United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
John Bagford died an unrepentant sinner, lamenting with one of his later breaths that he could not live long enough to get hold of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out of that. The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several varieties of him.
Clergymen and presidents of colleges have been known to be seized with it. The victim becomes more or less irresponsible, and presently runs mad. Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical memory, who mutilated not less than ten thousand volumes to form his vast collection of title-pages.
He had intended them for the use of his fellow Kings-at-Arms; but it was said that he had some pique against the Heralds' College, and so 'cut them off with a volume. The rest went to the auction-room: 'The Earl of Oxford, said Oldys, 'will have a sweep at it'; and we know that the cast was successful. As for John Bagford, the scourge of the book-world, we have little to say in his defence.
I was extremely surprised, for Bagford is a vigorous allopath of the old school, drastic, bloody, and an uncompromising enemy of "that quack," as he called my grave young friend. I said as much. Doctor Nash smiled. "Oh, I don't mind it, so long as the patients come to me. I can very well afford to send him one now and then. The fact is, the Irish must feel their medicine.
Besides, her disease increased upon her. Almost from minute to minute she grew more restless, and her increasing inattention to what I said frightened as well as hurt me. The medicines of Dr. Nash were useless. Before noon I sent for Dr. Bagford, who said it was decidedly brain-fever, that she must be leeched, and have ice at her head, and so forth. Ah, it was useless.
Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the country" on purpose to see "the study of John Bunyan," and the student who made it famous.
Doctor-like, he evaded my inquiry what was the matter, so that I saw it was a serious case. On my intimating as much, he said, with sudden decision, "I'll tell you what, Madam. She may be better by night. If not, you'd better send for Bagford. He might do better for her than I."
According to Bagford, Caxton's office was afterward removed to King Street. From the evidence of Wynkyn de Worde, in the colophon of his edition of "Vitæ Patrum," 1495, it appears that these "Lives of the Fathers" were "translated out of French into English by William Caxton, of Westminster, lately dead," and that he finished the work "at the last day of his life."
It's quite often that a raking dose will cure 'em, not because it's the right thing, but because it takes their imagination with it. The Irish imagination goes with Bagford and against me; and the wrong medicine with the imagination is better than the right one against it. I care more about curing this child than I do about him. Besides," and he grew grave, "it may be no great favor to him."
We are reminded that Bagford made no money by his crimes, that he took walking-tours through Holland and Germany in search of bargains, and that he made 'a priceless collection of ballads. It might be said also for a further plea that what one age regards as sport another condemns as butchery.
Word Of The Day