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BOOK-COLLECTOR
A General Survey of the Pursuit and of those who
have engaged in it at Home and Abroad from
the Earliest Period to the Present Time
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIBRARIES
AND ANECDOTES OF THEIR FOUNDERS OR OWNERS
AND REMARKS ON BOOKBINDING AND ON
SPECIAL COPIES OF BOOKS
BY
W. CAREW HAZLITT
JOHN GRANT
LONDON
1904
[Illustration: Key to the Characters in the 'Field-day at Sotheby's.']
1 Mr. G. S. Snowden 11 Lord Brabourne 21 Mr. Dykes Campbell
2 Mr. E. Daniell 12 Mr. W. Ward 22 Palmer's boy
3 Mr. Railton 13 Mr. Leighton 23 Dr. Neligan
4 Mr. J. Rimell 14 Mr. E. W. Stibbs 24 Mr. C. Hindley
5 Mr. E. G. Hodge 15 Mr. H. Sotheran 25 Earl of Warwick
6 Mr. J. Toovey 16 Mr. Westell 26 Mr. Molini
7 Mr. B. Quaritch 17 Mr. Walford 27 Mr. H. Stevens
8 Mr. G. J. Ellis 18 Henry 28 Mr. F. Locker-Sampson
9 Mr. J. Roche 19 Mr. Dobell 29 Mr. E. Walford
10 Mr. Reeves 20 Mr. Robson
[Illustration: BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS.
FROM THE ORIGINAL WASH DRAWING BY H.M. PAGET IN
POSSESSION OF MESS^RS SOTHEBY, WILKINSON & HODGE, LONDON.
CARL HENTSCHEL PH. SC.]
PREFACE
SEVERAL monographs by contemporary scholars on the inexhaustible theme
of Book-Collecting have made their appearance during the last twenty
years. All such undertakings have more or less their independent value
and merit from the fact that each is apt to reflect and preserve the
special experiences and predilections of the immediate author; and so
it happens in the present case. A succession of Essays on the same
subject is bound to traverse the same ground, yet no two of them,
perhaps, work from the same seeing point, and there may be beyond the
topic substantially little in common between them and the rest of the
literature, which has steadily accumulated round this attractive and
fruitful subject for bookman and artist.
During a very long course of years I have had occasion to study books
in all their branches, in almost all tongues, of almost all periods,
personally and closely. No early English volumes, while I have been on
the track, have, if I could help it, escaped my scrutiny; and I have
not let them pass from my hands without noting every particular which
seemed to me important and interesting in a historical, literary,
biographical, and bibliographical respect. The result of these
protracted and laborious investigations is partly manifest in my
_Bibliographical Collections_, 1867-1903, extending to eight octavo
volumes; but a good deal of matter remained, which could not be
utilised in that series or in my other miscellaneous contributions to
_belles lettres_.
So it happened that I found myself the possessor of a considerable
body of information, covering the entire field of Book-Collecting in
Great Britain and Ireland and on the European continent, and
incidentally illustrating such cognate features as Printing Materials,
Binding, and Inscriptions or Autographs, some enhancing the interest
of an already interesting item, others conferring on an otherwise
valueless one a peculiar claim to notice.
My collections insensibly assumed the proportions of the volume now
submitted to the public; and in the process of seeing the sheets
through the press certain supplementary Notes suggested themselves,
and form an Appendix. It has been my endeavour to render the Index as
complete a clue as possible to the whole of the matter within the
covers.
As my thoughts carry me back to the time--it is fifty years--when I
commenced my inquiries into literary antiquities, I see that I have
lived to witness a new Hegira: New Ideas, New Tastes, New Authors. The
American Market and the Shakespear movement[1] have turned everything
and everybody upside down. But Time will prove the friend of some of
us.
In the following pages I have avoided the repetition of particulars to
be found in my _Four Generations of a Literary Family_, 1897, and in
my _Confessions of a Collector_, 1897, so far as they concern the
immediate subject-matter.
W. C. H.
BARNES COMMON, SURREY,
_October 1904_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the writer's _Shakespear, Himself and his Work: A Study from
New Points of View_, second edition, revised, with important
additions, and several facsimiles, 8vo, 1903.
HISTORY OF BOOK-COLLECTING
CHAPTER I
The plan--The writer's practical career--Deficiency of a general
knowledge of the subject--The Printed Book and the Manuscript
independent branches of study--The rich and the poor
collector--Their relative systems and advantages--Great results
achieved by persons of moderate fortune--The Rev. Thomas
Corser--Lamb and Coleridge--Human interest resident in
collections formed by such men, and the genuine pleasure
experienced by the owners--A case or two stated--The Chevalier
D'Eon--The contrary practice--Comparatively early culture in the
provinces and interchange of books--Lady collectors--Rarity of
hereditary libraries--The alterations in the aspect of books--The
Mill a fellow-labourer with the Press--A word about values and
prices--Our social institutions answerable for the difference of
feeling about book-collecting--Districts formerly rich in
libraries--Distributing centres--Possibility of yet unexplored
ground--The Universities and Inns of Court--Successful
book-hunting in Scotland and Ireland--Present gravitation of all
valuable books to London.
