BOOKS.
HENRY BRA_DSH.A.W.*
Rap Henry Bradshaw been only a man well-beloved, this memoir would not have been written : had he been only a bibliographer of surpassing knowledge and preternatural acuteness, it would not be widely read. The presentment of the two characters in one individual,—of the tarn, earum, eaput, cherished and bewailed by every high-natured man who has left his mark on Cambridge during five Academic lustres, encased in the same personality with the discoverer of un- known manuscripts, the decipherer Of unintelligible glosses, the accepted referee of English and of foreign scholars as a specialist, or rather as a universalist, in every department of book-lore,—more than justifies the biography with which Mr. Prothero's three years' toil and admirable selective judgment will delight a host of readers both at home and on the Continent.
Henry Bradshaw was born a lover of books. At four years old, he announced that he would be "a scholar." At fifteen, while a boy at Eton, he had a book-plate struck for his library. At sixteen, he buried himself in Ducange's Dictionary, and questioned received etymologies. At eighteen, he was known as a book-hunter to the brothers Macmillan and in the Picca- dilly shops; taking up with him from school to his rooms in King's a library of five hundred volumes. His University career was inconspicuous. He rebelled against the exclusive Etonianism of King's, seeking his society in other Colleges ; the present Archbishop of Canterbury, the Master of Trinity, Bishop Lightfoot, Dr. Luard, Sir Arthur Gordon, were amongst his undergraduate intimates. He read widely, but discursively, refusing_ to touch books which did not interest him. He haunted the University Library, ransacking MSS., studying early Liturgies and old Irish books, of which last his father had possessed a valuable collection. He was deeply impressed by the writings of Maurice and of Charles Kingsley ; his religious fancies shaped themselves into "moderate Trac- tarianism," and he contemplated taking Orders. The break in -University life which is essential to healthy development came to him in the shape of a mastership at St. Columba's, a High Church, aristocratic, semi-ecclesiastical school near Dublin, governed by a remarkable man, the late George Williams. To teach boys was clearly not his vocation ; but he was fairly contented until Williams left; then he returned to Cambridge, and settled down on a nominal salary in a post created for him at the University Library. This was probably the happiest time in his life, though rash purchases of books and excursions to foreign libraries so crippled his means that he was compelled to sell two thousand of his treasures. The bibliomaniac side of his profession developed in him more and more :—" It was a treat to see him handle a rare volume; first the caressing clasp of the closed book in his two broad hands ; then the rapid survey of lettering, tooling, gilding ; then the critical glance at type and margin ; finally the long survey of title-page and colophon, with .the bit of erudition or delightful anecdote given out in il].stra- tion." But he was no mere dilettante. He gained such a knowledge of the then neglected library as no one of its pro- fessional custodians possessed, patiently examining the whole collection book by book, and laying up in his astonishing memory the character, contents, and structure of every volume on the shelves. He began to make discoveries : in a tenth-century MS. of the Gospels known as the Book of Deer, he found a series of Gaelic charters, then, as now, the only specimens extant : he interpreted Irish glosses in the MS. of .1-uveneus, which opened new materials for the study of the Celtic languages ; he disinterred the long-
lost "Vaudois Books," and by detecting an erasure in the passage hitherto supposed to fix their date, he shattered the accepted theory as to the antiquity of Waldensian Calvinism.
His researches extended themselves to early printed books ; ere long he had examined every Fifte-ener known to exist in any English library, and passed over into Holland and Belgium, to explore the rich materials still preserved in the birthplace and the cradle of Printing. As a Chaucerian expert he
attracted the purely literary scholars whose temperaments palaaography and typography had failed to touch ; his abso- lute knowledge of all editions in manuscript or print, his
• A Memoir of Henry Bradshaw, Fellow of Hines College, Cambridge, and University Librarian. By G. W. Prather°. London ; Began Pau', Trench, and CO. 311111
laborious study and ingenious application of rhyme-tests, the imaginative sympathy, the pouvoir divinatoire, as a French savant called it, which led him to recast the arrangement of the Prologues so as to simplify and clear the itinerary of the Pilgrims, seemed to mark him out as the long-desired editor who should harmonise and formulate the vast modern accumulation of Chaucerian lore, and achieve for the students of to-day what Tyrwhitt achiev.ed for the readers of a hundred years ago.
