Early English literature--Absorption of the rarer items by public
libraries or by America--Future of collecting--Poetical writers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Fruits of a long
neglect--Want of discrimination among private buyers--Necessity
for a better training or sounder advice--Remarks on our early
literature--Small proportion of high-class authors--Safe and
unsafe investments--Condition of copies--Writers whose works are
of mysterious rarity--Nicholas Breton--"Three-halfpenny
ware"--Paucity of great names in the post-Restoration period down
to our own--Foreign works belonging to the English series: their
chief places of origin--English presses--Typographical
vicissitudes of London--The Scotish Series--Scotish presses--The
Irish Series--Irish presses--The Irish Stock--The List of Claims,
1701--Anglo-American literature and early American editions of
English Classics--The American Colonial group of books--The _Bay
Psalm-Book_, 1640--The volumes of Statutes printed at Boston,
Philadelphia, and New York--Sources of information on
Anglo-American bibliography--Caution against impatience and
enthusiasm.
THE entire range of the earlier English and Scotish romantic,
poetical, and even historical literature embraces so many items, which
are either unattainable from their rarity or their cost, if they
happen once in a lifetime to occur, that it may be said to be ground
almost closed against the ordinary private buyer. Articles which are
to be seen by the hundred in the priced catalogues of libraries
dispersed twenty or thirty years since with fairly moderate figures
attached to them, have, owing to severer competition from America as
well as at home, either for public or private purchasers, trebled or
quadrupled in value. With the more modern literature, of which the
positive scarcity does not warrant this great inflation, we may
reasonably look for a fall; but in the case of volumes which are
really rare, it is hard to see how the chances of collectors can be
improved in the future. The upshot will be, that they must be
satisfied with smaller fish or modify their lines; for of old and
elderly books of intrinsic value and interest there is a plentiful
choice. With regard to a considerable body of Early English volumes,
which formerly appeared in the catalogues of Thorpe, Rodd, the elder
Pickering, and others, it is to be said that the fewness of survivors
was not appreciated, and half-a-dozen public or closed libraries have
absorbed them all.
It exemplifies the remarkable revolution in feeling and taste when we
turn over the pages of one of William Pickering's catalogues--that for
1827--and observe a perfect set of the four folio Shakespeares,
1623-85, marked L105, while a large-paper series of Hearne's books, or
of some standard edition of the classics in morocco, cost more;
whereas at present the Hearnes and the classics are barely saleable at
any price, and the dramatic volumes might be worth twenty times more
than they brought seventy years since.
The poetical writers of the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Stuart eras have
had, in a commercial sense, two or three reverses of fortune. From the
period of publication down to the last quarter of the eighteenth
century they were to be bought at prices little beyond waste paper, so
soon as the original interest in them had subsided. The editors of
Shakespeare--Pope, Hanmer, Theobald, Warburton, Capell, Steevens,
Malone, Farmer, and Reed--awakened a sort of new interest in the
subject, just in time to save the slender salvage of a century and a
half's neglect or indifference from the mill and the kitchen-fire; and
their example led to others coming upon the ground, such as West,
Major Pearson, the Duke of Roxburghe, Lord Blandford, Lord Spencer,
Bindley, and Heber, whose motives were primarily acquisitive. In or
about 1833 a strong reaction set in, and prices fell till 1842-45,
when the Bright and Chalmers sales, and the more sensible competition
of the British Museum, again restored confidence and strength to the
market. Since that time, our old poets have not, on the whole,
suffered any marked decline, and the most recent revival is in their
favour.
The Americans, it seems, call for first editions, and they have not to
call twice, though they may be required to pay smartly. This new
ticket owes its origin to the usual agency. One or two Transatlantic
book-lovers gain the information from some source that this is the
real article, that if you want fine poetry you must go to these
fellows--not exactly Shakespeare and Spenser, for they had heard of
them before--but to Gascoigne, Sydney, Herrick, Carew, Suckling,
Lovelace, and the rest of the company; and above all, if you desire to
enjoy their beauties and appreciate their genius fully and absolutely,
you are referred to the _editio princeps_--not that which the author
corrected and preferred, but the one in morocco extra, which your
bookseller recommends to you.