A MANUAL for the more immediate and especial use of English-speaking
inquirers is bound to limit itself, in the first place, mainly to the
literary products of the three kingdoms and the colonies; and,
secondly, to a broad and general indication of the various paths which
it is open to any one to pursue according to his tastes or
possibilities, with clues to the best sources of intelligence and
guidance. The English collector, where he crosses the border, as it
were, and admits works of foreign origin into his bookcase, does not
often do so on a large scale; but he may be naturally tempted to make
exceptions in favour of certain _chefs-d'oeuvre_ irrespective of
nationality. There are books and tracts which commend themselves by
their typographical importance, by their direct bearing on maritime
discovery, by their momentous relation to the fine arts, or by their
link with some great personality. These stand out in relief from the
normal category of foreign literature; they speak a language which
should be intelligible to all.
It must be obvious that in a restricted space a writer has no scope
for anecdote and gossip, if they are not actually out of place in a
technical undertaking. Yet we have endeavoured to lay before our
readers, in as legible a form as possible, a view of the subject and
counsel as to the various methods and lines of Collecting.
Such an enterprise as we offer, in the face of several which have
already appeared under various titles and auspices, may at first sight
seem redundant; but perhaps it is not really the case. A book of this
class is, as a rule, written by a scholar for scholars; that is all
very well, and very charming the result is capable of proving. Or,
again, the book is addressed by a bibliographer to bibliographers; and
here there may be, with a vast deal that is highly instructive, a
tendency to bare _technique_, which does not commend itself to many
outside the professional or special lines. It was thought, under these
circumstances, that a new volume, combining readability and a fair
proportion of general interest with practical information and advice,
was entitled to favourable consideration; and the peculiar training of
the present writer during his whole life, at once as a _litterateur_
and a practical bookman, encouraged the idea on his part that it might
well be feasible for him to carry the plan into execution, and produce
a view of a permanently interesting and important subject in all its
branches and aspects, appealing not only to actual book-collectors,
but to those who may naturally desire to learn to what the science and
pursuit amount.
One of the best apologies for book-collecting, and even for the
accumulation of fine books, is that offered by McCulloch in the
preface to his own catalogue. The writer takes occasion to observe,
among other points and arguments: "It is no doubt very easy to
ridicule the taste for fine books and their accumulation in extensive
libraries. But it is not more easy than to ridicule the taste for
whatever is most desirable, as superior clothes, houses, furniture,
and accommodation of every sort. A taste for improved or fine books is
one of the least equivocal marks of the progress of civilisation, and
it is as much to be preferred to a taste for those that are coarse and
ill got up, as a taste for the pictures of Reynolds or Turner is to be
preferred to a taste for the daubs that satisfy the vulgar. A man
acts foolishly, if he spend more money on books or anything else than
he can afford; but the folly will be increased, not diminished, by his
spending it on mean and common rather than on fine and uncommon works.
The latter when sold invariably bring a good price, more perhaps than
was paid for them, whereas the former either bring nothing or next to
nothing."
McCulloch's maternal grandfather was possibly the book-lover from whom
the eminent political economist inherited his taste.
In common with the Manuscript Document and the Autograph Letter, the
Written Book forms such a vast department of inquiry and study, that
it would be undesirable, and indeed almost impracticable, in a volume
of limited extent on book-collecting, to include the consideration of
any collateral subject.
The broad facts regarding our national collections of MSS. are
sufficiently well known, no less than the principal repositories in
which they are to be found and consulted, and the individuals who have
signalised themselves from time to time as owners of this class of
property on various scales or on various principles. Nearly everybody
with any claim to culture is familiar with the names of Cotton,
Arundel, Harley, Lansdowne, Birch, Burney, Egerton, Hardwicke, and
Stowe, in connection with precious assemblages of monuments in the
National Library; Parker, Tanner, Fairfax, Ashmole and others at
Oxford or Cambridge; Carew at Lambeth, and a succession of private
enthusiasts in this direction, either independently or in conjunction
with the printed side--Dering of Surrenden, Le Neve, Martin of
Palgrave, Duke of Buckingham, Sir Thomas Phillipps, Libri, Lord
Ashburnham, Heber, and Bright.
