"This is proved by more than one copy among his papers of this ballad corrected and interlined, in order to mould it to the language, the manners, and the feelings of the period, and of the district to which it refers. Mr Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject; and the result must have been gratifying to him." In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution, printed also in the life of Surtees, there are some words that must have brought misgivings and fear of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott, without apparently allowing doubts to enter his mind, yet noted some peculiarities in the piece, in which it differed from others. "Your notes upon the parties concerned give it all the interest of authority, and it must rank, I suppose, among those half-serious, half-ludicrous songs, in which the poets of the Border delighted to describe what they considered as the sport of swords. It is perhaps remarkable, though it may be difficult to guess a reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a different stanza and character, and obviously sung to a different kind of music, from those on the northern Border. The gentleman who collected the words may perhaps be able to describe the tune." We are aware of no system of ethics which lays down with perfect precision the moral code on literary forgeries, or enables us to judge of the exact enormity of such offences. The world looks leniently on them, and sometimes sympathises with them as good jokes. Allan Cunningham did not lose his designation of "honest Allan" by the tremendous "rises" which he took out of Cromek about those remains of Nithsdale and Galloway song-a case in point so far as principle goes, but differing somewhat in the intellectual rank of the party. The temptation to commit such offences is often extremely strong, and the injury seems slight while it is in the power of the offender immediately to counteract it by confession. Vanity, indeed, often joins conscientiousness in hastening on a revelation. Surtees, however, remained in obdurate silence, and we are not aware that any edition of the Minstrelsy draws attention to his handiwork. Perhaps he was afraid of what he had done, like that teller in the House of Commons who is said by tradition to have attempted to make a bad joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by counting a fat man as ten, and, seeing that the trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the measure, became afraid to confess it. The literary history of "The Death of Featherstonhaugh" is apt to excite uneasiness about the touching ballad of "Barthram's Dirge," also contributed to the Minstrelsy as the fruit of the industrious investigations of Surtees. Most readers will remember this "They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig, And they left him lying in his blood, Beside the headless cross, Upon the moor and moss." for its clearness as a picture, there After this stanza, often admired is a judicious break, and then come stanzas deficient in certain words, which, as hypothetically supplied by Surtees, were good-naturedly allowed to remain within brackets : : "They made a bier of the broken bough, She tore her ling [long] yellow hair, And knelt at Barthram's side. His wounds so deep and sair, And she plaited a garland for his breast, And a garland for his hair." Altogether, such affairs create an unpleasant uncertainty about the paternity of that delightful department of literature, our ballad poetry. Where next are we to be disenchanted? Of the way in which ancient ballads have come into ex istence, there is one sad example within our knowledge. Some mad young wags, wishing to test the critical powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new-made ballad in a fragmentary form. To the surprise of its fabricator, it was duly printed; but what naturally raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to him a secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment, but a complete ballad, the collector, in the course of his industrious inquiries among the peasantry, having been so fortunate as to recover the missing fragments. It was a case where neither could say any thing to the other, though Cato might wonder, "quod non rideret haruspex, haruspicem cum vidisset." This ballad has been printed in more than one collection, and admired as an instance of the inimitable simplicity of the genuine old versions. If the reader should ever alight on a ballad called "Chil Ether," and succeed in accurately tracing its literary history, he will find it to correspond pretty accurately with this statement. It may perhaps do something to mitigate Surtees' offence in the eye of the world, that it was he who first suggested to Scott the idea of improving the Jacobite insurrections, and, in fact, writing Waverley. In the very same letter, quoted above, where Scott acknowledges the treacherous gift, he also acknowledges the hints he has received; and, mentioning the Highland stories he had imbibed from old Stewart of Invernahyle, says, "I believe there never was a man who united the ardour of a soldier and taleteller-or man of talk, as they call it in Gaelic-in such an excellent degree; and as he was as fond of telling as I was of hearing, I became a violent Jacobite at the age of ten years old; and even since reason and reading came to my assistance, I have never got rid of the impression which the gallantry of Prince Charles made on my imagination. Certainly I will not renounce the idea of doing some thing to preserve these stories, and the memory of times and manners which, though existing as it were yesterday, have so strangely vanished from our eyes." The reader will not expect us to enter on a statistical account of the several associations for printing books, their origin and progress, the purposes to which they were devoted, and the method in which they have pursued them; nor would any such exposition be received with much gratitude. We may do a service, however, by showing the easiest and briefest path to such knowledge. In this utilitarian age there are alphabetical or other synoptical guides to every description of practical information, from the Encyclopædia of Religious Denominations, which gives a short exposition of every creed, and the Clerical