bouquinistes contained about seventy thousand volumes; Uzanne, in 1892, allows about ninety-seven thousand volumes to the one hundred and fifty-six vendors. They buy surplus books privately from journalists and critics, many of whom arrange for a periodical call from their bouquiniste, and at private and public sales, while great quantities are brought direct to the stalls for sale. The foundation of most stalls has remained the same during the last thirty years, and the intelligent foreigner must relieve the bouquiniste of enormous quantities of Buffon, Marmontel, Delisle, "Voyages" (especially that of Anacharsis, which is said to have largely led to the Revolution), Dulaure, La Harpe, church services. Robinson Crusoe, Scott, Maria Edgeworth, Berquin, and incomplete editions of all the French classics. What I like best on the quays is a mixed bag. I go out after giving the ground a long rest in hopes of surprises, keen all the time, and ready for a snap-shot. I can recall some red-letter days when at sunset, tired but happy, I have got back by steamer with a goodly bag of, say, fifty volumes, large and small, stowed away in all sorts of poacher's pockets or strung together like rabbits after a day's ferreting; expenditure say five francs for ammunition, free ground and no tips, and four sous for the steamers. To go out in search of any special book is usually disappointing. but it is wonderful here how knowledge of the ground helps; and you can keep a note of a number of works you want, or volumes to complete sets which you already have, so that there is always a lot of interest even when the elements are unfavorable and the ground is drawn blank. The other day I got an old 1664 book about the antiquities of Paris, which I had long wanted, for two shillings. Vive la chasse au bouquin! But Uzanne truly says the catalogues of Brunet, Quérard, and Barbier make the great find a rare accident. Most of the immortals have owned to their love for the bookstalls, and sung the praises of the dear old bookhunting days in no niggardly fashion. Enormous libraries have here been collected. Pillet's, and Boulard's of about three hundred thousand volumes, are perhaps the best known. The académicien Xavier Marmier always offered a cigarette or a bon-bon, according to sex, on the conclusion of a purchase. He found a hundred-franc note sealed up between two pages of a book, and at once gave it to the vendor, whose it was not, but whom it happened to relieve when sadly pinched by bad times. He left one thousand francs to be spent on a dinner to the bouquinistes of the left bank. About ninety-five of them dined au grand Vèfour on November 20, 1892. The oldest, M. Choppin d'Arnonville, made a fine reference to the fartravelled donor: "Madame de Staël said that she preferred to the Rhine her gutter in the Rue du Bac; Monsieur Marmier preferred your quays to the loveliest country, to his mountains, to his great pines, which he loved so much that he called them his cousins." Many survive to recall his charming personality, and the bottle of white wine which he often shared with a crony after a bargain. Jacques, a bridegroom of the other day, then advocated a huge gallery on the quays, lighted at night, a sort of national fair, and the abolition of all the big shops. Chonmoru, perhaps the doyen now, over eighty, but good for another twenty years, who suffered three days in prison for his Socialism and for shouting "A bas les voleurs!" to Carnot when he passed, has discarded his sabots and looks less Bohemian than of yore. The aunt of Raoul Pugno, the great pianist, died only a year ago, and his cousin now reigns next door to Chonmoru, at the end of the Boule Miche; while none who have looked over Uzanne's illustrations can mistake Ferroud, one of the deputies who helped to manage the great dinner. Bouland has almost completed forty years as a bouquiniste, and is perhaps, strictly speaking, the doyen or "père," though not so old as Chonmoru. Many Chambers's Journal. others might be cited, interesting personalities, young in spirit if not in years. What a sport of kings must this craze be which enthralls alike the young, the old, the rich man, the poor man, and the man of power! Paul Lacroix said the bibliophile was his type of happiness. From which it results that to be a bouquin is real happiness. J. Galbraith Horn. "HAMLET" AND "LAMMERMOOR." Sir Walter Scott may be said to have been dominated and permeated by Shakespeare. He had conned him devoutly, absorbed him deeply, and there is not one of his novels that does not bear some impress of Shakespeare's mastership. There are in all the novels, extending from "Waverley" in 1814 to "Castle Dangerous" in 1831, 996 chapters, and it was the custom of Scott to place at the head of each chapter a quotation or motto in some degree appropriate to its subject matter. There are only 24 chapters in all the novels to which there are not headings, and, curiously enough, all these come after "The Betrothed" in 1825. Well, 972 chapters have headings, and of these 212 are quotations from Shakespeare's plays. These Shakespearean quotations are very unevenly distributed through the novels: in "Guy Mannering" there are 19 of them, in "The Surgeon's Daughter" only one; but in the aggregate they show an extraordinary familiarity with Shakespeare's plays which enabled Scott to find at once passages suitable to the ever-shifting scenes he was depicting. But if the headings of the chapters are thus predominantly Shakespearean, throughout the chapters themselves there are Shakespearean echoes, characters and scenes that have been dipped in Shakespearean dye. It is impossible for me now to adduce even a selec tion of these, but I should like to direct attention to one instance in which Scott appears to have been influenced by