In the case of MSS. it is equally true with printed literature that
the interest and value depend on circumstances, and are liable to
changes and vicissitudes. They may be classified into countries,
periods, and subjects, and their appreciation depends on their
character even more than on their mere rarity. An unique MS. may
possibly be quite worthless. A comparatively common one may command a
good price. How numerous soever the ancient copies of Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_ might be, another coming into the open market would
still be an object of keen competition; and where importance is
coupled with scarcity or uniqueness, of course the latter feature
lends a high additional weight to the matter, and multiplies
inquirers.
We must, however, in justice to this branch of the topic and to our
readers, refrain from further pursuit of the discussion of it, as its
adequate treatment would absorb a monograph to the full extent as
ample as the present, and such a Manual is in point of fact a
desideratum--one, too, which the improved state of bibliographical
knowledge would assist in rendering much more satisfactory than was
formerly possible.
The _Rolls of Collectors_ by the present writer afford a convenient
view of the different classes of society in the now United Kingdom,
which from the outset to the present day have created, during unequal
periods of duration, more or less noteworthy centres of literary or
bibliographical gatherings, from the Harley, Roxburghe, Heber, or Huth
level to that of the owner--often not less to be admired or
commended--of the humble shelf-ful of volumes. Here names occur
associated with the most widely varied aims in respect to scope and
compass, yet all in a certain measure participating in the credit of
admitting to their homes products of intellectual industry and
ingenuity beyond such matter as Family Bibles, Directories, Railway
Guides, Charles Lamb's _Biblia-a-Biblia_, and sixpenny or threepenny
editions of popular authors, which constitute the staple decorations
of the average British middle-class household in this nonagenarian
nineteenth century.
So early as the time of the later Stuarts, a movement seems to have
commenced both in England and Scotland, not only in the chief centres,
but in provincial towns, for the education of the middle class, and
even of the higher grade of agriculturists, who sent their children to
schools, and at the same time, in the absence of circulating
libraries, improved their own minds by the exchange of books, as we
perceive in contemporary diaries and correspondence; and Macaulay
doubtless overcolours the ignorance and debasement of the bulk of
society about the period of the Revolution of 1688, apparently in
order to maintain a cue with which he had started. The Diary of John
Richards, a farmer at Warmwell in Dorsetshire, 1697-1702, is an
unimpeachable witness on the other side; it is printed in the
_Retrospective Review_, 1853.
It was about the same date that we find even in Scotland a project for
establishing throughout the country, in every parish, Reference or
Lending Libraries, and some pamphlets on the subject have come down to
us; but we hear nothing more about it. This was in 1699-1702, just
when the indefatigable John Dunton was sending from the press his
multifarious periodical news-books for the benefit of the more
literary sort in South Britain.
The Circulating Library in the United Kingdom in its inception was
intended more particularly for the better-to-do class, and even to-day
its tariff is hardly compatible with very narrow resources. Perhaps
the earliest effort to bring literature within the reach of the
working-man was Charles Knight's scheme of "Book-Clubs for all
Readers," mentioned in a letter to him of 1844 from Dickens.
A remarkable change in the fortunes and tactics of the collector has
arisen from one in our social institutions. The book-hunter of times
past, if he was a resident in the provinces, and worked on a more or less
systematic and ambitious scale--nay, if he merely picked up articles from
year to year which struck his fancy, relied, as he was able to do, on
his country town. Thither gravitated, as a rule, the products of public
and private sales from the surrounding neighbourhood within a fairly wide
radius. If a library was placed in the market, the sale took place on the
premises or at the nearest centre; there was no thought of sending
anything short of a known collection up to London. The transit in the
absence of railways was too inconvenient and costly. These conditions,
which long survived better possibilities, naturally made certain
headquarters throughout the kingdom a perfect Eldorado and Elysium, first
of all for local enthusiasts miles round, and later on for metropolitan
bargain-seekers, who made periodical tours in certain localities at
present as barren as Arabia Petraea.
The principal points appear, so far as existing information goes, to
have been in the North: Newcastle, York, Sheffield, Leeds; in the
Midlands: Birmingham and Manchester; in the West: Plymouth, Exeter,
and Bristol; in the South: Chichester; in the East: Norwich, Yarmouth,
Colchester, Bury, and Ipswich. It was at Chichester that the poet
Collins brought together a certain number of early books, some of the
first rarity; his name is found, too, in the sale catalogues of the
last century as a buyer of such; and the strange and regrettable fact
is, that two or three items, which Thomas Warton actually saw in his
hands, and of which there are no known duplicates, have not so far
been recovered.