In 1867 he became Librarian. He gained in power and celebrity, but he put his neck under a yoke. His student days were over ; henceforth he was to work for others, subject to the demands of all appellants, from. the Holtrop or the Ten Brink whose visits made red-letter days in the year's calendar, to the poetess who informed him that "the foliage of her glorious youth lies folded up deep down in the innermost strata of the palmozoic days of her golden past." To others the gain was immeasurable : foreigners spoke to one another- with bated breath of the new Librarian's acquirements. No matter what the language, bow archaic the texture of the documents they laid before him,—all alike seemed to have been his special study. He had mastered, if not thoroughly, yet abundantly for technical purposes, Arabic, Armenian, Persian,. Welsh and Celtic, Dutch and Flemish, Sanscrit, Pali, and Tibetan ! His memory was almost incredible. At Bruger, where he asked to see a particular book, the librarian insisted. that it was not there, had been carried off by the French. Bradshaw "blurted out the letter, number, shelf, under which it would be found," and there it was. At Orleans there was shown to him a fine early printed Bible : he named it once the. place and year of printing, and at the end of the book stood. date and press as he had given them. The astonished cicerone brought another and another book : a glance enabled him to' give the imprint of each. Mr. Quaritch was hunting in vain. for a collation, or bibliographical description, of a rare Massa- chusetts Bible : Bradshaw entered the shop, and at once met the case by writing out the complete collation, which proved. to be minutely accurate. Professor Mommsen told him of a con- traction in a Pandect MS. in the British Museum which neither- he nor the museum assistants had ever seen before : Bradshaw said nothing, but brought down a book from the shelves, and showed the same contraction. The talk turning one day on Sarum Breviaries, he wrote there and then, from memory, an accurate list, with dates, printers' names, and full descriptions, of the seven editions published in Queen Mary's reign. If the author of Village Communities wanted facts as to the Welsh tribal system of land-tenure ; if the Bishop of Lincoln doubted the ecclesiastical authority of the Novum Begistrum, which he had sworn to observe ; if a question was mooted amongst esoteric scholars as to the method of ruling Greek manuscripts. in the thirteenth century; if his old friend Dr. Benson, drafting statutes for his Truro Chapter, craved information on the. capitular offices of mediaaval French and older English cathedrals ; if an American Professor was investigating the- Family of Love ; if Dr. Zarncke found lacuna' in the materials for his historyof Prester John ;—the points were, as a matter of course, referred to Bradshaw, who, "by a curious coincidence,' as he always pointed out, had just been reading up the subject, and proceeded to irradiate it with all germane erudition. He assisted his memory by copious notes, taken at the time when a fact impressed him: like King Alfred, he "bare ever a boke in his bosome :" thirty-four of these were found in his rooms, stored with every variety of fact; he could always remember the exact date of every entry and refer to it without hesitation,. and one or two such references fixed it for ever in his mind.
