Literary Results of My Acquaintance with Mr Huth--The New
_Bibliography_ in Progress, and the 1867 Book gradually
superseded--Some Other Literary Acquaintances--George Daniel--John
Payne Collier and Frederic Ouvry, His Son-in-Law--The Millers of
Craigentinny--'Inch-rule' Miller--He purchases at the Heber Sale by
Cartloads--My Efforts to procure Particulars of all the Rare Books at
Britwell--I let Mr Christie-Miller have One or Two Items--An
Anecdote--Mr Miller's London House formerly Samuel Rogers's--His
Son--Where They are all buried--The Rev. Thomas Corser--His Fine
Library--What It cost and what It fetched--His Difficulties in Forming
It--Whither Much of It went--My Exploits at the Sale--Description of
the House where the Books were kept--Mr Corser's Peculiar Interest in
My Eyes--His Personal Character--The Sad Change in the Book Market
since Corser's Day--Mr Samuel Sanders--A Curious Incident--Mr Cosens,
Mr Turner and Mr Lawrence--Their Characteristics--Some Account of Mr
Cosens as He gave It to Me--His Line of Collecting--My Assistance
requested--A Few of His Principal Acquisitions and Their Subsequent
Fortunes--Frederic Locker--His Idiosyncrasies--His Want of
Judgment--His _Confidences_.
My bibliographical pursuits and exigencies, setting aside my concurrent
literary ventures, themselves sufficiently numerous and onerous to have
employed a person of average application, had the inevitable effect of
making me more or less intimately known to most of the persons who in my
time have studied or possessed books. My commerce was with the holders as
well as with the buyers and sellers of them. On the one hand I had to face
the problem of Life, and on the other that of Title-taking. Of my purely
literary work, which is not unknown to a few, I may say that the
proportion of _pot-boilers_ is not unreasonably large; it might have been
larger, had I not chosen as an alternative to turn to account my
conversance with old books as a _moyen de parvenir_, but during all the
term of my relationship with Mr Huth I was incessantly engaged in storing
up notes on the volumes, which came and which went, against an opportunity
for publication. That aim and my contributions to literature, such as the
_Venetian History_, the Warton, the Dodsley, the Blount's _Tenures_,
united to constitute my compensation for the rather distasteful ordeal of
espousing the commercial side. The bibliographical toil was enormous, for
the few hundreds of articles, which Mr Huth and others acquired, were a
mere handful in comparison with the mass which I gradually digested into
my system, and reduced to form and method.
I judge it to be the most intelligible plan, with a view to tracing my
somewhat peculiar and anomalous career in connection with books, china,
coins and other objects of general interest, to proceed, after furnishing
the previous sketch of Mr Huth and my participation in his experiences as
a collector, with some account of certain other individuals who influenced
me and proved more or less valuable as instruments for carrying out my
central and cardinal policy.
George Daniel of Canonbury and John Payne Collier were practically before
my time; but I corresponded with the latter on literary subjects, and
Daniel I occasionally met in the street or in the sale-room. With
Collier's relative, Frederic Ouvry the solicitor, I had some transactions;
but I found him an undecided and capricious sort of person, who had
evidently imbibed from Collier a tincture of feeling for the older
literature without having any solid convictions of his own. The best part
of his library consisted of books which he had purchased from his
connexion by marriage, and which the latter had obtained more or less
accidentally in the course of his prolonged career. Ouvry, however, did
not get all. For in a note to myself, Collier expressly says that his
unique copy of Constable's _Diana_, 1592, was exchanged by him with Heber
for 'books he more wanted.' It was he who lent me the fragment of _Adam
Bel_, _Clym of the Clough_ and _William of Cloudisle_, more ancient and
correct than Copland's text in the British Museum, for my _Early Popular
Poetry_, 1864, before I met with the second and yet more curious and
valuable one of 1536 in the hands of the late Mr Henry Bradshaw, which I
collated for my _Early Popular Poetry of Scotland and the Northern
Border_, 1896.
The name most directly and intimately associated with that of Mr Heber, in
a bibliographical sense, is that of Mr William Henry Miller of
Craigentinny, near Edinburgh, a gentleman who amassed a fortune by
occupations outside his profession as a solicitor, and whom we find
bidding at least as early as 1819 for books of price against all comers.
