book club. The practice was sedulously followed by Hearne the antiquary, and others, who provided old chronicles and books of the class chiefly esteemed by the book-hunter. The very fame of the restricted number, operating on the selfish jealousy of man's nature, brought out competitors for the possession of the book, who never would have thought of it but for the pleasant idea of keeping it out of the hands of some one else. There are several instances on record of an unknown book lying in the printer's warerooms, dead from birth and forgotten, having life and importance given to it by the report that all the copies, save a few, have been destroyed by a fire in the premises. This is an illustration in the sibylline direction of value being conferred by the decrease of the commodity; but by judiciously adjusting the number of copies printed, the remarkable phenomenon has been exhibited of the rarity of a book being increased by an increase in the number of copies. To understand how this may come to pass, it is necessary to recall the precept elsewhere set forth, and look on rarity as not an absolute quality, but as relative to the number who desire to possess the article. Ten copies which two hundred people want constitute a rarer book than two copies which twenty people want. Even to a sole remaining copy of some forgotten book, lying dead, as it were, and buried in some obscure library, may collective vital rarity be imparted. Let its owner print, say, twenty copies for distribution-the book-hunting community have got the "hark-away," and are off after it. In this way, before the days of the clubs, many knowing people multiplied rarities; and at the present day there are reprints by the clubs themselves of much greater pecuniary value than the rare books from which they have been multiplied. Some Book-Club Men. O one probably did more to raise the condition of the book clubs than Sir Walter Scott. In 1823 the Roxburghe made proffers of membership to him, partly, it would seem, under the influence of a waggish desire to disturb his great secret, which had not yet been revealed. Dibdin, weighting himself with more than his usual burden of ponderous jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott the desire of the club that the Author of Waverley, with whom it was supposed that he had the means of communicating, would accept of the seat at the club vacated by the death of Sir Mark Sykes. Scott got through the affair ingeniously with a little coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally accepted as the Author of Waverley's representative. The Roxburghe had, however, at that time, done nothing in serious book-club business, having let loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets of letterpress already referred to. It was Scott's own favourite club, the Bannatyne, that first projected the plan of printing substantial and valuable volumes. At the commencement of the same year, 1823, when he took his seat at the Roxburghe (he did not take his bottle there, which was the more important object, for some time after), he wrote to the late Robert Pitcairn, the editor of the Criminal Trials, in these terms: "I have long thought that a something of a bibliomaniacal society might be formed here, for the prosecution of the important task of publishing dilettante editions of our national literary curiosities. Several persons of rank, I believe, would willingly become members, and there are enough of good operatives. What would you think of such an association? David Laing was ever keen for it; but the death of Sir Alexander Boswell and of Alexander Oswald has damped his zeal. I think, if a good plan were formed, and a certain number of members chosen, the thing would still do well." 1 Scott gave the Bannatyners a song for their festivities. It goes to the tune of "One Bottle More," and is a wonderful illustration of his versatile powers, 1 Notices of the Bannatyne Club, privately printed. in the admirable bibulous sort of joviality which he distils, as it were, from the very dust of musty volumes, thus: "John Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concerned I can't call that worthy so candid as learned; He railed at the plaid, and blasphemed the claymore, One volume more, my friends, one volume more Celt and Goth shall be pleased with one volume more. As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor, His diet too acid, his temper too sour, Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more. But one volume, my friends, one volume more- I am tempted to add a word or two of prosaic gossip and comment to the characteristics thus so happily hit off in verse. John Pinkerton was, upon the whole, a man of simple character. The simplicity consisted in the thorough belief that never, in any country or at any period of the world's history, had there been created a human being destined to be endowed with even an approach to the genius, wisdom, and learning of which he was himself possessed. He never said a word in praise of any fellow-being, for none had ever risen so much above the wretched level of the stupid world he looked down upon as to deserve such a distinction. He condescended, however, to distribute censure, and that with considerable liberality. For instance, take his condensed notice of an unfortunate worker in his own field, Walter Goodal, wh 'fraught with furious railing, contem ity, low prejudice, small reading, and Thus having dealt with an unfortun obscure author, he shows his impartia with Macpherson, then in the zenith this wise: "His etymological nonse with gross falsehoods, and pretends Celtic without quoting one single N he deals wholly in assertion and opi clear that he had not even an idea and science are." Nor less emphatic the plaid and blaspheming at the clay and his brethren are thus described savages, but one degree above brute still in much the same state of so days of Julius Cæsar; and he who the Scottish Highlanders, the old Irish, may see at once the ancient and of women among the Celts, when h savages stretched in their huts, a women toiling like beasts of burden manly husbands;" and finally, " savages, and, like Indians and neg continue so, all we can do is to among them, and by this, and end emigration, try to get rid of the br This fervency is all along of the qu the Picts, or Piks, as Pinkerton c |