I survey the Ground before I start--I contemplate a New British
Bibliography--Richard Heber--His Extraordinary Acquirements--His Vast
Library--His Manuscript Notes in the Books--A High Estimate of Heber
as a Scholar and a Reader--He eclipses all Other Collectors at Home
and Abroad--A Sample or so of His Flyleaf Memoranda--A Few very
Interesting Books noticed--A _Historiette_--Anecdotes of Some Bargains
and Discoveries by Him and His Contemporaries--The _Phoenix Nest_ at
Sion College--Marlowe's _Dido_--Mystery connected with the Library at
Lee Priory--The Oldest Collections of English Plays--A Little Note
about Lovelace--Heber's Generosity as a Lender--His Kindness to
Dyce--Fate of His Rarest Books--How He obtained some of Them--The
Daniel Ballads and Their True History--Result of a Study of _Heber's
Catalogue_ and other Sources of Knowledge--The _Handbook_ appears--Mr
Frederick Harrison and Sir Walter Besant pay Me Compliments.
I soon learned to divide into two camps, as it were, the authorities
available to a student of our earlier literature. There were books like
those of Dibdin, Brydges, Park, Beloe, Hartshorne and Lowndes, and the
auction catalogues, on the one hand, and on the other there were Herbert's
_Ames_, Ritson's _Bibliographia Poetica_, and Collier's _Bibliographical
Catalogue_, to be reinforced presently by Corser's _Collectanea
Anglo-poetica_. These two classes were widely different and immensely
unequal. I began by drawing a line of distinction, and by depending for my
statements on the second group and type rather than the first. But as I
discerned by degrees the difference in too many instances between the
books themselves and the account of them in works of reference, and as I
studied more and more, at my leisure from other employments, the Heber and
a few more capital catalogues, revealing to me the imperfections in the
treatment of the whole subject, I commenced, just in the same way as I had
done in the case of Venice, revolving in my thought the practicability of
improving our bibliographical system, and placing it on a broader and
sounder basis.
The London Library copy of the _Heber Catalogue_ bears unmistakeable
traces of my industrious manipulation in years gone by. I conceived a
strong regard for that extraordinary, that unique collection and its
accomplished owner. Of his private history I have heard certain anecdotes,
which indicate that his life was not a very happy one, nor the end of it
very comfortable; but as a scholar, as a bibliographer, and as a
benefactor to the cause which he so zealously espoused and on which he
lavished a noble fortune, he was a man to whose equal I am unable to
refer.
I turn again and again to his sale catalogue, and amid much that is dry
and monotonous enough I am never weary of perusing the notes, chiefly from
his own pen, where he places on permanent record the circumstances, often
romantic and fascinating, under which he gained possession of this or that
volume. Remarks or memoranda by Mr Payne Collier and others are
interspersed; but the interest seems to centre in those of the possessor,
which make his personality agreeably conspicuous, and have always struck
me as elevating him above the ordinary standard as a collector, if not as
entitling him to the highest rank among those of this or any other
country. For when we compare his stupendous accumulations of literary
memorials of all ages and regions, in print and in manuscript, with those
of Harley, Grenville, Miller, Beckford, Spencer, Huth and others, and then
set side by side his conversance with the subject-matter in so many
cases, and the purely amateurish feeling and grasp of his predecessors,
contemporaries, and successors in a vast preponderance of instances, how
can we fail to perceive, and forbear to acknowledge, his claim to the
first place? I have mentioned elsewhere that Heber was partly instrumental
in saving the library of George III. from being sold by the Prince Regent
to the Czar.
The _Bibliotheca Heberiana_, in thirteen parts, is a work which it is
impossible to open at any page without encountering some point of interest
or instruction; but undoubtedly the second, fourth and eighth portions
contain the notices and information likely to be most attractive to
English and English-speaking persons, and it entered not immaterially into
my earlier life to study and utilise what I found here. No class of
anecdote can be more enduringly valuable in the eyes of the bibliophile
than those with which the work under consideration is so unstintingly
enriched, and I may not be blamed for exemplifying and justifying by some
typical specimens my estimate of Heber's scholarship and energy. If there
is a less agreeable side to the question, it is the feeling of regret, in
examining the catalogue, that he should not have restricted himself to
some range, instead of embracing the entire world of letters, instead of
aiming at centralising universality. In Heber book-collecting was not a
taste, but a voracious passion. His incomparable library, to a private
individual deficient, as he was, in method and arrangement, was of
indifferent value; as a public one, if he had chosen to dedicate it to
that object, it would have proved a splendid monument to his name for all
time, especially if the very numerous duplicates had been exchanged for
remaining _desiderata_.