Shakespeare in a singular degree. I allude to the analogies and similarities which exist between "Hamlet" and "The Bride of Lammermoor," constituting, to my mind, a conspicuous instance of literary parallelism which escaped the notice of Isaac Disraeli in his "Curiosities of Literature." I do not in the remotest way suggest appropriation or conscious imitation. That would be as absurd as to accuse Shakespeare of plagiarism because of the use he made of Plutarch and Holinshed. Swift truly said: "If I light my candle from another, that does not affect my property in the wick and the tallow." Scott had an unlimited supply of wick and tallow of his own, but he sometimes lighted his dips (and dips he called his novels, for he once triumphantly exclaimed to Ballantyne, when contemplating a cheap and popular issue of them, "We must have dips for our wax candles"), when he had not a spunk of his own handy, at the taper or torch of someone who had gone before him. It seems to me that in the case of "The Bride of Lammermoor" he derived illumination more than once from Shakespeare's inverted torch of "Hamlet," lurid and brilliantly flaming, and that he did so under circumstances of rare psychological interest. "Hamlet" is, at any rate in the popular judgment, the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" is by general consent the greatest of Scott's novels. "It is to my fancy," said Lockhart, "the most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned." Mr. Gladstone told Lord Ashbourne that "The Bride of Lammermoor" was his favorite amongst the novels of his favorite novelist, and Lord Lytton said, "There are three masterpieces in narrative which can never be too much studied-the Edipus Tyrannus,' the 'Bride of Lammermoor' and 'Tom Jones.'" Many other eminent authorities might be cited to bear testimony to the primacy that "The Bride of Lammermoor" holds in the Waverley group, a primacy analogous to that of "Hamlet" amongst Shakespeare's plays. Of all Shakespeare's plays "Hamlet" has most of the amplification of the novel, and of all Scott's novels "The Bride of Lammermoor" is most dramatic in its treatment, and both of these great works have exactly the same tragic touch. In both there is the same fierce conflict of vengeance and remorse, love, hatred, with supernatural terror brooding over all. In both the action sweeps on, and one feels it from the first like a torrent, hurrying on in its dark and resistless course all the personages concerned, the good and the wicked, towards a catastrophe not brought about by human will, but dug by destiny. It is not, however, in tinct or tendency-that of all noble tragedy since the triology of Eschylus-that I would suggest relationship betwixt "Hamlet" and "Lammermoor,"-but in a number of particulars, a few of which I will enumerate, leaving it to the remembrance of those who know the play and the novel to fill in my rough outline. The scene of the play and the novel are strikingly alike. "Hamlet" is mainly enacted on the battlements and in the halls of the Castle of Elsinore, a rugged Danish stronghold, commanding the entrance to the Baltic, perched high above turbulent waters and probably visited by Shakespeare. "The Bride of Lammermoor" is mainly enacted on the battlements or in the halls of Wolf's Crag, a gray, half-ruined fortalice, placed on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German Ocean-in reality Fast Castle, which was well known to Sir Walter Scott. But more significant than the scenery is the human element in "Hamlet" and "Lammermoor," and that is often in close agreement in the two. Hamlet and the Master of Ravenswood are twin brothers; intellectually they are akin; Hamlet soars into the loftiest region of human thought, and Ravenswood is the most highly gifted and reflective of all Scott's heroes. Each is under a vow to revenge a murdered father, and in both the vow has a supernatural sanction. Hamlet was under commandment of his father's ghost. Ravenswood, after witnessing his father's dying agonies and hearing the curses he breathed against his adversary, secretly at midnight cut a lock from his hair, and as it consumed in the fire, swore that his rage and revenge should pursue his enemies until they shrivelled up like that scorched symbol of annihilation. For both the times were out of joint, and both, pushed on by events, found that the impossible was required of him. Both were in love, each with a woman lovely, soft and yielding, wanting in power of resistance; and each found in his love his ruin and frustration. The one was the counterpart of the other in form, feature and attire; Hamlet is described as of princely form and manly bearing, was clad in "inky cloak and customary suit of solemn black;" and the Master of Ravenswood, of majestic mien and regular features, wore a loose mourning cloak thrown round him, and a Montero cap with a black feather that drooped over his brow. Ophelia and Lucy Ashton are twin sisters. Both are young, fair, inexperienced girls, and it is their innocence, sweetness and weakness, in the straits in which they are placed, that move our profound pity. Both fondly open their hearts to a young love that rends them. Both sacrifice their love to paternal authority, and both, by this and by their lover's reproaches, are maddened with a madness that runs One into babbling, despair and death. cannot hear Ophelia's "To-morrow will be Saint Valentine's Day," without thinking of Lucy Ashton's "Tak' up your bonny bridegroom." Both were buried with maimed rites. "Must there no more be done?" asks Laertes at the funeral of Ophelia. "No more," the priest replies. We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace parted souls. "The melancholy ceremony," says Sir Walter Scott of the funeral of Lucy Ashton, "was performed in the misty