Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/283

Aberdeen : Its Literature, Bookmaking, and Circulating. 271 competent person within the bounds of Britain ? He most gladly accepted the task ; very speedily cleared a mass of the debris, and made short work with many of them. " This MS. " said he, "is a Persian classic ' Tooti Nairn,' the well-known ' Tale of a Parrot.' " Ah, me ! how very ignorant we felt our- selves ; but after that any unknown thing was always char- acterised by us as " Tooti Nami," because we knew as much about it as the parrot. But, and this is a dead secret, and as the advertisements say, not to be repeated, even Professor Robertson Smith was baffled by some of the languages which he had not then mastered, and had to confess his ignorance ; and the gloomy prospect of us having to sell these volumes like " pigs in a poke" loomed before us, and was very unsatisfactory. We were in a quandary, stranded, and utterly helpless, when the sharp, quick-witted acuteness of the Professor lifted us out of the bog. " Turn up," he said, "the article 'Alphabets' in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and also that in the Penny Cyclopedia," and this was done. " Now then," he said, " we can spell out letter by letter, get the kernel of the book, and can, at least, give its title." The catalogue appeared ; was a source of unbounded astonishment to the citizens, and of their admiration at the learning of the compilers, and it was facetiously proposed in the newspapers to confer on them the title of " Doctorus Cata- logorum," which would have been equivalent to dressing jack- daws in eagles' feathers. How little Professor Andrew Scott, the collector of this library, valued these titles may be inferred from the fact that when offered the degree of LL.D. by the University of St. Andrews he never replied. Three weeks after, being again asked if he would accept, he then replied that " if they dared to dub him so, he would prosecute them for libel." It is a pleasure to think that by his acquisition of many of these volumes at the sale, Professor Robertson Smith's library was enriched, and that they fell into the hands of one who could make good use of them. As Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen helped to introduce printing into Scotland in 1509, so, but a hundred years later in 1622, Bishop Patrick Forbes helped to introduce the art into Aberdeen, inducing the Provost and Magistrates to offer such valuable privileges to Edward Raban then at St. Andrews, that he began to exercise his craft as a printer here, and when the man came the time was propitious, for, although he lived in