East Anglia during a prolonged period was peculiarly rich in holders
and seekers of the Old Book, both manuscript and printed. It formerly
abounded in monastic institutions, affluent county families, and
literary archaeologists. We may mention Lord Petre, the Hanmers of
Mildenhall, the Herveys of Ickworth, the Bunburys of Bury, the
Tollemaches, the Freres, the Fountaines, Sir John Fenn, Martin of
Palgrave, Dawson Turner, and the Rev. John Mitford. It was the same,
as we take elsewhere occasion to show, in the West of England, in the
Midlands, in the Northern counties, and in the South of Scotland. The
absence of ready communication with the metropolis and the relative
insignificance of provincial centres kept libraries together. Their
owners, while the agricultural interest was flourishing, had no motive
for sale, and the inducement to part with such property was far less
powerful, while the competition remained limited.
In Kent: Canterbury and Maidstone; in Surrey: Guildford, Croydon,
Kingston, and even Richmond, may have helped to supply local
requirements to a certain extent. But the Sydneys of Penshurst, the
Oxindens of Barham, the Lee-Warlys, the Barretts of Lee, the Evelyns
of Sayes-Court and Wootton, and others among the gentry of these and
the adjacent shires, probably filled their shelves in principal
measure from the London shops during their periodical visits to the
metropolis for various purposes.
Even in later times the suburbs of London, and now and then such
localities as Woolwich, Reading, Manchester, Shrewsbury, Salisbury,
Wrexham, Conway, Keswick, and Dublin have yielded a prize or so, owing
to the dispersion of some small library in the neighbourhood on the
premises. Otherwise one may prospect the country towns all over the
three kingdoms nowadays, and not see anything save new stock and
penny-box ware. Even the provincial centres are, in general, sterile
enough; but the rural districts are dried up. Every species of
property seems to drift to London.
The Bristol houses, Kerslake, Jefferies, George, Lasbury, often came
across rarities; but it is so no longer. The West has been threaded
through. If there is a section of England where some good things may
yet linger, it is, we should say, in Staffordshire, Lancashire, and
Shropshire, to which might perhaps be added Worcestershire.
The seats of our two ancient Universities, and cathedral cities
generally, have not yielded such ample fruit to the explorer, perhaps
because there has always been a species of magnetic attraction, by
which any spoils of the kind are drawn into the local libraries and
museums. A graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, a canon of this or that
church, a loyal dweller in Winchester or Lincoln, possesses or
discovers a rare volume, and his impulse, if he does not keep it
himself, is to bestow it on his place of residence or education.
Whatever happens, the stranger coming to hunt in these preserves
arrives only in time to learn that the stall or the shop has given up
some unique desideratum a day or two before, and is referred to the
librarian of the college, or to the buyer at such an address, if he
desires to inspect it, which, if his aims are simply commercial, be
sure he does not. The aggravation is already sufficient!
At the same time, the Universities and Inns of Court have been from
time to time the homes of many famous book-collections. Robert Burton,
Anthony Wood, John Selden, Sir David Dundas, Mr. Dyce, Dr. Bliss, Dr.
Bandinel, Dr. Coxe, Mr. Bradshaw, are only a few select names.
In the same way there was a time, and not so distant, when Edinburgh,
and even Dublin, yielded their proportion of finds, and the Duke of
Roxburghe and General Swinton, David Laing and James Maidment,
obtained no insignificant share of their extremely curious and
valuable stores from their own ground. Now the Scotish amateur and
bookseller equally look to the great metropolis for the supply of
their wants, and the North Country libraries are sent up to London for
sale. The capital of Scotland has lost its ancient prestige as a cover
for this sort of sport, and is as unproductive as an ordinary English
provincial town.
From an acquisitive standpoint the locality signifies no longer. The
game is up. The three kingdoms have been well-nigh ransacked and
exhausted. The country town is as bare as a bird's tail of anything
but common-place stuff, bought in the London market, and (if any
dweller in a distant city is simple enough to order it from the
unsophisticated vendor) charged with a good profit and the freight up.
Naturally the provincial dealer, if he stumbles on a gem or two in an
accidental way, takes care that it is sold in no corner, unless it be
at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand. He considers that
the value may be a matter of doubt, and he leaves it to gentlemen to
decide between them how much it is worth. Do you blame him?
It is a frequently debated point whether at home in Great Britain the
feeling for books, in the collector's sense, is not on the decline;
and, indeed, the causes of such a change are not far to seek. The
acute pressure of business among the wealthy mercantile class, which
principally contributes to the ranks of book-buyers, and the decrease
of resources for such luxuries among the nobility and clergy, might be
sufficient to explain a shrinkage in the demand for the older and
rarer literature in our own and other languages; but there is another
and even more powerful agency at work which operates in the same
direction, and is adverse to the investment of money in objects which
do not appeal directly to the eye. The _bibliophile_ discovers, when
he has expended a small fortune (or perhaps a large one) in the
formation of a library, that his friends evince no interest in it,
have no desire to enter the room where the cases are kept, do not
understand what they are told about this or that precious
acquisition, and turn on their heel to look at the pictures, the
antique furniture, or the china. This undoubtedly wide-spread
sentiment strikes a very serious blow at a pursuit in which the
enthusiast meets with slight sympathy or encouragement, unless it is
at the hands of the dealers, naturally bound for their own sakes to
keep him in heart by sympathy and flattery. Doubtless the present
aspect of the question might have become ere now more serious, had it
not been for the American market and the extension of the system of
public and free libraries.
