronicles, comprehending Hollinshed, Stowe, Grafton, Lord Berners' Froissart, etc. etc., forming a curious and most valuable selection of the materials on which English history is founded, since sold at a considerable reduction of price. David Macpherson's edition of "Winton's Chronicles of Scotland," put forth in a manner which might have been a model for every publication of the kind, was also for several years sold at a greatly abated price. The "Restituta" and "Archaica," published in a splendid form by those eminent antiquaries, Sir Egerton Brydges and Mr Park, met with even less favour in the market. The large collection, called "Thurlow's State Papers," containing the most authentic materials respecting the period of the great Civil War and of Cromwell's domination, was not long since, and perhaps still is, to be purchased at something little higher than the price of waste paper.

It is true-habent et sua fata libelli-that such works have their phases, and become valuable as they grow scarce in the market, and get dispersed in libraries, from which they rarely return into public sale. In such case, they become at length high priced,-because they have the merit of curiosity attached to them. Before such a rise, however, takes place, the original adventurers have usually lost all concern with the books, which have been probably sold off to the trade in the shape of remainders, by which is well understood that species of a bookseller's property which is the residuum of his stock, and which he parts with for what he can get. This fate, which seems usually, though not inevitably or constantly, attendant upon the reprints of ancient, rare, and curious publications, seems to exclude them, in a great measure, from the adventures of booksellers, who, if they are to publish at all, must necessarily do so under the expectation of a reasonable profit. Nor has the method of subscription been of late years found applicable to works of this nature, though the system of the present day is, in a certain degree, a modification of that plan.

A very few words upon the pursuits of that class of persons usually called bibliomaniacs or book collectors, may explain the nature and