Mr Miller made it his speciality to take only the finest and tallest
copies, and he thence gained the sobriquet of _Inch-rule_ or _Measure_
Miller, because he invariably carried with him the means of comparing the
height of any book with which he met against his own; and if the new one
had a superior altitude, out went the shorter specimen to make room for
the more Millerian example. At the Heber sale, this gentleman saw his
opportunity, and used it well. The bibliophobia had set in; prices were
depressed, so far as the early English poetry was concerned, and Thorpe
the bookseller, under his instructions, swept the field--the Drama, the
Classics, and the Miscellanea he left to others. Nearly the whole of the
rarities in that particular division, set forth in the second, fourth,
sixth and eighth parts of the catalogue, fell to Mr Miller; and of many no
duplicates have since occurred. The purchaser must have laid out
thousands, and have added to his collection positive cartloads.
He died in 1849. Of his successor, Mr Samuel Christy, the hatter of
Piccadilly, who assumed the name of Christie-Miller, I saw comparatively
little; but I used to hear odd things about him from David Laing and from
Riviere the bookbinder. In my ardour for organising my own _Bibliography_
on an enlarged and exhaustive footing, I jesuitically availed myself of
the periodical consignments of books to Riviere for binding; and, with the
leave of the latter, took notes of everything in his hands. Mr
Christie-Miller himself vouchsafed me a certain amount of information,
and from David Laing I derived many other particulars about the Britwell
library, so that with these channels of help and light, and others in the
shape of occurrences of duplicate copies of recent years, I flatter myself
that there is very little in that rather jealously-guarded repository
which I have not put on record in print or in MS.
I have been guilty of extending the Miller library only in two or three
instances. The late proprietor coveted more than one volume which he saw
in my possession; but I always gave Mr Huth the preference, and as a rule
that gentleman never let a good thing go begging. I must relate an amusing
episode, which happened in connection with Mr Christie-Miller about 1872.
I had called at John Pearson's in York Street, and found him from home;
but I waited for him on the doorstep, and presently he arrived with two
folio volumes under his arm. I asked him what he had got there. 'Why,'
said he, 'two lots which were sold separately to-day at Sotheby's as "Old
Newspapers, etc."' And he handed them to me, as I stood by him outside his
shop. I glanced at the contents, and inquired how much he expected for
his purchase. He said, 'If you will take the volumes now as they are,
twelve guineas.' I did. Riviere broke them up, bound the seventy
black-letter ballads in a volume, which I sold to Mr Miller for £42, and
returned me the residue, a collection of penny _Garlands_, which went to
the British Museum, and some rubbish, which dropped into my waste-paper
basket.
Christie-Miller owned the house in St James's Place which had once been
classic ground as the residence of Samuel Rogers. I went there two or
three times, and met his (Miller's) wife and son. The latter was a mild
youth, who had been educated at high-class schools and a university, and
who had (like his father) an imperfect acquaintance not only with
literature but with grammar. He was phenomenally ignorant and dull, like
his parent. All three at present lie seventy feet beneath the ground, near
Holyrood, where a monument has been erected to their memory. If the
ferocious Socialist hereafter disinters the remains of haughty and
purse-proud book-collectors of former times, he will probably not dig down
low enough to find the bones of the Millers.