It is by no means that we seek to ridicule or discourage the pursuit,
but we want and wish to see a more healthy and discriminating spirit
among buyers. Let intending collectors devote a reasonable time to a
preparatory study of the subject and survey of the field and then they
will perhaps accomplish better results at a lower cost. Let them, once
more, not be in too violent a hurry. The abundance of transmitted
writings in a metrical shape only proves more conclusively the
familiar fact that it is as easy to compose verses as it is difficult
to compose poetry. The long succession of authors who fall within the
category of poets has received an extent of editorial care and
illustration in the course of the century, however, which argues the
prevalence of a more favourable opinion of their merits. The names
which are at present commanding chief notice are those which have
always been esteemed: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Beaumont, Jonson, Daniel,
Drayton, Wither, Sir John Davis, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and
Suckling; and among the Scotish bards Drummond takes the lead. The
most singular feature about the matter is that, in the presence of all
kinds of critical editions, the demand is not for them, but for the
originals. The mission of the modern recensor comes to an end when, by
a stupendous amount of research and erudition, he has emphasised the
characteristics and gifts of a writer. Then the amateur steps forward,
and expresses his readiness to give any price for the good old book,
undisfigured by notes and emendations!
It is perhaps fruitless to attempt to turn the tide of common
sentiment, and gentlemen must be permitted to choose their own money's
worth. They may think and say that they want the volume as it left the
author's hands, not diluted and overlaid by commentators. Granted, it
is a product of the time, even though the author did not see the
proofs, and the printer could not always decipher the MS. But then
comes the larger and more general question: How much of the better
class of early verse-writers are worth reading? The present deponent,
without being conscious that he is very hyper-critical, states the
deliberate result of actual examination and perusal when he affirms
that of the minor poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
save perhaps Randolph, the productions of enduring value and interest
could be brought within the compass of a moderate volume.
It would be eminently unwise for any one who treats his library as an
investment to yield to the existing tendency to exorbitant prices for
the later poets and playwrights, as the rise is due to ephemeral
causes, and the demand, for the most part, is not likely to exhaust
the supply.
If the truth may be told, the literature of past ages in all
countries, and nowhere more so than in England, is, in proportion to
its immense extent, excessively barren of high-class writers or
written matter. Each generation of collectors discovers this fact at
last; but it discovers it for itself. We disdain to profit by the
experience of our precursors, just as the little girl insisted on
learning at her own cost how foolish it was to do a certain thing.
Because there are a few highly interesting catholic publications, your
amateur must be absolutely complete in the series. If it seems
expedient to possess an example or two of ancient typography, he ends
by doing his best to accumulate every example in the market. There is
more than a probability that the service-books of the Romish Church
have their archaeological and literary value: _ergo_, he orders every
one which he sees advertised, albeit the differences are substantially
far from momentous. He understands that some very curious volumes
illustrative of ritualism and the various holy orders were printed
here or abroad, and he proceeds to drain the booksellers' shelves
throughout the universe of every bit of sorry stuff answering to this
description. There are a dozen or so of Collections of Emblems,
English or foreign, which are supposed to throw light on passages in
Shakespeare and other authors; this is sufficient leverage for the
concentration under the unfortunate gentleman's roof of a closely
packed cartload.
Seriously and bibliographically speaking, there is a fairly wide
difference and disparity among the old editions of the poets and
romancists; and there are, and always will be, a distinguished
minority, of which the selling prices may be expected to remain firm.
Such men as Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chapman,
Massinger, and among the lyric group Barnfield, Watson, Constable,
Wither (earlier works and _Hallelujah_), Carew, Herrick, Suckling, and
Lovelace, are to be viewed as standard and stable.
Then in the Scotish series there is permanence in Lyndsay, Drummond,
and Burns. But, on the contrary, the minor, more obscure, or commoner
productions must be carefully distinguished and circumspectly handled
by those who do not desire or cannot afford to throw away their money.
The names above cited are themselves very unequal; some, like Breton,
Churchyard, Whetstone, Barnfield, Watson, and Constable, are sought,
and will ever be sought, by reason of their peculiar rarity; and, save
in a sentimental way, no one would probably dream of placing Beaumont,
Chapman, Wither, and some of the rest on a par with Shakespeare,
Fletcher, and Massinger. There has been, however, a tendency to force
on the notice of book-buyers, _faute de mieux_, many writers whose
productions are neither rare nor of the first class--Heywood, Dekker,
Webster, Ford, and Shirley--and to bracket them commercially with
authentic _desiderata_ either on the score of merit or of scarcity. Of
the three former, the most difficult pieces to procure are the Civic
Pageants. Nearly all Ford's and Shirley's works, except the _Echo_ of
the latter, 1618, are classable among common books even in the first
editions.
