PISANUS FRAXI
III
whom Hotten had previous dealings. This illustrates the almost uni–
versal custom of misrepresenting the number of copies of a privately
printed and "limited" edition. Most of the time the direction taken
by this misrepresentation is to announce fewer copies than are actually
printed; occasionally, however, one finds an inexplicable instance of
the reverse.
The third illustration is my personal favorite, one of Hotten's
wilder aberrations, and a kind of masterpiece of senseless obfuscation.
In 1872 he reprinted seven works on flagellation, adding to them
the date 1777, which is of course false. He also entitled the whole
series as
Library Illustrative 'Of Social Progress. From the Original
Editions collected by the late H enry Thomas Buckle, Author of "A
History of Cvvilization in England."
In a fly-sheet which Hotten dis–
tributed among his private customers, he expanded on these circum–
stances. "It is well known," he wrote, "that the late Henry Thomas
Buckle . . . collected a large library of curious books. Amongst the
many topics that engaged his attention was the subject of CHASTISE–
MENT, viz., discipline with a Birch or other implement. By rare good
fortune, he collected an almost complete set of the astounding books
issued by George Peacock, in the last century, and as no other ex–
amples of some of these rarities are known to exist, it is proposed to
privately print a few copies as 'Curiosities of Literature.' Apart from
their extreme rarity, the works are remarkable for the light they throw
upon the stale of society in the last century, and the mania that pos–
sessed all classes for chastising and being chastised." He goes on
to
describe the volumes and their price and lists their titles. Having
reprinted this circular, Ashbee then rises up in what for him (Rome
always in the exception) is the closest he ever comes to wrath-he was
ever the mildest of debunkers. "Now in .all this," he writes, "there
is not a word of truth; the original tracts did not come from the library
of Buckle, nor had he, in all probability, ever seen them. All seven
had been for many years, and are still, in the possession of a well
known London collector [guess who?] .... The fact is the present
possessor of the volume in question lent it to Hotten, who had it
surreptitiously reprinted, without the owner's permission or knowl–
edge." One need not conjecture a reconstruction of the event, which
must in any case have been simple enough. The striking thing about
it
is
its aimlessness: one can't even determine whether Hotten meant
it as a joke. Its floating and incoherent irrelevance, however, is rep–
resentative of a genre whose only secret sometimes seems to be its
ability to persuade the reader that psychosis is merely a heightened
form of normality.