My jottings in corroboration of my view are, however, almost exclusively
derived from those sections of the catalogue devoted to an account of the
early English literature, in which the collection was so marvellously
rich. Since this is merely a sort of introductory feature in my little
undertaking, and I was desirous of affording some samples of one of my
bibliographical primers, I do not deal with technical detail, but limit
myself to literary _adversaria_, and to Heber's own personal remarks about
his possessions, as distinguished from those of the compilers of the
catalogue.
Under 'Bevis of Hampton,' Heber notes, 'For an account of the Romance of
Bevis see Ritson's _Dissertation_, prefixed to his _Metrical Romances_,'
and he copies out what is found there. To his copy of the edition of
_Boethius_ in English, printed at the exempt Monastery of Tavistock in
1525, he appends a long memorandum, stating that he had bought it at
Forster's sale in 1806 for £7, 17s. 6d., imperfect and ill-bound, and had
afterward completed it from a second, which had belonged to Ratcliff and
Gough. He refers us to Robert of Gloucester, the _Harleian Catalogue_, and
other authorities, states that Lord Bute gave £17, in 1798, for Mason's
copy, and estimates his own at about £50. It fetched £63. It might now be
worth £250.
On Churchyard's _Discourse of the Queenes Maiesties Entertainment in
Suffolk and Norfolk_, there is this commentary: 'This must have been
printed in 1577-8, because Frobisher returned from his last journey while
this book was printing. I have another copy of this tract, corresponding
minutely throughout with the present, except in the dedication.... The
Address to the Reader differs also, but merely in the Typography.' Of
Dekker's _Bellman of London_, 1608, he says, 'I have compared this edition
with that of 1612, which corresponds exactly, except that six pages of
introductory matter are prefixed, and four pages of canting terms are
subjoined, entitled "Operis Peroratio."' To the 'O Per Se O' of the same
writer he has attached a still more elaborate account of the readings of
various impressions. He appears to have compared all the editions in his
hands with remarkable attention and interest.
When we come to Gascoigne's _Posies_, 1575, there is a historiette which
seems well deserving of reproduction: 'This interesting copy of G.
Gascoigne's Poems, diligently read and copiously be-noted by his
contemporary, Gabriel Harvey, came from the ancient and curious Library of
the Parkers of Browsholme, hereditary bow-bearers of Bolland forest under
the Dukes of Buccleuch. In the first instance, my friend, Thomas Lyster
Parker, merely proposed to arrange, beautify and enlarge the family
collection, for which purpose he called in Ford the bookseller to his
assistance, who gave the greater part of the volumes new Manchester
liveries instead of their old, time-worn coats, in which they had
weathered centuries under the domicile of their protectors. Subsequent
events induced Mr P. to dispose of the whole; a few of the Caxtons were
distributed in London to Lord Spencer and others at considerable prices;
but the bulk was sold to Ford, from whom I purchased the present and
several more. The Manchester shears have, I fear, somewhat abridged the
margins. I prize the volume as no ordinary rarity--it affords a curious
average sample of the manner in which G. H. recorded his studies in the
margins of his books, his neat handwriting, his various learning, his
quaintness, his pedantry, and above all his self-satisfied perseverance.'
Gascoigne's Works, 1587, Heber made a receptacle for collations with other
texts, and I may be pardoned for breaking through my own rule by appending
a remark by a former owner, George Steevens, 'This volume of Gascoigne's
Works was bought for £1, 1s. at Mr Mallet's, _alias_ Mallock's, _alias_
M'Gregor's sale, March 14, 1766. He was the only Scotchman who died in my
memory unlamented by an individual of his own nation.
On the flyleaf of Googe's _Eglogs_, 1563, is a composite note by Steevens,
Heber and the cataloguer. Heber, alluding to Steevens's remarks, says, 'Mr
Steevens had never looked into Thomas Rawlinson's cat., part vii., sold at
London House, March 1726, where a copy occurs (perhaps indeed the present
one) among the Poetæ in 8vo. See also Ballard's cat. of Mr T. Britton,
Small-coal man, 1714-15, No. 353.' The _Temple of Glass_, by Lydgate,
evoked the following: 'I believe there are three editions of this
tract--I. The present in Caxton's types; II. An edition by Wynkyn de
Worde; III. An edition by Berthelet, of which there was a copy in
Pearson's collection, bought by Malone, and left by him to Bindley, at
whose sale it was bought by James Boswell.' Just below occurs the entry of
Berthelet's impression, with a memorandum by Boswell, 'The price, £4, 18s.
