Classification of collections--Origin of the taste for
books--Schedule of topics or branches of inquiry--Each separately
considered and the authorities cited--Ancient typography--British
history and topography--Liturgies--Books of Hours--The _Imitatio
Christi_--_Pilgrim's Progress_--Books of Emblems--Books of
Characters--Books printed before the Great Fire, at Oxford,
during the Civil War and Interregnum, &c.--Monastic and patristic
writers--English devotional and other books printed
abroad--Froschover's Zuerich Bible of 1550--Other Bibles--The
French Bible of 1523-28--Minor specialisms.
AS books, in a manuscript or printed shape, are far more numerous and
varied than any other species of property, and are also more largely
sought for purposes of direct study and instruction, there exists the
greater difficulty in attempting to advise collectors as to the line
which it is best, wisest, or safest to embrace.
The class of persons who engage in this attractive pursuit are:--
(i) Pure amateurs, without any eye to the financial question.
(ii) Specialists of more than a single kind.
(iii) Students.
(iv) Speculators.
(v) Miscellaneous or casual buyers.
The normal amateur starts, in general, without any well-defined scheme
before him. He has seen in the hands of a friend, perhaps, a curious
book; and the notion takes possession of him, rather stealthily, yet
rather languidly too, that it might be a "nice" thing to have
oneself--that or such another. The spirit of collecting, like a
delicate germ, is at first easily extinguished; but an incident as
trivial and fortuitous as the one just suggested has ere now
constituted the _nucleus_ and starting-point of a large library. It
may, indeed, be a favourable symptom and augury when a man begins
circumspectly and deliberately; he is more apt, other circumstances
favouring, to prosecute his scheme to the end, and to prove a valuable
friend to the trade.
We have mentioned that the Specialist may be of more than one sort. He
may, in short, be of ten thousand sorts; and the Student, after all,
may be bracketed with him; for both equally devote their exclusive
attention to a prescribed class of works or branch of inquiry for a
more or less definite term.
The subjects which principally engage the notice of specialists are:--
Ancient Typography (including Xylographic works).
English, Scotish, and Irish History.
English Topography.
English Genealogy and Family History.
Liturgies and Prayer-Books.
Books of Hours.
Bibles.
Roman Catholic books.
English books printed abroad.
Voyages and Travels.
Irish Literature.
Scotish Literature.
Early illustrated books.
Modern illustrated books.
French illustrated books.
Books of Emblems.
Books of Engravings.
Early English Poetry.
Early Romances.
Early Music.
Spanish Romances.
Italian Romances.
Dantesque Literature.
Cromwell Literature.
Civil War and Commonwealth tracts.
Editions of the _Imitatio Christi_.
Editions of the _Pilgrim's Progress_.
Occult Literature.
Folk-lore.
Tobacco.
Educational books.
Caricatures in book form.
Miracles and phenomena.
Broadsides.
Chap-books.
There is probably not much of consequence to be suggested outside this
calendar from which an intending collector may make his choice. Each
of the topics indicated is, for the most part, susceptible of being
subdivided and subdivided again.
_Ancient Typography_ is not only a large, but a difficult and costly
field. It is, notwithstanding, a not unusual circumstance for a
beginner, and not a rich one, to start by making himself master of a
few examples of our first printers; and this arises from the fact that
among the remains in such a line of collecting are pieces of no high
interest or character, and copies whose condition does not attract the
riper connoisseur. At the same time it arises from the feeling of the
period which witnessed the dawn of the art, that a heavy percentage of
the output of the printers of all countries amounts to little more
than typographical curiosities, which may be substantially possessed
in the form of an example of moderate cost. The novice generally
selects books and tracts of foreign origin, and of a theological or
technical complexion. Perhaps he goes further--even so far as to
discard his earlier purchases; perhaps he does not. It is a matter of
taste and money. If he does not seek the finest and rarest specimens,
especially in the English series, it is not too much to say that L500
spread over a career would suffice to procure one a fair
representation in which Fust and Schoeffer, Gutenberg, Mentelin, and
Caxton might appear in the form of a leaf--possibly a damaged one. Yet
there would be a chronological view in actual originals of the art of
printing from the commencement in all countries. We go for our facts
on this subject to Panzer, Hain, Brunet, the British Museum Catalogue,
&c.
_British History_ and _Topography_ are alike departments which can
scarcely be regarded as specialities without questionable fitness. For
when we survey the catalogues of those who have professedly restricted
their aim to these two ranges, and reflect that all such collections
are, by the light of bibliographical authorities, more or less
tentative and imperfect, we are brought to the conclusion that there
would be, in a thoroughly exhaustive treatment of the matter, less
left outside than could be found within. Of the divisions which
present themselves above so much is capable of being drawn into the
two other series. Numerically an assemblage of ancient and modern
books in these classes would be by possibility immense. But the
attendant outlay, unless certain signal rarities were included, or it
was deemed necessary to comprise all the poetical relics with a
historical or a topographical side, ought not to be relatively so high
as that on the preceding category, particularly if the acquirer were
satisfied here and there with trustworthy reproductions of
three-and-four-figure items. From L1000 to L1500 will go a long way in
supplying a collection with that qualifying proviso; without it, four
times the amount would barely cover you. The Hartley and Phillipps
catalogues should be consulted, as well as Upcott and other older
authorities.
