The rise and progress of what Sir Egerton Brydges calls 'the black-letter mania' gave the death-blow to the long-cherished school of poetry of which Pope may be taken as the most distinguished exponent. 'Men of loftier taste and bolder fancy early remonstrated against this chilling confinement of the noblest, the most aspiring, and most expansive of all the Arts. . . . It was not till the commotion of Europe broke the chain of indolence and insipid effeminacy that the stronger passions of readers required again to be stimulated and exercised and soothed, and that the minor charms of correctness were sacrificed to the ardent efforts of uncontrolled and unfearing genius. The authors of this class began to look back for their materials to an age of hazardous freedom, and copious and untutored eloquence: an age in which the world of words and free and native ideas was not contracted and blighted by technical critics and cold and fastidious scholars.' To abandon the abstract for the more matter-of-fact details of sober history, the mania to which Brydges alludes may be said to date itself from the spring of 1773. The occasion was the sale in London of the library of James West, President of the Royal Society. George Nicol, the bookseller, was an extensive purchaser at this sale for the King, for whom, indeed, he acted in a similar capacity up to the last. Nicol told Dibdin 'with his usual pleasantry and point, that he got abused in the public papers, by Almon and others, for having purchased nearly the whole of the Caxtonian volumes in this collection for his Majesty's library. It was said abroad that a Scotchman had lavished away the King's money in buying old black-letter books.' The absurdity of this report was soon proved at subsequent sales. Dibdin adds, as a circumstance highly honourable to the King, that 'his Majesty, in his directions to Mr. Nicol, forbade any competition with those purchasers who wanted books of science and _belles lettres_ for their own progressive or literary pursuits; thus using the power of his purse in a manner at once merciful and wise.'
[Illustration: _George Nicol, the King's Bookseller._]
The impetus which book-collecting, and more particularly the section to which we have just referred, received by the dispersal of the West Library gathered in force as time went on, reaching its climax with the Roxburghe sale thirty-nine years afterwards. The enthusiasm culminated in a club--the Roxburghe, which still flourishes. The warfare (at Roxburghe House, St. James's Square), as Mr. Silvanus Urban has recorded, was equalled only by the courage and gallantry displayed on the plains of Salamanca about the same period. 'As a pillar, or other similar memorial, could not be conveniently erected to mark the spot where so many bibliographical champions fought and conquered, another method was adopted to record their fame, and perpetuate this brilliant epoch in literary annals. Accordingly, a phalanx of the most hardy veterans has been enrolled under the banner of the far-famed Valdarfer's Boccaccio of 1471. . . . The first anniversary meeting of this noble band was celebrated at the St. Alban's Tavern [St. Alban's Street, now Waterloo Place] on Thursday, June 17, 1813, being the memorable day on which the before-mentioned Boccaccio was sold for £2,260. The chair was taken by Earl Spencer (perpetual president of the club), supported by Lords Morpeth and Gower, and the following gentlemen,[61:A] viz., Sir E. Brydges, Messrs. W. Bentham, W. Bolland, J. Dent, T. F. Dibdin (vice-president), Francis Freeling, Henry Freeling, Joseph Hazlewood, Richard Heber, Thomas C. Heber, G. Isted, R. Lang, J. H. Markland, J. D. Phelps, T. Ponton, junior, J. Towneley, E. V. Utterson, and R. Wilbraham. Upon the cloth being removed, the following appropriate toasts were delivered from the chair: