ARTICLE XVII.

PITCAIRN'S CRIMINAL TRIALS.

[The last piece of criticism which came from the pen of Sir Walter Scott was this, on the first six parts of the Collection, entitled "Trials, and other Proceedings, in matters Criminal, before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland; selected from the Records of that Court, and from original Manuscripts preserved in the General Register House, Edinburgh. By ROBERT PITCAIRN, Writer to his Majesty's Signet, F.S.A.” This article was in the Quarterly Review for February 1831. MR PITCAIRN has since completed his work in four quarto volumes, published under the auspices of the BANNATYNE CLUB at Edinburgh, of which SIR WALTER SCOTT was the founder and first President.]

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THIS has been called "the age of clubs ;" and certainly the institution of societies which, under no more serious title than that of a festive symposium, devote themselves to the printing of literary works not otherwise likely to find access to the press, hereafter be numbered among not the least honourable signs of the times. The two Scotch clubs of this class have of late been doing so much and so well, that we venture to introduce a few general

remarks on the circumstances under which their exertions have been called forth.

It is a frequent subject of complaint among young authors that they experience difficulty in bringing their works before the public, under a general shyness which the TRADE, as they are usually called (we suppose par excellence), or, in plain language, the booksellers, entertain with respect to MSS. which do not bear either a wellknown name, or, at least, the announcement of some popular and attractive subject in the titlepage. In fact, there is real ground, on some occasions, for complaining of this species of impediment. The bookseller, though a professed trader in intellect, cannot be in every case an infallible judge of the vendibility of the wares submitted to him, the only circumstance, it is plain, which his business requires him to attend to.

The name of a veteran

author is one, though by no means an infallible, insurance against loss; just as a knowing jockey, destitute of other foundations for his betting system, will venture his money upon a descendant of Eclipse. Failing this kind of recommendation, the bookseller is often, and naturally enough, determined by considering the style of those works which have been successful about the same time. If he finds the new comer adopting the sort of topic, or form of composition, actually much in vogue, he is very apt to indulge the hope, that although it may intrinsically fall short of such as are esteemed the models of the day, his book may, nevertheless, fall in with the reigning taste, and

take advantage of the popular gale. This may not be thought, on the part of the bookseller, a very intellectual method; we are inclined, nevertheless, to suspect that it is one of the safest which he could adopt. We have had considerable opportunities of observation in these matters, and undoubtedly the result is, that whenever we hear of a young bookseller, as laying high pretensions to critical skill and acumen, we augur badly of his career. Among the unsuccessful booksellers whom we have chanced to know, the majority have been men who relied upon their own taste, and so ventured on speculations which would not have been hazarded by more cautious men, who confine themselves to the more mechanical part of the concern, and seldom look beyond a titlepage. We are not so absurd as to suppose that the bookseller, who adds to complete acquaintance with the commercial parts of his trade, a liberal and enlightened familiarity with literature, is to be considered the less fit for his calling from such an acquisition. On the contrary, such a publisher must not only rise to the top of his profession, but become an ornament to his country, and a benefactor to letters, while his fortune increases in proportion to his fame. His name, imparted with a mixture of liberality and caution, adds a consideration to the volumes on which it stands, and is in itself a warrant for their merit. But to rise to such a pitch of eminence requires an unusually sound judgment-and a long train of observation and experience-and he that attains it will seldom if ever be found to have acted,

in the earlier stages of his business, under the impulses of pure literary enthusiasm. His object and rule is, and should be, to buy and publish what bids fairest to be withdrawn from the counter by a steady and rapid sale; and no capacity for estimating what favour a given MS. ought to meet with, will compensate for the want of tact to judge of the degree of favour which the public are likely to bestow on it. Let us take a memorable instance, though a hackneyed one. We will suppose Samuel Simmons, a respectable member of the Stationers' Company, of London, leaning over his counter in some dark street, to the eastward of Temple-bar, in the year 1667; an aged, grave, and reverend person, led by a female decently attired, enters and places in his hands a voluminous manuscript, which he requests him to purchase. Now, suppose our friend Simmons to have been himself a man of pure taste and high feeling of poetry, it is extremely probable that he would have offered money to the extent of the whole value of his stock for the copyright of the Paradise Lost. But what would have been the event? it was full two years before one thousand three hundred copies were sold, and poor Samuel Simmons, supposing him, in his just confidence in his own discrimination, to have overstepped the bounds of commercial caution, must have" marched in the rear of a Whereas," sooner or later—exactly in proportion, indeed, to the degree of judgment and feeling of poetry which had moved him-in other words, to the proportion in which the copy-money offered by him had ap

proached to the real intrinsic value of the English epic.

But Samuel Simmons was a man of the world, and judged with reference to the extrinsic probabilities attending the publication of the poem in question. If he did not know Milton by person, he could not fail to discover that he had been the secretary of Cromwell, and the violent defender of the regicides; that his was therefore a name highly unlikely to command popular success when the tide of politics set in a different direction.

Nor were

the style and subject of the poem, grave, serious, and theological, more apt to recommend it to the light and giddy paced times, when Butler and Waller headed the world of fashionable writers. A shrewd trader, therefore, was likely to do, as in fact Simmons did, namely, to offer to the author such a price, and no more, as was calculated upon the probability of sale which attached to a grave work in a light age, and written by an author hostile to the triumphant party. Under the influence of such reflections he made with the author of Paradise Lost the well-known bargain "for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition; and five pounds after the same sale of the third ;" and when it is considered, that before 1680, Simmons, already twenty pounds out of pocket, transferred the whole right of Paradise Lost for twenty-five pounds, it can scarcely be