Again, condition is a postulate which begins to assert itself in the
book-market. Poor and bad copies are eschewed by many or most of those
who are willing to pay handsomely for fine specimens; and the worst
type of indifferent exemplars is the sophisticated volume, which can
be manipulated by experts to such an extent that even a person of
considerable experience will now and then be at fault. The American
collector grows more fastidious every day, and discovers blemishes
which we on this side of the water try to tolerate, if the article is
rare or we badly want it. Our Transatlantic friends, however, are more
inexorable, and go so far as to return purchases not answering the
description in the auctioneer's catalogue to their English
commission-agents.
We have instanced above two or three writers whose works command
excessive prices mainly by virtue of the paucity of surviving copies,
seconded by a faint and indirect literary interest; but we see that
the list is open to extension. During the last half-century and upward
the publications of Nicholas Breton have fetched sums, when they have
occurred, totally incompatible with any intrinsic value; with some few
exceptions they belong to the category of "three-halfpenny ware," as
Chamberlain the letter-writer styles such things in his correspondence
with Sir Dudley Carleton; half-a-dozen or so out of forty and more
are undoubtedly curious and illustrative; but Mr. Corser and one or
two other collectors made a speciality of the author. It is only the
other day that Sir John Fenn's copy of Breton's _Works of a Young
Wit_, 1577, recorded by Herbert in his _Typographical Antiquities_,
and the only perfect one known, occurred at an auction and fetched
L81! A fine book it was, too, with the blank leaf at end. Doubtless,
the reason for the evanescence of Breton's literary labours is to be
sought in their estimation by many, besides the letter-writer above
quoted, as barely more than waste paper. Verily, their substantial
worth is barely tangible.
Speaking from a connoisseur's rather than from a reader's point of
view, when we leave behind us the pre-Restoration writers of Great
Britain and Ireland, we do not encounter much difficulty in a
commercial sense, if we consider the length of time and the almost
innumerable names, excepting Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, Swift's
_Gulliver_, Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_, Goldsmith's _Vicar of
Wakefield_, and a few early Byrons and Shelleys, unless the buyer
schedules among his _desiderata_ the earlier Anglo-American
literature. For as we draw nearer to our own day, items which were
thought to be superlatively uncommon, including sundry pieces by
Tennyson and Browning, have failed to maintain their reputation for
scarcity, as any one might have foreseen that they would do. The
preposterous prices paid for some copies have brought out others, and
the ultimate supply will probably exceed the demand.
Even where an English collection may not enter the Continental lines,
but preserves its national character, there are numerous classes of
books of foreign origin and from foreign presses, which are fairly
entitled to consideration and admittance. These publications embrace
not merely religious and controversial literature, but a large and
important body of material for English and Scotish biography and
history, and for the elucidation of Irish affairs. Every season brings
to light some new features in this immense series, which is, of
course, susceptible of a classifying process, and may be ranged under
such sections as we have above indicated, besides a considerable
residue which falls under the head of poetry and typography, the
latter constituting a branch of the History of English Printing, and
the former being worthy of notice as embracing some of the rarest
metrical productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which
owed their issue from presses in Germany and the Low Countries to
various agencies, but chiefly to the exigencies of foreign military
service by English and Scotish officers during the English operations
in the Netherlands under Elizabeth and during the Thirty Years' War.
The foreign sources of English books, or books written by or about
English, Scotish, and Irish folk, have been--
Aire
Amsterdam
Antwerp
Arras
Augsburg
Basle
Bologna
Boulogne
Breda
Bruges
Brussels
Constantinople
Dort
Florence
Flushing
Geneva
Ghent
Gouda
Haarlem
Leipsic
Leyden
Lyons
Malines
Middelburg
Milan
Munich
Munster
Paris
Parma
Pisa
Rome
Rotterdam
Strasburg-in-Elsass
The Hague
Tournai
Utrecht
Venice
Vevey
Wesel
Zuerich
It is always to be borne in mind that these adjuncts at the foot of
title-pages in troubled periods are not unfrequently fictitious; and
we have elsewhere equally shown that Greenwich and Waterford are names
appended to early controversial works of which the writers desired to
conceal the real parentage.
