78

FAIR PLAY'S A JEWEL.

Byron mysel-for though I ne'er saw him atween the een, I've had mony kind letters frae him—and I think there's as loud a ca' on me to produce ma contribution to his beeography as there was on Mr Galt.

North. But you must wait, my dear James, till a year or two after the publication of Mr Moore's Life of Byron. Any interference with him at present would be unkind and unhandsome-and would look like an attempt to hustle and jostle him out of the market.

Shepherd. What for no me as weel's Galt?

North. There ought to be as fine a sense of honour, James, between author and author, publisher and publisher

Shepherd. As among thieves.

North. Or other gentlemen, in the affairs and intercourse of life. Mr Galt should have scorned to prepare, and Mr Colburn to publish, a Life of Byron, till Moore's and Murray's had had its run. That's poz.

Shepherd. Poz aneuch.

North. But instead of having had its run, one half of it is yet unpublished—and the other half yet in quarto. Silver against gold-shillings against guineas-is hardly fair play. Shepherd. But canna Muir's gold beat Galt's silver, or rather brass, sir?

North. You misunderstand me, James-Moore costs as many guineas as Galt shillings.

Shepherd. Galt and Colburn should hae waited—as I shall do-if they wished the public to look on them-I will not say as honest-but as highly honourable men.

North. One-half of Mr Galt's volume may be said to be borrowed.

Shepherd. Say stown

North. From Mr Moore

Shepherd. Too-hoo; or whare else could he hae got the facks about his boyhood and youth-and mony o' them about his manhood?

North. Nowhere else-as well observed the Monthly Review.

Shepherd. Fair play's a jewel, foul's paste. But the Public ee sune kens the difference; the jewel she fixes on her breast or forehead, the paste finds its way into the Jakes.

North. The volume is the first number of the NATIONAL

1

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY.

79

Library. But I trust that the spirit in which it has been hatched, and huddled to market, is not National on either side of the Tweed. Number second is-the BIBLE! the contents of the Bible, and not its history, as its senseless title would indicate. Now, James, what a bound from Byron to the Bible! Does the Rev. Mr Gleig think it decorous for a divine to put into the one hand of a young Christian lady a book containing a pretty picture and panegyric of Lord Byron's kept-mistress, and into the other the History of the Bible? He thinks so,—and that he may be able to do it, he plunders Stackhouse as prodigally as Mr Galt plunders Moore. Messrs Galt and Gleig are both Scotchmen,-so are we,-and we must again enter our protest against the Nationality of a library conducted on such principles.

2

3

Shepherd. Heaven preserve us! hoo mony Leebraries are there gaun to be at this yepoch! The march o' Intellect will be stopped by stumblin outower so mony bales o' prented paper thrawn in its way as steppin-stanes to expedite its approach to perfectibility! The people will be literally pressed till death. Is that a pun?

North. I presume, since there is such a supply, that there is a demand. But as I cannot say that in the stillest night of a quick spring I ever heard the grass growing, so

Shepherd. What! never a bit thin, fine rustle, sound and nae sound, that tauld o' the gradual expansion of some sweet germ gainin in hicht about the thousand part o' a hair'sbreadth in ae dewy moment, and thus waxin in the coorse o' March, April, May, and June, intil gerse that in wadin thro't in the first week o' July, afore mawin, would reach up to the waistband o' your breeks?

North. The people appear to me to want bread rather than books.

Shepherd. Let them hae baith.

North. But bread first, James.

Shepherd. Surely-for wha can read to ony purpose on an empty stamack? For, suppose they were to swallow some pages o' paragraphs out o' a byuck, hoo the deevil in that

1 "The National Library," which did not extend beyond a few volumes, was conducted by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, and published by Colburn and Bentley. Galt's Life of Byron was No. I.; and this was followed by Gleig's History of the Bible. 2 The Countess Guiccioli. 3 Leebraries-libraries.

80

COMPETITION AMONG BOOKSELLERS.

state could they dijeest it? They would bock the best byuck that ever was bun'.

North. But the Libraries I allude to are not for the poor, James, but the "well-off," the wealthy, or the rich.

Shepherd. That's a' richt aneuch. I'm for everything cheap. Yet, sir, observe hoo the human mind comes to despise everything cheap. There's port wine. A' at ance, some years sin' syne, port wine tummled doun ever sae mony shillins the bottle-and I drank some at the Harrow last nicht at half-a-croon, o' the famous veentage o' the year wan-and better black-strap never touched a wizen. I remember hoo a' the middle classes-includin, in a genteel toun like Embro', nine-tenths o' the poppilation-at the first dounfa' o' the article, clapped their hauns, and swore to substitute port in place o' porter, and Cape wine (a bad exchange) for sma' yill. Mony o' them did sae; and you saw citizens smellin at corks, and heard them talkin o' auld port, and crust, and the like, wha used to be content wi' their tippenny. But the passion for port was sune satiated-for the port itsel, however cheap, was vulgar; or even if no vulgar, it was common, and in the power o' the said multifawrious middle classes, baith in the New and the Auld Town. So the boddies took to the toddy again-wi' het water and broon sugarwhich, though cheap too, was the drink that had been lang natural to their condition. There-ye hae baith argument and illustration.