0d., which this volume had been previously sold for, is marked above. On
the 21st of Jan., 1819, I purchased it for £40, 10s.!!!' But as it had
been left as a legacy by Mr Malone to Mr Bindley, at whose sale I bought
it, I scarcely know how to estimate the _pretium affectionis_ of a book
which was at once a memorial of two such dear and respected friends. At
Heber's sale the copy fetched £14.
A singular assemblage of _Penny Merriments_, published between 1621 and
1675 (Heber Cat. iv., 1743) bears this interesting note of _provenance_,
'This curious collection belonged originally to Narcissus Luttrell, and
passed with the rest of his valuable Library to Mr Edward Wynne of
Chelsea, on whose decease it was sold by auction at Leigh & Sotheby's,
March, 1786 (see cat., lot 23). Mr Baynes was the purchaser for £3, 8s.
0d., and bequeathed the poetical and romantic portion of his Library to Mr
Ritson, at whose sale I bought it.'
We enter on a different atmosphere and line of culture, when we scan
Heber's note on a small metrical tract by 'Playne Piers' on the clergy,
printed secretly in the time of Henry VIII., and mis-described by some
authorities as in prose: 'If Maunsell had examined it with due attention,
he must have perceived that a large portion of the text (though not the
whole) is written in verse, and runs into loosely-accentuated rhyming
stanzas and couplets. To say the truth, I am more than half-disposed to
ascribe the authorship to the famous W. Roy, of whose poem, _Rede me and
be not wroth_, the present composition reminds me both in sentiment and
measure. It is worthy of remark that G. Steevens's copy of the first
edition of that poem (now in my possession) is bound exactly uniform, and
being of precisely the same dimensions, they probably were united in one
cover till he separated them. It is plain that he attached equal and
considerable importance to both, having bestowed on each his best russia
binding, with his initials on the sides, and inscribed his autograph on
the back of title and at the foot of the last leaf--infallible signs of
his especial favour.'
In the case of a Caxton of extraordinary beauty, the _Hoole Lyf of Jason_,
Heber gives an account of the copies known to him, and concludes that his
own, in the original binding of oak covered with calf, and with many rough
leaves, is the finest. It had been Watson Taylor's. Another very beautiful
one occurred at the Selsey sale in 1871, and fetched £670, Mr Walford
desiring to see how far Mr Quaritch would go and seeing accordingly. He
was fortunate enough, however, to have it taken off his hands by Mr
Ellis, who sold it to an American, I believe, for £800.
Heber, as we all know, was a general scholar, and was at home in foreign
no less than in English books. He observes of a very early _Roman de la
Rose_: 'This Edition is executed in the Characters of Ulric Gering, the
earliest Parisian Printer, and is very scarce. There is said to be a copy
in the Public Library at Lyons. See Delandine's catalogue. Gering
exercised his art from 1470 to 1520, in which year he died. The present is
neither one of the earliest nor latest efforts of his press--perhaps about
1480. It has signatures, but neither catchwords nor numerals. It has also
many grotesque woodcuts. The execution and presswork very clear and
beautiful.'
Of the romantic accident which threw Robinson's _Golden Mirrour_, 1589,
into Heber's hands, I give an account in the Handbook, where I also shew
that the author belonged to Alton in Cheshire. Briefly, Rodd the
bookseller found the volume of Elizabethan tracts, this included, at a
marine store dealer's on Saffron Hill about 1830, and being put into the
scales it was found to be worth _fourpence threefarthings_. Rodd sold it
to Heber for £50. It was a glorious haul, yet not so good as that of
Warton the historian, who picked off a broker's board at Salisbury for
sixpence the 1596 edition of _Venus and Adonis_, bound up with several
other pieces of equal or even greater rarity. Those were halcyon days,
were they not? But how much the cost governs the appreciation! What comes
to us cheap, because no one else wants it, we hold cheap, and that is the
history of many of the early bargains.
The _Phoenix Nest_, 1593, contains the ensuing flyleaf matter: 'I gave Mr
Isaac Reed five Guineas for this very scarce book in the summer of
1802.--R. H....' Heber enters into very careful detail as to the authors
of the several poems, and where some of them appear in other books. The
copy was uncut, and sold at his sale for £31, 10s. I accidentally
discovered another very fine one at Sion College, bound up at the end of a
common volume, and pointed it out to the librarian, the Reverend Mr
Milman, who did not seem to be very strongly impressed by the
communication. Had it been a sermon worth twopence, he might have felt
otherwise.
