He cannot avoid conviction as a literary
monster; yet his contemporaries regarded him as a miracle of erudition,
and Mr. Pollard has lately put in a kindly plea in mitigation. We are
reminded that Bagford made no money by his crimes, that he took
walking-tours through Holland and Germany in search of bargains, and that
he made 'a priceless collection of ballads.' It might be said also for a
further plea that what one age regards as sport another condemns as
butchery. The Ferrar family at Little Gidding were the inventors of
'pasting-printing,' as they called their barbarous mode of embellishment;
and Charles I. himself, in Laud's presence, called their largest
scrap-book 'the Emperor of all books,' and 'the incomparablest book this
will be, as ever eye beheld.' The huge volume made up for Prince Charles
out of pictures and scraps of text was joyfully pronounced to be 'the
gallantest greatest book in the world.' The practice of 'grangerising,'
or stuffing out an author with prints and pages from other works, was
even praised by Dibdin as 'useful and entertaining,' though in our own
time it is rightly condemned as a malpractice.
Next to Harley's library in importance was that of John Moore, Bishop of
Ely, of which Burnet said that it was a treasure beyond what one would
think the life and labour of a man could compass. Oldys has described it
in his notes upon London libraries, which it is fair to remember were
based on Bagford's labours, as regards the earlier entries.
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