And what was gain to others was joy to him. His bountiful nature, his delight in giving, reconciled him to the encroach- ments of official duty upon private research which would have maddened a Casaubon or a Pattison. Not only to the famous scholars, bearing world-wide names, but to the modest literary neophytes shyly consulting him on points which they feared were almost too trivial for his attention, he gave all his time- and knowledge; kindling their enthusiasm bylis own, showing. them as they had never seen before, the scope and beauty of the subjects which they thought they knew, leading them_ like dazed folk into a new world, as he took down book after book, opened cut after cut, clothed dry bones with flesh.. They followed him from the library to his rooms, and absorbed the evening which should have given rest to- the day sacrificed in. their service. “11. was here till,
half-past seven after hall," he writes, "and P. and H. were here till eight, and D. was here till nine, and G. came in at nine, and it is now half-past, so I ought not to be talking with you." "The most delightful thing in the world," he said one day to a very young scholar, "is to have people coming to you for help." And " help " was a word writ large in his vocabulary. It meant that brain and goods and person and purse were given to him in stewardship for others ; usu non onancipio, in usufruct, not in freehold. "It was dangerous for those he loved to express a wish or to sound a note of admiration in his presence." When St. Columba's was in temporary difficulties, he tore up and returned, though a poor man at the time, the cheque handed to him for a half-year's salary. He would assist a needy scholar by paying him for work ; would subsidise a student to whom foreign study was sssential. He noticed the low spirits of a deserving library assistant, found that he was encumbered by a debt of £80, paid it, and "set him on his legs again." By successive sweeps he poured the greater part of his own fine library into the University shelves. When classical archmology was recognised as a Cambridge study, and the necessary funds were ink at once available, he secretly placed in the Vice- 'Chancellor's hands £200 for a first year's endowment.
The noblest men have failings which link them to less perfect humanity. His were procrastination, diffuseness, inability to finish. "You like doing bits of twenty-five things, instead of finishing one," writes Mr. Furnivall. "What is Bradshaw doing P" some one asked of Mr. Vansittart. "Oh !" was the answer ; "he is doing something else !" His foible of not answering private letters became at last a habit which amused or pained his correspondents, but which never shook their faith in his affection. A friend to whom he had promised a visit, but who could get no answer to his invitations, sent him two post-cards, inscribed severally with " No " and "Yes," and asked him to post one of them. Bradshaw promptly posted both. In literary matters the fault did wider mischief. The biography is a museum of promises deferred and broken, of abandoned attempts to edit or to print matter which he alone could expound completely and authori- tatively, yet which fell from him into less competent but more energetic hands. So it was with the Book of Deer and the Juvencus, with Wyclif's Postils, with Degnille- ville's Pilgrimages, with the Barbour fragments, with the history of fifteenth-century Bruges printing, with William
Palerne and the Hisperica Famina ; above all, with Chaucer. Yet it must be borne in mind that all this was due not solely to his dilatoriness, but to his fastidiousness, to his notions of accuracy and responsibility, his refusal to stamp the imprimatur of his name on any statement which he had not exhaustively verified, his lively surmise of possible sub- sequent discovery which might contradict and vitiate con- clusions for the present unimpeachable. From the scholars' point of view, such hesitancy is mistaken ; as a moral trait, it is essential to our understanding of the man. He has left some valuable letters, eight brief "Memoranda," a paper on 4‘ Early Bibles," a curious and characteristic annotation of the day-book of a sixteenth-century Oxford bookseller, the Sibylline leaves of his note-books. These, or some of these, his biographer hopes to print.
His life was as happy as it deserved to be,—as all men's lives must be into which is woven the belief that it is "more blessed to give than to receive." When past forty, he fell in love; his suit was unsuccessful, and he resigned himself to his late,—but something of a scar remained. Not long before his death, he was comparing notes of the past with an old and valued friend, whom he had not seen for many years. The other's public life had been full of care and turmoil ; his own .0a:1m and free from anxiety. "But," he said, "you have had domestic happiness, and I have missed it." The friend—the same friend who traces these obituary lines, and in tracing them mournfully lays a last wreath upon his grave—thought of Bacon's aphorism,—the charity which waters the ground, the charity which first fills a pond,—the love concentred by most of us on wife and child, spreading out from him to such a domain of friends as scarce any man besides possessed.
Multi); bonis !--multis, as the farewell gathering round his tomb attested ; bonis, for to have been dear to ma a man Ives a certificate of worth ; flebilis, for where will any of us find again a friend so staunch and a welcome so affectionate, as made himself a comrade and. his rooms a home to old and young for five-and-twenty years P
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