North. A sort of imaginative reasoning that is apt to lead a weak or incautious mind astray. I am, however, far from entirely dissenting from your opinion; and therefore, a truce to philosophising about the Spirit of the Age-and let me whisper into your ear, that the whole is a Speculation among the Booksellers. Now, the Spirit of the Age is one thing, and the Spirit of the Trade is another; and therefore, the question is, are the Trade (the term is collective) ruining themselves— or, if not so, destroying their profits-by competition?

Shepherd. Just as wi' steamboats on the river Clydethere being now some saxty, I understaun', a' plyin 'tween Glasgow, Greenock, and the Isles.

North. Now, James, I hope all the Libraries will prosper. But I fear some will dwine and die. The best will endure, and enduring flourish; the worst will become bankrupt; and

the various go-betweens the best and worst will never enrich either the pockets of the publishers, or the pericraniums of their purchasers, and expire, one after another, like so many candles, some farthing, some half-a-dozen to the pound, and some "lang-twa's." Next Noctes I shall rip up the merits and demerits of them all-meanwhile pass the Jug.

Shepherd. You hae been rather ponderous on that pint, sir. But to return to Galt-like the dowg to his vo—

North. James-James-James!

Shepherd. They tell me that Mr Muir has been quizzin Galt in some sateerical lines-Are they just uncommon facetious, sir?

North. Why, but so-so, James-not much amiss-the merest trifle-airy and ingenious enough-but without gall towards Galt; and, since I love to be candid, fribbleish and feeble.1 But oh, James! Heaven have mercy on my old bones! when I think on the cruel load laid upon them by what Mr Galt, or some friend of Mr Galt's, has supposed to be the Retort Courteous, or Quip Modest to Mr Thomas's jeud'esprit !-Poor as that jeu-d'esprit is, it makes no pretensions, and no doubt was thrown off by Mr Moore with the same ease as an answer to an invitation to dinner; but the answer of the anser is indeed like the gabbling of ever so many geese disturbed in their green-mantled pool by a few pebbles shied at them by some sportive passenger who wishes not to hurt a hair of their head-I beg their pardon-a feather; and who, in spite of his previous knowledge of the character of the animal, is amazed at the multitudinous din of their protracted clamour, so utterly disproportionate to the original cause of offence-itself so slight and evanescent. In this case there is an additional absurdity in the behaviour of the geese. For Mr Galt, at whom Mr Moore threw the small polished pebbles, harmless as peas out of a pop-gun, so far from being a goose, is a swan-though of late he has, contrary both to reason and instinct, associated with a flock of those noisy waddlers, and by people at some distance, who may

1 See ante, p. 77.

2 Some friend of Galt's appears to have published a rejoinder to Moore's squib. But neither squib nor rejoinder are worth retrieving from the oblivion into which they have fallen.

VOL. III.

F

82

GEESE WILD AND TAME.

1

not be very sharp or long-sighted, must lay his account with being taken-mistaken-for a prodigious gander-within a few stone-weight of that greatest of all ganders-the Glasgow gander who ought to have his long neck broken for hissing at Sir Walter Scott. The geese in whose company he was walking at the time of the assault, could not stomach in their mighty hearts the affront of being insulted in the person of him their sultaun—and instanter stretching themselves all up on their splay-feet that love the mud, and all at once flapping with their wings the oozy shallows, they gave vent to their heroic indignation in more ways than it would be pleasant or proper to describe -to the disturbed wonder of the neighbourhood, and, if the truth were known, to their own astonishment.

Shepherd. Do you ken, sir, that I admire guses- tame guses far mair nor wild anes.

-

A wild guse, to be sure, is no bad eatin, shot in season out o' season, and after a lang flicht, what is he but a rickle o' banes? But a tame guse, aff the stubble, sirs-(and what'n a hairst this 'ill be for guses, the stooks hae been sae sair shucken !)-roasted afore a clear fire to the swirl o' a worsted string stuffed as fu's he can haud frae neck to doup wi' yerbs-and devoored wi' about equal proportions o' mashed potawties, and a clash o' aipple sass-the creeshy breist o' him shinin outower a' its braid beautifu' rotundity, wi' a broonish and yellowish licht, seemin to be the verra concentrated essence o' tastefu' sappiness, the bare idea o' which, at ony distance o' time and place, brings a gush o' water out o' the pallet-his theeghs slightly crisped by the smokeless fire to the preceese pint best fitted for crunchin — and, in short, the toot-an-sammal1 o' the Bird, a perfeck specimen o' the beau-ideal o' the true Bird o' Paradise, for sic a guse, sir-(but oh! may I never be sae sairly tempted)-wad a man sell his kintra or his conscience

and

neist day strive to stifle his remorse by gobblin up the giblet-pie.

North. To hear you speak, James, the world would take you for an epicure and glutton, who bowed down five times a-day in fond idolatry before the belly-god. What a delusion! Shepherd. What does the silly senseless world ken about the real character o' the puir Ettrick Shepherd, ony mair than 1 See ante, vol. ii. p. 30, note 2.

2 Tout-en-semble.