A personage far more in sympathy with Mr Heber was the Reverend Thomas
Corser, of Stand, near Manchester, whose acquaintance it was my honour to
enjoy from about 1862 to the time of his death. I have taken occasion
elsewhere to explain how it was that Mr Corser and myself were bound
together in a measure by a community of interest apart from books. While
he was as zealous and genuine an enthusiast as Heber, and regarded his
acquisitions as something better than shelf-furniture, he was in one
important respect totally different from his great predecessor who, as a
man of large fortune, had only to decide on purchases and to refer the
vendors to his bankers. Mr Corser, on the contrary, was a man of very
limited resources, and found it a difficult task now and then to keep pace
with the _desiderata_ submitted to his notice by the booksellers and
auctioneers. I know as a fact that at the Bright sale in 1845, which must
have marked a comparatively early stage in his bibliographical career, he
was obliged to pay five per cent to the agent (Thorpe or Rodd), who bought
for him; and his bill was not far from £1000. Altogether his fine and
interesting library cost him, as he told me, £9000; and it realised about
£20,000, chiefly owing to the competition of the British Museum, Mr Huth,
and Mr Miller. The national collection made a splendid haul--far better
than it would have done, had Mr Huth been better advised. As it was, I
secured at my own risk a large number of lots at very high prices, which
his agent Lilly had overlooked, or did not duly appreciate. I bought
personally, as well as through F. S. Ellis, to the value altogether of
£2000 or £3000, and Ellis subsequently congratulated me on my dexterity in
giving my commissions to him, and thus removing one of my most formidable
competitors. He instanced one lot, which thus went to him at 2s., and for
which he would have given £3, 3s.
The Rectory at Stand was a small, detached house near the church, and had
no suitable accommodation for such an assemblage of treasures as Mr Corser
gradually accumulated within its walls. Nearly all the bedrooms, as well
as reception-rooms, had book-cases or cupboards crammed with volumes. I
paid repeated visits here, and enjoyed the free range of everything which
I desired to examine, provided that my excellent friend could put his
hand on it. He had to light a candle on one occasion to hunt for a Caxton
in a bedroom cupboard; and latterly, when he was disabled by paralysis,
poor fellow! and unable to help me, I had to search as best I could for
this or that book or tract, of which very possibly no second copy was to
be seen anywhere in the whole world except in that secluded parsonage.
I cherish, with a gratification never to be lessened or forgotten, the
memory of this delightful intercourse with one whose people had known my
people in the days gone by, and who, besides being a collector of old
books, had made himself a master, like Heber, of the contents; and who, as
a younger man, enjoyed the genteel recreation of angling, and in his
maturer life relished good wine and good talk. When I think of the Rector
of Stand, and look at most of the circle which at present constitutes the
book-collecting world, and governs the market, I perceive the difference
and the fall! And just at this moment the Almighty-Dollar type rules the
roost, and makes its caterers and agents look big and reckless at sales,
and the disciples of the old-fashioned school, to which Mr Corser
belonged, button up their pockets and retire.
One of the last men who collected books for their own sake, and not from
mere ostentation and purse-pride, was the late Mr Samuel Sanders, who, as
he informed me, had been a buyer from his youth, and who bequeathed his
extensive collections to one of the Colleges. I knew him very slightly.
But, not long before his death, I was in the room at Sotheby's and
expressed to a stranger my regret at having missed the day before an
unique Wynkyn de Worde, of which I lacked the true particulars. It was Mr
Sanders, and he apprised me that he was the purchaser through Mr Quaritch,
and would bring up the volume for my inspection next day, which he
accordingly did.
My gallery of bibliographical acquaintances is not deficient in variety.
During a more or less brief period, I saw a good deal from time to time of
Mr F. W. Cosens, Mr R. S. Turner and Mr Edwin Lawrence. Of the two latter
I have little more to say than I have noted down in another publication. I
used to meet Mr Turner at Mr Huth's. His line of collecting was, on the
whole, a little outside my speciality or specialities, and Mr Lawrence was
mainly associated in my mind as a member of a literary club to which I
sometimes went as my father's guest. He was a subscriber to some of my
literary enterprises, and I thence learned that he was F.S.A., as those
letters accompanied his signature not only in his communications, but in
his cheques. He was, like Turner, an ill-hung man; but I have understood
that he was very kind and generous, and I know that he was a first-rate
judge (like Turner again) of what was the right article, both in books and
in other cognate matters.
Mr Cosens was altogether different. He was self-educated and self-helped.