But, on the other hand, while enormous numbers of books are sold under
the hammer year by year, there must be an approximately proportionate
demand and an inexhaustible market, or the book trade could not keep
pace with the auctioneers; and, moreover, we may be in a transitional
state in some respects, and may be succeeded by those whose appetite
for the older literature will be keener than it ever was.
The complaint of a superabundance of books of all kinds is not a new
one. It goes back at least to the reign of Elizabeth and the age of
Shakespeare, for in 1594, in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, a
divine says:--
"There is no ende of making Bookes, and much reading is a
wearinesse to the flesh, and in our carelesse daies bookes may
rather seeme to want readers, than readers to want bookes."
No one should be too positive whether it is to the rich or to the poor
book-collector that the romantic element chiefly or more powerfully
attaches itself. It has been our lot to enjoy the acquaintance of both
classes, and we hesitate to pronounce any decided opinion. There is
the unquestionable triumph of the man with a full purse or an
inexhaustible banking account, who has merely to resolve upon a
purchase or a series of purchases, and to write a cheque for the sum
total. He is no sooner recognised by the members of the trade as a
zealous enthusiast and a liberal paymaster, than offers arrive, and
continue to arrive, from all sides. He is not asked to take any
trouble; his library is an object of solicitude to everybody who has
anything to sell; the order on his bankers is all that his humble
servants desire. He finds himself, after the lapse of a decade or so,
the master of a splendid collection, without having once known what it
was to get disagreeably warm or anxious in the pursuit of a volume, to
deliberate whether he could afford to buy it, or to submit to the
ordeal of attending an auction, one of a motley throng in a fetid
atmosphere. All these trials he has been spared; he has collected with
kid gloves.
On the contrary, a good deal may be said in favour of the amateur of
moderate fortune, who by personal judgment slowly accumulates an
important and enviable assemblage of literary monuments, like the Rev.
Thomas Corser, who spent L9000 during a lifetime on books, which
realised L20,000, and would now bring thrice as much, and perhaps
even more; and in that of men such as Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, who had to pause before they laid out a few shillings in
this way. The history of Lamb's books is more humanly interesting than
the history of the Huth or Grenville library; as chattels or furniture
they were worthless; they were generally the poorest copies
imaginable; but if they did not cost money, they often cost thought;
they sometimes involved a sacrifice, if the price was in the high
altitude of a sovereign. In the case of Lamb, the sister's opinion was
sought, and the matter lay ever so long in abeyance before the final
decision was taken, and Lamb hastened to the shop, uncertain if he
might not be too late, if the person whom he saw emerging as he
entered might not have _his_ book in his pocket. Here was payment in
full for the prize; the coin handed to the vendor was nothing to it;
Lamb had laid out more than the value in many a sleepless night and
many an anxious calculation. Lamb, although he probably never bound a
volume of his own in his life, or purchased one for the sake of its
cover, could grow enthusiastic over his favourite _Duchess of
Newcastle_, and declare that no casket was rich enough, no casing
sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel.
Collectors of the abstract type looked, and still look, at the essence
or soul--at the object pure and simple. A book is a book for a' that.
It may be imperfect, soiled, wormed, cropped, shabbily bound--all
those things belong to its years; let it suffice that there is just
enough of the author to be got in glimpses here and there to enable
the proprietor of him in type to judge his quality and power. That is
what such men as Lamb wanted--all they wanted. A copy of Burton's
_Anatomy_, of Wither's _Emblems_, or Browne's _Urn-Burial_, in the
best and newest morocco, was apt to be a hinderance to their enjoyment
of the beauties of the text, was almost bound to strike them as an
intrusion and an impertinence--perchance as a sort of sacrilege--as
though the maker of the cover was seeking to place himself on a level
with the maker of the book. Nor are there wanting successive renewers
of this school of collector--of men who have bought books and other
literary property for their own sake, for their intrinsic worth,
irrespectively of rarity and price. A relative of the writer devoted a
long life--a very long one--to the acquisition of what struck him as
being curious and interesting in its way and fell within his
resources, which were never too ample; and in the end he succeeded in
gathering together, without much technical knowledge of the subject, a
fairly large assortment of volumes, not appealing for the most part to
the severer taste of the more fastidious and wealthier amateur, but
endeared to him at least, as Lamb's were, by the circumstances under
which they came to his hands. Each one had its _historiette_. This
gentleman represented, as I say, a type, and a very genuine and
laudable one, too. I admired, almost envied him, not in his
possession, but in his enjoyment of these treasures; they were to him
as the apple of his eye. When I speak of him as a type, I mean that
the same phenomenon still exists. In a letter of 1898 from the extreme
North of England there is the ensuing passage, which strongly
impressed my fancy: "Ever since I had a house of my own--nearly twenty
years--I have been a collector of books on a humble scale. . . .