Of _Pierceforest_, of which he possessed the edition by Giles Gourmont,
1531-2, in folio, Heber speaks as follows: 'This is a Romance of great
Character, value and merit. Mr Warton, upon whatever authority, asserts it
to have been originally written in verse about 1220, and not till many
years afterwards translated into prose, an assertion which cannot be
confirmed; no MS. of any Metrical Romance under that title appearing to be
anywhere extant, and indeed it is probable that he confounded
_Pierceforest_ with _Perceval_. It is, however, believed to be one of the
oldest prose Romances extant, and is mentioned by Caxton in his _Book of
the Ordre of Chyvalry_.'
A volume by Spenser receives this perhaps somewhat out-of-date notice; but
it demonstrates the habit of Heber in regard to all classes of works of
importance in his possession: 'This is the first edition of Spenser's
_Shepheard's Calendar_, and _of extraordinary rarity, not to be found in
the most distinguished libraries_. Mr Todd was obliged to take a journey
to Cambridge to obtain a sight of a copy. The subsequent editions in 4to
are rare and valuable, but far less so than the present....'
We have to go back a long way, and cross the sea, before we reach the
_patria_ of the next sample, the _Historia Naturalis_ of Pliny, printed by
Jenson in 1469, in rich old blue morocco, from the library of Camus de
Limari, at whose sale in 1783 it fetched 3000 livres. Heber has inscribed
a MS. note on the flyleaf to this effect. The book sold at his sale for
£31, 10s.
We return home at the next specimen, which is Gosson's _Playes Confuted in
Five Actions_ in the same volume with Lodge's _Reply to Gosson_, and a
third tract relating to the theatre. Mr Heber notes: 'The present vol.
contains only 3 out of a remarkably curious collection of 8 pieces, bound
together soon after the publication of the latest, somewhere about 1580.
This may be ascertained by the antiquity of the handwriting, which exactly
records them all, on the reverse of the title-page of _Playes Confuted_.
So late as 1781 they all remained together in Mr Beauclerc's collection
(see cat., 4137), with the exception of Gascoigne's _Delicate Diet for
Drunkards_. They seem afterwards to have passed into Mr Nassau's library,
who divided them into 5 different vols., which are now all in my
possession.
'As to Gascoigne's _Delicate Diet_, it is, I apprehend, the same copy
contained in G. Steevens's collection of Gascoigne's Works, now in my
possession--in fact, no other is known.' It was on that account,
presumably, that the copy sold at Heber's sale for £27, 16s. 6d.
The history of Marlowe's _Dido_, 1594, must not be repeated here, as it is
already printed in the _Handbook_. Nobody has ever seen the elegy by Nash
on Marlowe, mentioned by Warton. The copy of _Dido_ given by Isaac Reed to
George Steevens, and bought at Steevens's sale in 1800 by Sir Egerton
Brydges, was transferred by the latter to Heber, at whose sale it produced
£39. The Duke of Devonshire's, which had previously been Kemble's, cost
Henderson the actor _fourpence_.
A good deal of mystery surrounds the Lee Priory collection, which seems to
have at one time contained many dramatic rarities of the first order,
most, if not all, of which eventually found their way to Heber. Henry
Oxenden of Barham, near Canterbury, is known to have owned in 1647 an
extraordinary assemblage of old English plays, bound together in six
volumes, and comprising the _Taming of a Shrew_ (not Shakespear's), 1594,
_Ralph Roister Doister_, _Hamlet_ (1603), and other precious remains. What
became of them, there is no record; but it has sometimes occurred to me
that they might have gone to Lee Priory. At Lord Mostyn's, at Gloddaeth in
Carnarvonshire, there is a second series of volumes; but of the contents I
have no personal knowledge. To return to the Heber _Dido_ for a moment, it
may be permissible to transcribe Steevens's note: 'This copy was given me
by Mr Reed. Such liberality in a collector of Old Plays is at least as
rare as the rarest of our dramatic pieces.--G. S.'
Now and again, of course, Heber is misinformed, or his information has
been superseded, as where he alludes to Shakespear's Henry the Fourth,
1608, as a first-rate rarity. His copy sold for £12, 12s. In the note
about it he takes occasion to mention that Steevens bought many of the
books of the Rev. J. Bowle, whom Gifford called 'the stupidest of
two-legged creatures,' but who had a very curious library, of White.
