Some few yards off
were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as missiles,
with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe.
Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly,
paterfamilias receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition
of "Paradise Lost" in the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly
escaping a closer personal acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet
than he had ever had before. Finale: great outburst of wrath,
and rapid retreat of the combatants, many wounded (volumes) being
left on the field.
POSTSCRIPTUM.
ALTHOUGH, strictly speaking, the following anecdote does not
illustrate any form of real injury to books, it is so racy,
and in these days of extravagant biddings so tantalizing, that I
must step just outside the strict line of pertinence in order
to place it on record, It was sent to me, as a personal experience,
by my friend, Mr. George Clulow, a well-known bibliophile,
and "Xylographer" to "Ye Sette of ye Odde Volumes." The date
is 1881. He writes:--
"_Apropos_ of the Gainsborough `find,' of which you tell in `The Enemies
of Books,' I should like to narrate an experience of my own, of some
twenty years ago:
"Late one evening, at my father's house, I saw a catalogue of a sale
of furniture, farm implements and books, which was announced to take
place on the following morning at a country rectory in Derbyshire,
some four miles from the nearest railway station.
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