Guide, which tells you who teaches it, and what he gets for doing so, down to the Black List, which favours you with an index to all people who have become bankrupt, or get their bills protested, or are "wanted" by the persons from whom they have obtained effects without rendering a good quid pro quo. So it might be expected that there should be some guide or index to the services of the book clubs; and the expectation is fulfilled in the existence of a tidy little volume called "The Learned Societies and Printing Clubs of the United Kingdom; being an Account of their respective Origin, History, Objects, and Constitution, with full Details respecting Membership, Fees, their Published Works and Transactions, Notices of their Periods and Places of Meeting, &c., by the Rev. A. Hume, LL.D., F.S.A., &c." It will go hard if the man who has the disposition of the thing in his nature do not find his proper book club in the variety of titles and objects thus laid before him. The distribution of the clubs is, it must be confessed, not at all of a logical character, having indeed rather a close resemblance to those examples of false analysis sometimes laid before their pupils by logicians, which consist in dividing literature into books on divinity, books on science, quarto books, and books bound in calf. One system of arrangement is topographical, as the Chetham, "for the purpose of publishing biographical and historical books connected with the counties Palatine, or Lancaster and Chester." N.B.-Among other volumes of interest, it has issued a very valuable and amusing collection of documents about the siege of Preston, and other incidents of the insurrection of 1715 in Lancashire. The Surtees, again, named after our friend the ballad-monger, affects "those parts of England and Scotland included in the east between the Humber and the Firth of Forth, and in the west between the Mersey and the Clyde-a region which constituted the ancient kingdom of Northumberland." The Maitland, with its headquarters in Glasgow, gives a preference to the west of Scotland, but has not been exclusive. The Spalding Club, established in Aberdeen, the granite capital of the far north, is the luminary of its own district, and has produced fully as much valuable historical matter as any other club in Britain. Then there is the Irish Archæological-perhaps the most learned of all, having to deal with Celtic lore, requiring a peculiar and exceptional scholarship. The Aelfric may be counted its ethnical rival, as dealing with the productions of the Anglo-Saxon enemies of the Celt. The Camden professes to be general to the British empire. The name of the club called "The Oriental Translation Fund," tells its own story. There are others, too, with no topographical connection, which express pretty well their purpose in their names -as the Shakespeare, for the old drama-the Percy, for old ballads and lyrical pieces. The Hakluyt has a delightful field-old voyages and travels. The "Rae Society" sticks to zoology and botany; and the Wernerian, the Cavendish, and the Sydenham, take the other departments in science, which the names given to them readily indicate. In divinity and ecclesiastical history we have the Parker Society, named after the archbishop. Its tendencies are "low," or, at all events, "broad;" and as it counted some seven thousand members, it could not be allowed the run of the public mind without an antidote being accessible. Hence "The Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology," the tendency of which was not only shown in its name, but in its possessing among its earliest adherents the Rev. E. B. Pusey and the Rev. John Keble. The same party strengthened themselves by a series of volumes called the "Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church anterior to the Division of the East and West, translated by Members of the English Church." In Scotland, the two branches which deny the supremacy of Rome (it would give offence to call them both Protestant), are well represented by the Spottiswoode, already referred to as the organ of Episcopacy; and the more prolific Wodrow, which, named after the zealous historian of the Troubles, was devoted to the history of Presbyterianism, and the works of the Presbyterian fathers. Thus are the book clubs eminently the republic of letters, in which no party or class has an absolute predominance, but each enjoys a fair hearing. And whereas if we found people for other purposes than literature combining together according to ecclesiastical divisions, as High Church or Low, Episcopalian or Presbyterian, we should probably find that each excluded from its circle all that do not spiritually belong to it, we are assured it is quite otherwise in the book clubs-that High Churchmen or Romanists have not been excluded from the Parker, or evangelical divines prohibited from investing in the Library of AngloCatholic Theology. Nay, the most zealous would incline to encourage the communication of their own peculiar literary treasures to their avowed theological opponents, as being likely to soften their hearts, and turn them towards the truth. Some adherents of these theological clubs there also are of slightly latitudinarian propensities, to whom the aspirations of honest religious zeal, and the records of endurance and martyrdom for conscience' sake, can never be void of interest, or fail in summoning up feelings of respectful sympathy, whatever be the denominational banner under which they have been exhibited. Some of these clubs now rest from their labours, the literary strata in which they were employed having been in fact worked out. Whether dead or living, however, their books are now a considerable and varied intellectual garden, in which the literary busy bee may gather honey all the day and many a day. It were hard to choose in what quarter we may best select a specimen or two by way of example; but suppose we take down that thin light-looking volume of the Camden, which bears the rather attractive title, Anecdotes and Traditions illustrative of Early English History and Literature derived from MS. Sources, and edited by Mr W. J. Thoms. The sources of this collection are some unpublished Ana by Aubrey, a commonplace book kept by a certain John Collet, but chiefly a set of good sayings in their day set down by a country gentleman, Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, who died in the year 1654. Here is one of his anecdotes which has been often told, but which it is interesting to view so near to its source, and see expressed in the very words of the contemporaries of Shakespeare who retailed it :— Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christ'ning, being in a deepe study, Jonson came to cheer him up, and ask't him why he was so melancholy. 