Still, by being continually on the look-out for 'bargains,' I have
managed to gather between three and four thousand volumes together,
chiefly of a poetical nature." Now, to my apprehension, the present
aspect of the matter touches a higher or deeper chord than that
reached by the owner of the most splendid library in the universe; for
all this Heliconian harvest signified personal search and personal
sacrifice.
We do not always bear in mind that the rare books of to-day were the
current literature not merely of, but long posterior to, the period of
their appearance. They suffered two kinds and stages of deterioration
and waste. While they remained in vogue among readers and students,
they necessarily submitted to a succession of more or less indifferent
owners, who regarded without much concern objects which it was in
their power to replace without much difficulty. The worst day dawned,
however, for our ancient literature, especially that of a fugitive or
sentimental class, when it had ceased to be in demand for practical
purposes, and was not yet ripe for the men, in whose eyes it could
only possess archaeological attractions. Independently of destruction
by accidental fires, a century or two of neglect proved fatal to
millions of volumes or other literary records in pamphlet or
broadsheet form; and as tastes changed, the mill and the fire
successively consumed the discarded favourites of bygone generations,
just as at the present moment we pulp or burn from day to day
cartloads of old science, and theology, and law, and fiction, and ever
so much more, preparing to grow unique.
The Mill has been as busy as the Press all these centuries on which we
look back. It has neither eyes nor ears, nor has it compassion; it
unrelentingly grinds and consumes all that comes in its way; age after
age it has reduced to dust what the men of the time refuse in the
presence of something newer, and, as they hold, better. The printers
of each generation, from those of Mainz downward, lent themselves, not
unnaturally, not unwisely, to subjects in the first place (by way of
experiment) which were not costly, and secondly to such as appealed to
contemporary taste and patronage. We find under the former head
Indulgences, Proclamations, Broadsides, Ballads; under the second,
Church Service Books of all kinds, succeeded after a while by certain
of the Classics. The impressions long remained limited; and continual
use and subsequent neglect accomplished between them the task of
creating the modern bibliographical and bibliomaniacal schools.
Even in Anglo-Saxon times the ferocity of warfare and the ravages of
invasion on invasion, coupled with the scanty diffusion of literary
taste, destroyed many of the monastic libraries. But, which is
stranger and less excusable, even down to the second half of the
seventeenth century, down to Aubrey's day, the greatest havoc
continued to be made in this way alike among printed books and MSS.,
the latter being used for all sorts of utilitarian purposes--even as
bungs for beer-barrels. In our own period it is immeasurably sadder
and more astonishing to learn that, besides the losses arising from
casual conflagrations to public and private libraries, the old
vandalism is not extinct, and that nothing is sacred in its eyes, not
even the priceless muniments of a cathedral church.
What must the aggregate have become, if such a process had not been
steadily in operation all these centuries! And, even as it is, the
dispersion of old libraries, like those of Johnson of Spalding and
Skene of Skene, encourages the waste-paper dealer to believe that the
end is not yet reached. The frequenter of the auction-rooms of London
alone has perpetually under his eyes a mountain of illegible printed
matter sufficient to overload the shoulders of Atlas.
Bibliomania has as many heads as the famed Briareus; but it seldom
lifts more than two or three at once. Perhaps it would be impossible
to name any variety of fancy which has not at some time entered into
the pursuit which we are just now attempting to illustrate. The love
of the book without regard to the binding, or of the binding
irrespectively of the book; the fashion for works with woodcuts, of
certain printers, of certain places, of certain dates; the
establishment of a fixed rule as to a subject or a group of subjects,
taken up collectively or in succession; a limitation as to price or as
to size, for a candidate for admittance to some cabinets may not
exceed so many inches in altitude; it must go back to the century
which produced it, to be rewritten or reprinted, ere it may have a
place.
It is said of the elder Wertheimer that, when some one expressed his
astonishment at the price which he had given for an item, and even
insinuated his want of wisdom, he retorted pleasantly that he might be
a fool, but he thought that he knew greater ones than himself.