dawn of an autumn morning, with such moderate attendance and ceremony as could not be dispensed with. Here in a coffin, bearing neither name nor date, were consigned to dust the remains of what was once lovely, beautiful and innocent, though exasperated to frenzy by a long tract of unremitting persecution." With Laertes, Ophelia's brother in "Hamlet." Colonel Ashton, Lucy Ashton's brother in "The Bride of Lammermoor," had much in common. Both took it upon them to avenge what they considered their sister's wrong, and both had an encounter with him who had wronged her, as they believed, over that sister's grave. Hamlet fell in a duel with Laertes; the Master of Ra venswood was engulfed in the quicksand while hurrying sword in hand to a duel with Coloned Ashton. I could carry the comparison between characters in "Hamlet" and "The Bride of Lammermoor" further, but do not wish to labor the case. I should like to point out, however, some structural reIn both there is supersemblances. natural machinery: in "Hamlet" the ghost of his father, majestical, armor clad, beckoning away and delivering its dread secret and charge; in "The Bride of Lammermoor," the ghost of Blind Alice at the Mermaid's Well, shrouded and wan, appearing to Ravenswood at the hour of her death, and the crisis of his fate, with warning hand and mutterings of withered lips. In both there is a picture scene, "Look here upon this picture and on this," and in both a churchyard scene. with an interview between the hero and a sententious grave-digger. Not incomparable with Shakespeare's supreme touch in Hamlet's last words: "the rest is silence" is Scott's closing incident of the finding by Caleb Balderston on the Kelpie's flow of the large sable feather, the sole vestige that remained of the vanished Master of Ravenswood. He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow And his name shall be lost for evermo'e. There are, no doubt, other reflections of Shakespeare in "The Bride of Lammermoor." The sudden and passionate attachment of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton, intervening in the hereditary feud of their families, recalls Romeo and Juliet, and the three village hags are reminiscent of the witches in "Macbeth;" but it was assuredly "Hamlet" that haunted the corridors of Sir Walter Scott's brain while he was inditing this "Tale of a Landlord," and high psychological interest attaches to the question how the Hamletular infusion took place in the circumstances under which "The Bride of Lammermoor" was written? It was composed in April, 1819, while Scott was passing through an acute attack of an intensely painful and prostrating malady from which he suffered at intervals for years. The malady was called cramp of the stomach, or spasms, but, looking back on it now in the light of modern experience, there is no difficulty in recognizing it as gallstones, a malady which did not finally carry him off, but which caused him the utmost distress, and must have absolutely disabled any man of less buoyant temperament and less resolute will, a malady, let me add, of which he could now have been promptly relieved. He was emaciated and broken down, with scarcely muscular strength enough to hold himself upright, lying upon a sofa, sick, and often turning himself upon his pillow with a groan of torment, as he dictated to Laidlaw and Ballantyne "The Bride of Lammermoor." His sentences were sometimes interrupted by cruel pangs, "but," says Laidlaw. "when duologue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed triumph over matter, he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and, as it were, acting the part." to And very remarkable was one of the consequences of the mental effort under such adverse conditions. The book, says James Ballantyne, "was not only written but published before Scott was able to rise from his bed; and he assured me that when it was first put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident, character or conversation it contained. He did not desire to convey that his illness had erased from his memory the original incidents of the story, with The Contemporary Review. which he had been acquainted from boyhood. These remained rooted where they had ever been, or, to speak more explicitly, he remembered the facts of the existence of the father and mother, of the son and daughter, of the lovers, of the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by the bride upon the hapless bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected, just as he did before he took to his bed, but he literally recollected nothing else—not a single character woven by the romance, not one of the many scenes and points of humor, nor anything with which he was connected as the writer of the work. For a long time," he said, "I felt myself very uneasy in the course of my reading, lest I should be startled by meeting something altogether glaring and grotesque." That Scott's mind was in a state of abnormal exaltation when he produced "The Bride of Lammermoor" is clear. He wrote himself at this time: "I certainly began to have some doubts whether the mischief was not getting at my mind." "I had another of my attacks," he wrote again, "and felt as if a phantasmagoria was going on around me." He had been having large doses of opium, and it may well have been that in the phantasmagoria in which he was involved, the mind not only failed to register its processes, but was inundated by figures and images rising spontaneously from the mysterious depths of memory, affinitive impressions and reminiscences in the guise of new conceptions. It may well have been that as Scott, in sore travail, stitched the glorious tapestry of "The Bride of Lammermoor," some old Shakespearean threads that came to hand got mixed up with it. James Crichton-Browne. |