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The last book of the kind written before Don Quixote, according to Clemencin, was Policisne de Boecia, published in 1602; but La Toledana Discreta, which is a romantic poem in ottava rima, was published in 1604, and a few chap-books and religious romances, of the slighter kind, afterward.
So he went back, climbed the library steps again, and taking the little bundle of chap-books from their dusty resting-place, set himself, in a somewhat penitential spirit, to master their contents. If the occupation was distasteful to him, the more wholesome to pursue it!
Of these we have a larger body than ever before, too large indeed to handle in detail. It would be idle to quote from the chap-books on witch episodes their raisons d'être. It all comes to this: they were written to confute disbelievers. They refer slightingly and even bitterly to those who oppose belief, not however without admitting their numbers and influence.
Scottish law did not treat the abduction of heiresses against their will in a gentle spirit, and before the northern courts the son of the King would be in no better case than the sons of Rob Roy, with whose exploits in this direction a taste for the reading of chap-books had made him familiar.
He has gone over to look at the new lodge. You could ride all the way through the east woods in the cool. See, I will put these tidy." And, as she spoke, Katherine stooped to pick up the scattered chap-books from the ground. But, in the last few moments, while looking at her, yet further understanding had overtaken Julius March.
The industrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books, being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literary deficiencies: they preferred to obey tradition rather than to invent ineptitudes. So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue through the unnumbered lives of three centuries.
What a stride in literature from the "Prognostications" of Nostradamus and Partridge, and the imposture of such prophetic chap-books as the almanacs of Moore and Poor Robin, to the bulky volumes teeming with all manner of information, such as the "Almanach Impérial," the "New Edinburgh," or "Thorn's Irish Almanac"! In the list of superior works ranking with those just named is to be included the new "National Almanac."
He laid the four little chap-books back hastily behind the outstanding woodwork of the bookshelf, descended the steps, walked the length of the gallery, and leaning against one of the stone mullions of the great, eastern bay window looked out of the wide, open casement. The prospect was, indeed, reassuring enough.
Strangest truth of all, none knows at what moment Dick Turpin first shone into glory. At any rate, there is a gap in the tradition, and the chap-books of the time may not be credited with this vulgar error.
Here, for instance in one of the comic chap-books picked up by chance we have a caller rushing violently into a drawing-room; he knocks against a lady, who upsets her cup of tea over an old gentleman, who slips against a glass window which falls in the street on to the head of a constable, who sets the whole police force agog, etc.
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