But Heber's insight into the contents and merits of his books is
admirable. In his copy of Tatham's _Ostella_, 1650, he draws our attention
to the author's Ode to Lovelace on his journey into Holland, and adds,
'It must have been written before his marriage. The Prologue on the
removal of the Cockpit has not been hitherto noticed, and on the next page
is a mention of a Play called "The Whisperer; or, what you please," of
which this is the only record.'
These extracts might be indefinitely extended; but in a volume not
intended for merely bibliographical purposes the foregoing citations may
suffice to establish Heber's intelligent and painstaking treatment of his
books and to explain the stress which I laid on his _Catalogue_ in my
younger days as one of the leading resources in an attempt to remodel, on
an improved and enlarged plan, our national stores.
So long as the original gatherer lived, his books were at the service of
all who approached him with a legitimate aim, and more particularly at
that of the scholar and the editor. We repeatedly hear from Mr Dyce how
greatly he was indebted to Heber for the means of completing his texts of
the early dramatists and poets, of whose works the original copies were
often nowhere else to be found. Heber was the warm friend and helper of
the men of letters of his time, and deserves to be classed among them.
Many of his rarest volumes unfortunately passed into hands where they
still remain, and where they are not so readily available. I am thinking
of the Britwell and other closed private libraries, of which the
proprietors are indifferent to literature or jealous of intrusion. The
zealous bibliographer blesses them both, and prays for the music of the
hammer.
A careful survey of the _Heber Catalogue_ leads to the conclusion, from
the immense number of rarities there offered for sale for the first time,
that the owner succeeded in obtaining a notable proportion of his early
books direct from the trade or from private sources by that most powerful
of inducements--the known willingness to pay promptly and well for
everything brought to him. The note to Thorpe the bookseller, enclosing an
order on his bankers for £200 for the Ballads, of which the Daniel volume
was merely a selection, is still extant; the money seems to have reached
Thorpe's hands before the purchase left them, in consequence of Heber
being from home; even he speaks there of being ashamed of himself for his
extravagance, and he asks the vendor whether it was the inheritance of
the Stationers' Company. He was not aware that the lot came from
Helmingham Hall through Fitch of Ipswich, and that it had been milked by
Daniel.
My association with the London Library and gradual contact with the
British Museum, with collectors, and with the book trade, tended to
stimulate a natural affection for old books, while it gradually and, at
first, unconsciously gave to the movement a bibliographical and commercial
direction. I conceived in my mind, apart from any collateral matters, a
grand literary scheme. I saw before me all that former men, Heber
included, had achieved toward a BRITISH BIBLIOGRAPHY; and I determined to
combine and collate the whole, and make it the nucleus of a New Work. The
result was the appearance in 1867 of the _Handbook of Early English
Literature_.
I made not only the British Museum, and the Oxford and Cambridge
libraries, but Sion College, South Kensington, and Lambeth, pay me toll. I
did not at first attend personally at Lambeth; but the present Bishop of
Oxford, who was then librarian, copied such titles as I indicated to him,
and his Lordship, I have to say, was very accurate, and wrote a very
clear hand. I always found Dr Stubbs extremely kind and obliging in this
way. Maitland was before my time.
I did not consider at the time that I had much ground for being ashamed of
this performance; it was undeniably a long advance on my precursors; that
I had a great deal to learn and unlearn was an experience to be gained by
degrees, and at more or less casual opportunities; and it will become
necessary to enter into some particulars of the circumstances which led
and enabled me to undo piecemeal my maiden essay, and to build up from the
ruins such a colossal structure as, on its near completion, no other
civilised country can boast of possessing.
Thirty years have passed away. The Handbook has become only one of a
series.
In the _Hazlitt Memoirs_ I judged it to be high time to expose the
ingenious strategy of the Rev. Canon Ainger and Mr Alexander Ireland in
respect to my Lamb and Hazlitt labours. I have been, as a rule, fairly
reticent and forbearing in these cases, and have refrained from appealing
to the press. But I procured the insertion in two journals of protests
against the assumption of Mr Frederic Harrison that a bibliography of
English history was a novel project, and the apparent claim of Sir Walter
Besant, as I infer from a paragraph in the _Globe_, to the rectification
of the Whittington legend. I ought to be pleased that so illustrious a
personage as Sir Walter thinks so humble an one as myself worth such
flattering recognition. Peradventure, if I should reproduce my work, I
shall be charged with having borrowed my statements from a great author
and scholar.