'No, faith, Ben,' (says he), 'not I, but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to VOL. XC.-NO. DLII. bestow upon my god-child, and I have resolved at last.' 'I pr'y thee, what?' says he, 'I' faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a douzen good Lattin Spoones, and thou shalt translate them.'" The editor of course does his duty to this passage, by giving the approved information about the bestowal of apostle's spoons by godparents, and how some gave the whole twelve, while others, for economic reasons, would not extend this eiconism beyond the four evangelists. It is, after all, a very hard test of the excellence of a joke, to encounter it for the first time newly unearthed from a latent manuscript. It is wonderful how poor and flat the best things appear when translated from their own time and place, and especially from their own language. In fact, there are many of the standard established mots that would seem worthless to us at first sight if met by surprise in some out of the way manuscript, but having been preserved by tradition, and kept alive, as it were, they have become household, and are part of our very notions of wit or humour, as the case may be. Yet to our notion some of L'Estrange's come out well even at first sight. The following is dry but significant-it shows, like other little hits, that he was of the old school, and did not like the Puritans. "My Lord Brookes used to be much resorted to by those of the preciser sort, who had got a powerful hand over him; yet they would allow him Christian libertie for his recreation, but being at bowles one day, in much company, and following his cast with much eagerness, he cryed, 'rubbe, rubbe, rubbe, rubbe, rubbe.' His chaplaine (a very strict man) runns presently to him, and in the hearing of diverse, 'O, good my lord, leave that to God; you must leave that to God,' says he." L'Estrange was connected with the Paston family, from whose domestic correspondence we have the 2 H well-known Paston Letters. He does not seem to have liked them, for he has many jests, more hard than witty, on the number of fools who had flourished among them. One of these conveys an utterly novel notion of the quarter in which hereditary talent might be expected to be found. "Sir Robert Bell being in company with Sir J. Hobart, Charles Grosse, &c., in a merry humour, would goe make his will, and give every man a legacie; but when he came to Mr Paston, says he, 'I know not what to bestow on thee; my witt you shall not need, for you must needs be well stor❜d with that, because thou hast the witt of at least three generations; for his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all books." The following does not perhaps display much wit, and it is utterly divested of good feeling as a domestic sketch, but there is a grotesqueness about it that amuses one. "Sir Martin Stutevilles's father riding abroade one day, with him attending on him, he rode to the nurse's house that overlaide his eldest sonne, at which time the nurse stoode at the doore. 'Looke ye there, Martin,' sayde his father; there stands she that made you an elder brother.' 'Is that she, sir?' says he; 'marry, God's blessing on her hart for it!" and presently gallops up to her, and gives her a couple of shillings." It will be noticed in these brief citations, and is well known to the prowler among club books, that although these volumes profess to be printed from old manuscripts, or to be mere reprints of rare books, they take a considerable portion of their tone and tendency from the editor. In fact, the editor of a club book is, in the general case, a sort of literary sportsman, who professes to follow entirely his own humour or caprice, or say his own taste and enjoyment, in the matter which he selects, and the manner in which he lays it before his friends. Hence, many of these volumes, heavy and unimpressible as they look, yet are stamped strongly with the marks of the individuality, or of the peculiar intellectual cast, of living men. We take down, for instance, the volume standing beside L'Estrange - considerably more cumbrous and formidable. It is the De Antiquis Legibus Liber, otherwise, Cronica Majorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum, printed from " a small folio, nine inches and a half in length and seven inches in breadth, the binding of white leather covering wooden backs, and containing 159 leaves of parchment, paged continuously with Arabic cyphers." It is partly a record of the old municipal laws of the city of London, partly a chronicle of events. Had it fallen to be edited by a philosophical inquirer into the origin and principles of jurisprudence, or an investigator of the rise and progress of cities, or a social philosopher of any kind, it is hard to say what might have been made of it easy to say that it would have been made something very different from what it is. The editor was an illustrious genealogist. Accordingly, early in his career as expositor of the character of the vo lume, he alights upon a proper name, not entirely isolated, but capable of being associated with other names. Thus, he is placed on a groove, and off he goes travelling in the fashion following over 220 pages of printed quarto. "Henry de Cornhill, husband of Alice de Courcy, the heiress of the Barony of Stoke, Courcy Com. Somerset, and who, after his decease, re-married Warine Fitz-Gerald the king's chamberlain, leaving by each an only daughter, co-heirs of this Barony, of whom Joan de Cornhill was the wife of Hugh de Neville, Proto Forrester of England, wife first of Baldwine de Reviers, eldest son and heir apparent of William de Vernon, Earl of Devon, deceased in his father's lifetime; and, secondly, of the wellknown favourite of King John, Fulk de Breauté, who had name from a commune of the Canton of Goderville, arrondissement of Le Havre, |