Do we not under existing conditions view with too uncharitable
sentiments the marvellous good fortune of the book-hunters of the last
century, at the very outset of a revival of the taste for our own
vernacular literature? Does it not seem tantalising to hear that
Warton the historian could pick up for sixpence a volume containing
_Venus and Adonis_, 1596, and seven other precious _morceaux_, off a
broker's counter in Salisbury, when the British Museum gave at the
Daniel sale L336 for the Shakespeare alone? What a thrill passes
through the veins, as we read of Rodd the bookseller meeting at a
marine store-shop on Saffron Hill, somewhere about the thirties, with
a volume of Elizabethan tracts, and having it weighed out to him at
threepence three-farthings! Our space is far more limited than such
anecdotes; but they all strike us as pointing the same moral. If one
happens on a Caxton or a quarto Shakespeare to-day for a trifle, it is
the isolated ignorance of the possessor which befriends one. But till
the market came for these things, the price for what very few wanted
was naturally low; and an acquirer like George Steevens, Edward
Capell, or Edmond Malone was scarcely apt to feel the keen
gratification on meeting with some unique find that a man would now
do, seeing that its rarity was yet unascertained, and even had it been
so, was not likely to awaken much sensation.
Low prices do not alone establish cheapness. Cheap books are those
which are obtained by accident under the current value. In the time of
the later Stuarts, Narcissus Luttrell found from one penny to sixpence
sufficient to satisfy the shopkeepers with whom he dealt for some of
the most precious volumes in our language; and a shilling commanded a
Caxton. The Huths of those days could not lay out their money in these
things; they had to take up the ancient typography in the form of the
classics, or large-paper copies of contemporary historians, or the
publications of Hearne.
We do not know that the celebrated Chevalier D'Eon was singular in his
views as a collector in the last century. He bought in chief measure,
if we may judge from a document before us, what we should now term
nondescripts, and in the aggregate gave a very handsome price at a
London auction in 1771 for an assemblage of items at present
procurable, if any one wanted them, at a far lower rate. There is not
a lot throughout which would recommend itself to modern taste, save
the _Cuisinier Francois_, and perhaps that was not in the old morocco
livery considered by judges as _de rigueur_. We append the
auctioneer's account entire, because it exhibits a fair example of the
class of book which not only Frenchmen, but ourselves, sought at that
time more than those for which we have long learned to compete, and
which were then offered under the hammer by the bundle, if not by the
basketful. For L8, 4s., a hundred and twenty-five years ago, how many
quarto Shakespears could one have acquired?
THE CHEVALIER D'EON,
_Bought of Baker & Leigh_.
L s. d.
Catalogus Librorum MSS. Angl. et Hibern 0 7 6
Index Librorum Bibliothecae Barberinae, 2 vols. 0 10 6
Reading Catal. Lib. in Collegio Sionensi 0 4 0
Le Long, Bibliotheque Hist. de la France 0 9 0
Voyage Literaire de deux Religieux Benedictins 0 5 0
Histoire de Demelez de la Cour de France 0 2 6
Memoires sur le Rang entre les Souv. de l'Europe, &c. 0 2 6
Discours Politiques sur Tacite, par Josseval 0 2 0
Dictionnaire Mathematique, par Ozanam 0 5 0
Dictionnaire Practique du Bon Menager de Campagne,
par Liger, 2 vols. 0 6 0
Leland agt. Bolingbroke's Study of History 0 2 0
Mutel's Causes of the Corruption of Christians 0 1 0
Bindon on Commerce 0 2 6
Essay on Money, Trade, War, Banks, &c. 0 1 0
England's Gazetteer, 3 vols. 0 7 6
Halifax's Advice to a Daughter 0 1 0
Tresor de la Pratique de Medecine, 3 vols. 0 4 0
Seneque de la Consolation de la Mort 0 1 0
Tacite (la Morale de) par Houssaie 0 1 6
Tite Live reduit en Maximes 0 1 0
Gracien l'Homme Universel 0 1 6
L'Ecole de l'Homme 0 2 6
Memoire pour diminuer le nombre de Preces 0 1 6
Receuil des Edits 0 1 6
Le Secret des Cours, par Walsingham 0 1 6
Receuil de Maximes pour Institut. du Roy 0 1 0
Callieres de la Science du Monde 0 1 0
Traites des Interests des Princes' & Souverains de l'Europe 0 1 0
Sciences des Princes, par Naude, 3 vols. 0 5 0
Etat present du Royaume de Danemarc 0 2 0
Memoires de l'Empire Russien 0 1 6
Memoires & Negociations Secrettes de diverses Cours de
l'Europe par M. la Torre, 5 vols. 0 7 6
Memoires pour Servir a l'Histoire de Corse 0 1 6
Memoires Militaires sur les Anciens, 2 vols. 0 2 0
Histoire Generale de Suisse 0 2 0
Memoire du Card. Richelieu, 5 vols. 0 5 0
La Vie du Card. Richelieu, 2 vols. 0 4 0
La Vie de Mons. Colbert 0 1 6
Voyage de Grece, Egypte, &c. 0 2 0
Voyage du Mont du Levant 0 1 6
Lettres du Card. Richelieu 0 1 0
Lettres d'un Turque a Paris 0 1 6
Lettres Persanes, par Montesquieu 0 3 0
Le Passe Tems Agreable 0 1 6
Essai Politique sur le Commerce 0 2 0
Theorie de l'Impot 0 2 0
Histoire du Systeme des Finances, 1719 & 1720, 6 vols. 0 6 0
Histoire du Commerce, par Huet 0 2 0
Le Vrai Cuisinier Francois 0 1 6
Dictionnaire Neologique 0 2 0
Relations de quelques Religieux, 6 vols. 0 10 6
Reflexions sur l'Edit 0 1 0
Several lots of Pamphlets, 1s. each 0 4 0
Five Pamphlets, at 6d. each 0 2 6
--------
L8 4 0
========
_Jan. 12th, 1771._
Recd. the contents
For Baker and Self,
GEO. LEIGH.