His practical conversance with literary affairs was almost _nil_; but he
was willing to take a good deal on credit, and had a natural leaning
toward letters and art. He introduced himself to me, as Lawrence indeed
had done, and invited me to assist him in a scheme which he had rather
vaguely formed for collecting together the MSS. remains of our early poets
and verse-writers. I was instrumental in procuring for him a tolerably
voluminous body of this sort of material, as Mr Huth was indifferent to
it, and among much that was of inferior account, from the incessant
absorption of valuable MSS. by public libraries, Mr Cosens succeeded in
obtaining a fair number of interesting and even important items,
particularly an ancient codex on vellum of the _Prick of Conscience_, and
a volume of Elizabethan lyrics, which I bought at an auction, unbound, and
for which Mr Christie-Miller gave me some Roman parchment to enable
Riviere to clothe it in a becoming style. This book contained _Amoris
Lachrymæ_ and other poems by Nicholas Breton, printed in his _Bower of
Delights_, 1591. Boone valued it at £60, but I gave £16 under the hammer,
and I thought £45, under the circumstances, not extravagant. Its
subsequent history is curious enough. When the Cosens MSS. were sold by
Sotheby, the cataloguing was so well done that what I had got for £16 I
had knocked down to me for as many shillings, and the lot is now, I
believe, in Great Russell Street. Again, thanks to the auctioneer's clever
manipulation, the old vellum MS. bought at the Corser sale by Ellis for
£70, sold by him to me for £105, and by me to Cosens for £157, 10s., fell
to me at £24. It has found its probably final resting-place in the
Bodleian.
Frederick Locker, or, as he subsequently became, Locker-Lampson, was a
gentleman to whose bibliographical side I have devoted a fair share of
space in the _Four Generations of a Literary Family_. During a few years,
and prior to the preparation and issue of his privately-printed catalogue,
I saw a good deal of him, and he became the channel for some of my
acquisitions which Mr Huth did not require, or when the latter was in a
less eager humour for buying.
Locker was very partial to certain books. He aimed at getting all four
editions of Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_, and he succeeded. Over the
first one of 1602 he made a tactical blunder by letting one bookseller
understand that he wanted the volume when it accidentally occurred, and
giving his commission to another. It was a very poor copy indeed, and cost
him £60, plus ten per cent. That of 1611 came to him dear enough, too. I
had changed Mr Huth's copy, which was not satisfactory, for a beautiful
one in the original vellum wrapper, and had the duplicate at £6. I sold
it to Ellis for £12, and he charged Locker £21. The latter upbraided me,
who had no knowledge of his views, with making him pay £9 more than was
necessary! He always struck me as a most unfortunate purchaser; and there
was about him a flaccidity, which made him appear inconsistent and
insincere. He gave an exorbitant price for a most wretched imperfect copy
of Barnfield's Poems, 1598, and he actually paid highly for two copies of
_England's Helicon_, 1600, both wanting the last leaf, and both otherwise
indifferent. Surely these old books, to be interesting and desirable,
should be fine and complete. The mere text, where there is no extrinsic
feature, such as a signature or a bookplate, you can have in a five
shilling or a fivepenny re-issue. Yet Locker found some one to sing the
praises of the Rowfant books in strains--well, significant of a _quid pro
quo_ for recent experience of friendly hospitality.
This gentleman, however, was in his best days as a collector a genuine
enthusiast, and might have been occasionally seen at an early hour walking
up and down on the pavement, awaiting the arrival of some bookseller, in
whose brand-new catalogue had appeared a nugget to his taste. This phase
of the book-fancier's career, by the way, has its curious side. Such a
thing has been known as for the publisher of a list of old books to lard
and season it with a few excruciating rarities which had yet to be
acquired, and to bring to his door fasting all the competitors for such
matters within a radius or telegrams from the more remote--with a common
result.
Locker's _Confidences_, which he made almost a parade, in referring to
their future appearance, in characterising as a publication of absolute
necessity posthumous, was, if one may compare small things with great, as
perfect a disappointment as the Talleyrand _Memoirs_, so anxiously looked
for, and at last printed, only to create a murmur of surprise at the
almost total absence of interest and point. The contents of the Locker
volume might have been imparted to the public with the most complete
immunity from consequences in the writer's life-time--they are
phenomenally mild and neutral. From my personal impression of the
distinguished individuals with whom the author of _London Lyrics_ was
connected or associated, I should not have dreamed of him so thoroughly
missing the mark, and leaving us a legacy so flat and commonplace.