Note 364 — The Drawing Room. (continued 2)

"The Maitland Collection of Manuscripts was ever in the collector's (Sir Richard Maitland's) family."—"His grandson was raised to the dignity of Earl of Lauderdale." "The Duke of Lauderdale, a descendant of the collector's grandson, presented the Maitland Collection, along with other MSS., to Samuel Pepys, Esq. Secretary of the Admiralty to Charles II. and James II. Mr. Pepys was one of the earliest collectors of rare books, &c. in England; and the duke had no taste for such matters; so either from friendship, or some point of interest, he gave them to Mr. Pepys,"—who "dying 26 May, 1703, in his 71st year, ordered, by will, the Pepysian Library at Magdalen College, Cambridge, to be founded, in order to preserve his very valuable collection entire. It is undoubtedly the most curious in England, those of the British Museum excepted; and is kept in excellent order." Mr. Pinkerton's preface, p. vii., to Ancient Scottish Poems from the Maitland Collection, &c., 1786, 8vo., 2 vols. I wish it were in my power to add something concerning the parentage, birth, education, and pursuits of the extraordinary collector of this extraordinary collection; but no biographical work, which I have yet consulted, vouchsafes even to mention his name. His merits are cursorily noticed in the Quarterly Review, vol. iv., p. 326-7. Through the medium of a friend, I learn from Sir Lucas Pepys, Bart., that our illustrious bibliomaniac, his great uncle, was President of the Royal Society, and that his collection at Cambridge contains a Diary of his life, written with his own hand. But it is high time to speak of the black-letter gems contained in the said collection. That the Pepysian collection is at once choice and valuable cannot be disputed; but that access to the same is prompt and facile, is not quite so indisputable. There is a MS. catalogue of the books, by Pepys himself, with a small rough drawing of a view of the interior of the library. The books are kept in their original (I think walnut-wood) presses: and cannot be examined unless in the presence of a fellow.—Such is the nice order to be observed, according to the bequest, that every book must be replaced where it was taken from; and the loss of a single volume causes the collection to be confiscated, and transported to Benet-college library. Oh, that there were an act of parliament to regulate bequests of this kind!—that the doors to knowledge might, by a greater facility of entrance, be more frequently opened by students; and that the medium between unqualified confidence and unqualified suspicion might be marked out and followed. Are these things symptomatic of an iron or a brazen age! But the bibliomaniac is impatient for a glance at the 'forementioned black-letter treasures!—Alas, I have promised more than I can perform! Yet let him cast his eye upon the first volume of the recent edition of Evans' Collection of Old Ballads (see in limine, p. ix.) and look into the valuable notes of Mr. Todd's Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer,—in which latter, he will find no bad specimen of these Pepysian gems, in the exultation of my friend, the author, over another equally respected friend—in consequence of his having discovered, among these treasures, a strange, merry, and conceited work, entitled "Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayd-Marian; and Hereford Town for a Morris-daunce, &c.," 1609, 4to., p. 273. Ex uno Disce omnes. The left-handed critic, or anti-black-letter reader, will put a wicked construction upon the quotation of this motto in capital letters: let him: he will repent of his folly in due time.