_Liturgies_ form one of the tastes and objects of pursuit of persons
who have left behind them the fancies of their novitiate, and possess
the means of purchasing a description of literature which is
abnormally costly, and might prove more so, were the buyers more
numerous. The editions of the Prayer-Book fall under this section, and
are almost innumerable, being tantamount to _Annuals_, and of many
years we possess more than one issue.
The printed _Books of Hours_ might, from their extent, as regards
subordinate variations arising from the different uses and occasional
changes in portions of the ritual, constitute in themselves a life's
study and absorb a fortune. There is great disparity in their
typographical and artistic execution, no less than in their commercial
value. A tolerably full description of the series occurs in Brunet,
Lowndes, Maskell, the British Museum Catalogue, and in those of the
principal collectors on these lines. Of those adapted to English or
Scotish uses there is an account in Hazlitt's _Collections_; but we
may look in the early future for an exhaustive monograph from the pen
of Mr. Jacobus Weale.
The British Museum is singularly rich in editions in all languages of
the _Imitatio Christi_, having enjoyed the recent opportunity of
supplying wants from an enormous collection sold by public auction _en
bloc_. The Offor Catalogue is considered an authority on the
_Pilgrim's Progress_ and other works of Bunyan; but the National
Library contains a large proportion of these books, and the Huth
Catalogue and Hazlitt's _Collections_ must not be overlooked.
The authorities just cited, the Corser Catalogue, and the publications
of the Holbein Society, will prove useful guides to any one desirous
of studying the EMBLEM Series, which was some time since in marked
request, but has sustained the customary relapse, and is what
booksellers term rather _slow_ just now. Our own literature is not
particularly wealthy in these productions; there is nothing of
consequence beyond Whitney, Peacham, _The Mirror of Majesty_, 1618,
Wither, Quarles, and Harvey (_School of the Heart_). But if the
collector goes outside the national frontier, he meets with works of
this class in even bewildering abundance in regard to number, variety
of type and treatment, and degree of artistic and literary merit.
Moreover, among the works of this species just enumerated as of
national origin, four of the six were more or less heavily indebted
to the Continent; the Whitney was printed at Leyden, and Wither,
Quarles, and Harvey did little more than write English letterpress to
sets of foreign plates.
_Books of Characters_, of which perhaps Earle's _Microcosmography_,
1628, is the most familiar, have attracted attention from more than
one of our book-fanciers; they constitute a somewhat extensive series,
and we gain a fair _apercu_ of it in the catalogue of the library of
DR. BLISS, of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, 1858. It was Bliss who
reprinted Earle in 1811, and inserted a bibliography of publications
on similar lines.
The above-mentioned gentleman also lent himself to two other paths of
collecting: one suggested by local associations, and consisting of
works printed at Oxford, the second dealing with those which appeared
just prior to the Great Fire of London in 1666.
One of Bliss's Oxford friends, DR. BANDINEL, Bodley's librarian, made
it his speciality to bring together as many of the fugitive
publications as possible relative to the Civil War Period and the
Commonwealth, and MR. JOHN FORSTER did the same. The Bandinel
Catalogue, 1861, is an excellent guide on this ground, although it is
almost unnecessary to state that it is very incomplete. The best and
most exhaustive assemblage of the literature of the Troubles and
Interregnum (1640-59) is the descriptive list of the King's pamphlets
in the British Museum formed by Thomason the stationer.
The interest and profit attendant on the study of the monastic and
patristic writers, who may be said to be less strictly national and
more cosmopolitan than those of later schools, are, as a rule, casual
and slender for the merely literary consulter or peruser, supposing
the rather extreme case, where such a person is sufficiently
courageous and robust to engage in anything approaching a serious
examination of these families of books. The authors were true
enthusiasts, labouring to their lives' last thread in some obscure
cell or dim closet, where pride of authorship, as we may feel and
enjoy it, there was none, when beyond the walls of a convent or those
of a native town their names were unknown, their personality
unrecognised. Except to the theologian or ritualist how repellent and
illegible this mass of printed and manuscript matter must ever seem!