The neglect of our early literature continued, as we have said, down
to the second half of the eighteenth century. Prior to that time, all
the information at our command tends to show that collectors almost
uniformly restricted themselves to the books current in or about their
own time, as we find even Pepys asking Bagford to secure for him, not
Caxtons or Elizabethan books, but items which we should now regard
with comparative or absolute indifference. While some insignificant
trifle, which had happened to go out of print, was sought with
avidity, while editions of the classics and Continental writers, long
since converted to waste paper, were objects of keen rivalry, the most
precious examples of ancient English and Scotish typography and poetry
were obtainable for pence.
A very interesting side to the subject before us is the share
claimable in it by the fair sex. In our two _Rolls of Book-Collectors_
we have included the names of several ladies, who in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, as well as in the earlier part of the
present, established a title to rank among possessors of libraries in
a larger or smaller measure. Two of the most prominent names are
probably those of Miss Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Yorkshire,
and Mrs. Rylands of Manchester, the latter not only the acquirer of
the Althorp treasures, but of a most valuable body of books, ancient
and modern, in augmentation of them. This feature in the annals of
collecting is the more to be borne in mind, in that it has in recent
days declined almost to disappearance, and may be said to be limited
to a few gentlewomen, who pursue special studies, like the Hon. Alicia
Amherst and Mrs. Earle, and bring together for use or reference the
works illustrative of them.
A study of the writer's _Rolls of Book-Collectors_, which embrace over
two thousand names, will satisfy any one that the hereditary or
transmitted collections in this country are very few, if we limit
ourselves to libraries of note, and do not compensate for the long
catalogue of old libraries which have been dispersed even in our own
time. Are there really more than the Miller and the Huth, unless we
add the Spencer or Althorp, kept intact and amplified, yet in the
hands of a stranger? Book-collecting by individuals is, then, mainly a
personal affair, which begins and ends with a life. The continuance
even of the two libraries above mentioned in private hands cannot be
regarded as otherwise than precarious and terminable; the fourth
succession of Miller has just expired in an unexpected manner, and the
destiny of the Britwell treasures is problematical. Rumour has long
since pointed to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh as the ultimate
reversioner.
In a volume of moderate compass, professedly addressing itself in a
special manner to English collectors, the consideration of foreign
literature must of necessity be a secondary and incidental feature and
element, although it may be quite true that our countrymen and
countrywomen look so frequently aside, as it were, from the literary
productions of their own soil to study those of other lands. In Great
Britain we may be said to be much more cosmopolitan in our
book-collecting tastes than many of our contemporaries on the
Continent of Europe, Germany perhaps excepted. In France, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and elsewhere, the demand is almost exclusively for
native authors; but the Germans, Americans, and ourselves take a
pride, and a just one, in being more catholic and broad: we see the
advantage, no doubt, and no doubt we reap the fruit, of such a policy.
At the same time, in a monograph of limited scope it is obviously
impossible to embrace even a general view of the enormously wide range
which is before any one who crosses over from his own country to add
to his English possessions even a select collection of books in
foreign languages; and we have confined our efforts in this direction
to an indication of such typical or special works (principally French)
as are usually sought by people in these islands, who resort more or
less to the Continental market. Even prominent Anglo-French amateurs
like Mr. R. S. Turner and Lord Ashburton are found keeping within
certain classes of literature, and certain copies recommendable by
their _provenance_, binding, or graphic peculiarities.