e volumes profess to be printed from old
manuscripts, or to be mere reprints of rare books, they take a
considerable portion of their tone and tendency from the editor. In
fact, the editor of a club book is, in the general case, a sort of
literary sportsman, who professes to follow entirely his own humour or
caprice, or, say, his own taste and enjoyment, in the matter which he
selects, and the manner in which he lays it before his friends. Hence,
many of these volumes, heavy and unimpressible as they look, yet are
stamped strongly with the marks of the individuality, or of the peculiar
intellectual cast, of living men. Take down, for instance, the volume of
the Camden called "De Antiquis Legibus Liber," otherwise, "Cronica
Majorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum," printed from "a small folio, nine
inches and a half in length and seven inches in breadth, the binding of
white leather covering wooden backs, and containing 159 leaves of
parchment, paged continuously with Arabic cyphers." It is partly a
record of the old municipal laws of the city of London, partly a
chronicle of events. Had it fallen to be edited by a philosophical
inquirer into the origin and principles of jurisprudence, or an
investigator of the rise and progress of cities, or a social philosopher
of any kind, it is hard to say what might have been made of it--easy to
say that it would have been made something very different from what it
is. The editor was an illustrious genealogist. Accordingly, early in his
career as expositor of the character of the volume, he alights upon a
proper name, not entirely isolated, but capable of being associated with
other names. Thus, he is placed on a groove, and off he goes travelling
in the fashion following over 220 pages of printed quarto: "Henry de
Cornhill, husband of Alice de Courcy, the heiress of the Barony of Stoke
Courcy Com. Somerset, and who, after his decease, re-married Warine
Fitz-Gerald the king's chamberlain, leaving by each an only daughter,
co-heirs of this Barony, of whom Joan de Cornhill was the wife of Hugh
de Neville, Proto Forester of England, wife first of Baldwine de
Riviers, eldest son and heir-apparent of William de Vernon, Earl of
Devon, deceased in his father's lifetime; and, secondly, of the
well-known favourite of King John, Fulk de Breaute, who had name from a
commune of the Canton of Goderville, arrondissement of Le Havre,
department of La Seine Inferieure, rendered accompt of this his debt in