How deficient in human sympathy and pertinence! These treatises, so
erudite, so prolix, and so multifarious, were composed by men
(Universal, Irrefragable, or Seraphic Doctors), and after a certain
date by women too (Angelical Sisters), who had no knowledge of the
world, of society, of human nature, or of real philosophy. Yet they
were, and long remained, the class of literature most cultivated, most
studied, and most multiplied; and to this hour, notwithstanding the
destruction of millions of them, they abound in our national,
cathedral, and college libraries, and in private collections dedicated
to that particular side of inquiry and learning. In the booksellers'
catalogues we sometimes meet with examples, which are recommended to
the curious buyer by their illustrations of conventual life, and their
exposure of those vices which a state of celibacy is calculated to
promote in both sexes. The chained book is not an uncommon feature in
the ancient ecclesiastical repositories, and even in certain churches;
and apart from the Scriptures, it almost invariably enters into the
department of early divinity or polemics.
Whatever may be thought of this branch of the theological library,
there is an undoubted market for it, or some portions of it, as stocks
are kept both here and abroad, although on a more restricted scale,
perhaps, than formerly. It is extremely probable that, if any one who
was learned enough and dexterous enough should make a decoction of all
the uncountable folios which exist up and down the globe, the result
might be a single volume of not very ample dimensions, affording its
share of insight and edification.
The call on the part of a narrow coterie of churchmen for the Catholic
literature of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries, more especially
the books produced at Continental presses, necessarily resulted in the
rapid inflation of the value, while it brought to light from
numberless recesses a vast assemblage of works previously undescribed
and unknown. Many of these works were produced at obscure localities
in France and the Netherlands; but Paris, Douay, Brussels, Antwerp,
Mecklin, Tournai, Bruges, Ghent, Breda, are responsible for a
majority. Besides the purely religious publications, quite a large
number of secular books, and those of permanent and striking interest,
owed their origin to the same region, particularly to Amsterdam, the
Hague, Middelburg, Dort. The source of all this foreign production was
mainly either the employment of Englishmen and Scots abroad on
military service, or their residence there in exile or for other
purposes. Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and even Poland, lent their
presses to the British author; the scarce tracts by James Crichton
(the Admirable) proceeded from Milan or Venice. We know what important
centres for English controversial divinity and political
pamphleteering were Geneva, Basle, and Zuerich, and the last-named
place is particularly associated with the name of Christopher
Froeschover, printer of the Bible of 1550. A distinct feature in this
vast body of Continental typography connected with us is the curious
and often unique light which it incidentally throws on the lives of
our countrymen and countrywomen, segregated by their employments or
opinions from their compatriots at home, and obliged to resort to
printers ignorant of the language which they committed to type. A
tolerably exhaustive estimate may be found of this branch of the
subject by a reference to the _General Index_ of Hazlitt's COLLECTIONS
(1867-91).
To the Duke of Sussex's Catalogue, and those of Lea Wilson, George
Offor, Francis Fry, William Maskell, W. J. Loftie, W. J. Blew,
Farmer-Atkinson, Lord Ashburnham, and the Rev. W. Makellar of
Edinburgh, we must go for the means of bibliographically estimating
the editions of the Scriptures and the Prayer-Book; and the Huth and
Caxton Exhibition Catalogues should be consulted. The ordinary English
and American collector seldom goes beyond English, French, German, and
Latin Bibles. Of all these, not even excepting the Fust and Gutenberg
or Mazarin, the original impression of the Scriptures in French,
published at Paris and Antwerp in six volumes between 1523 and 1528,
is by far the rarest; and the next place or rank is perhaps due to the
German one, printed at Zuerich in the same number of volumes, 1527-29,
of which an imperfect copy is in the Huth Library. The Mazarin Bible
has grown rather commoner of late years. It is certainly much more so
than Coverdale's English one of 1535 in a perfect state, or Tyndale's
New Testament of 1526. It is a point about it not generally known,
that the extant copies on vellum and on paper differ.
For History, Genealogy, Topography, and well-nigh all other branches
of human science, the student finds himself referred to the
Middle-Hill Library, now in course of gradual dispersion; but this is
far richer in the manuscript than in the printed book department. He
may also profitably consult the catalogues of Mr. Hartley and Mr.
Tyrrell (City Remembrancer), of whom the second collected largely on
London.
Mr. Bolton Corney, Mr. Grenville, and Mr. Jadis made voyages and
travels, books relating to America, and the first-named literary
_adversaria_, distinct features in their enormous aggregate of
volumes.
Information on early English poetry and the drama may be sought in the
catalogues of Sykes, Perry, Caldecott, Heber, Chalmers, Jolley,
Wolfreston, Way, Daniel, Corser, Collier, Frere, Bliss, Bright,
Mitford, Ouvry, Bandinel, Halliwell-Phillipps, and of course Huth.
Mr. Brook Pulham concentrated his attention on the writings of George
Wither, Mr. Bragge on works illustrative of Smokers and Tobacco, and
Major Irwin on the occult and supernatural.
Mr. Henry Pyne during a long series of years made an extensive
collection, restricted to English books dated prior to the year 1600,
and as a rule, it must be added, to the commoner class of
publications.