Of English presses it might seem almost superfluous to speak; but in
fact the typographical fortunes of London have experienced their flux
and reflux. At first we find the City itself in sole possession of the
industry and privilege; then Westminster came; thirdly, Southwark. Of
the provincial places of origin, Oxford appears to have been the
foremost, and was followed at intervals by York, Cambridge,
Canterbury, Ipswich, Worcester, and other centres, of which some
preserved their reputation down to comparatively recent times, while
Oxford and Cambridge of course remain important and busy seats of
printing. Beverley, Nottingham, Derby, Northampton, Bristol,
Birmingham, Gateshead, and Newcastle-on-Tyne have never been more than
occasional sources of literary production, and certain towns, such as
Lincoln and Gainsborough, are only known from local or small popular
efforts; there is an edition of _Robin Hood's Garland_ with the
Gainsborough imprint. One or two publications purporting to have been
executed at Sherborne in Dorsetshire belong to the firm of William
Bowyer of London.
There was a distinct centralising tendency at a later period, by which
the English metropolis absorbed the principal share of work, and it
was followed, owing to economical causes, by a reaction which we know
to be at present in full force, and which has restored to the
provinces, but to new localities, Bungay, Guildford, Bristol, no less
than Edinburgh and Aberdeen, an appreciable proportion of the custom
of the London publishing houses; nor is it unusual to send MSS. abroad
for the sake of the advantage accruing from cheaper labour. We not
long since secured this boon in Scotland; but Scotland has grown as
dear as London.
The SCOTISH SERIES is a difficult and costly one to handle. The early
vernacular literature of that country has suffered from two classes of
destructive agency, neglect and fanaticism, to a greater extent than
England, and the disappearance of the more popular books and tracts
has been wholesale. The attempt on the part of a collector, however
rich and persevering he might be, to form a complete series of
original editions of the poetical and romantic writers of North
Britain, could only be made in ignorance of the utter impossibility of
success. The late David Laing abundantly illustrated this fact in his
numerous publications, and further evidence of it may be found
throughout the bibliographical works of the present writer.
The old Scotish presses were Edinburgh, Leith, St. Andrew's, Glasgow,
Stirling, and Aberdeen; but a large proportion of the literary
productions of Scotish authors, including much of the historical group
relative to Mary Queen of Scots, proceeded from foreign places of
origin, where the writers had settled or were temporarily resident.
The principal channels through which we have in modern times augmented
our information of their products are the catalogues of Fraser of
Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, the Duke of Roxburghe, Pitcairn,
Constable, Chalmers, Maidment, Gibson-Craig, David Laing, and the Rev.
William Makellar, the last a cousin of Sir William Stirling Maxwell of
Keir, and a collector from 1838 to 1898.
A purely IRISH LIBRARY would inherently differ both from one limited
to English or to Scotish books. There is no early typography or
poetry, no works printed on vellum, no masterpieces of binding. The
collectors in that part of the empire have always been few in number,
and in fact Irish books have been chiefly collected by persons who
were not Irishmen, nor even residents in that country. It used to be
the case that, where a book was remarkably successful in England, the
Dublin booksellers reprinted it, and, as these reproductions are
generally scarcer than the originals, doubtless in limited numbers.
The series consists of a handful of books and tracts of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1570-1625); of publications relative
to the Civil War (1644-48); of others relative to the Commonwealth and
Jacobite troubles (1650-90); of literary illustrations of the state of
Ireland under the Houses of Orange, Stuart, and Brunswick or Hanover,
and of modern days. The bibliographical writings of Sir James Ware are
usually quoted and consulted for the literature within his time, but
they have become almost obsolete. The two other works of reference for
amateurs and students are those by Charles Vallancey (_Collectanea de
Rebus Hibernicis_, 1786-1807, 7 vols.) and Charles O'Conor (_Rerum
Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres_, 1814-26, 4 vols.).
But we have to go to more recent authorities to discover that the
typographical productions of Ireland in the first decade of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comprise a few books of the
greatest rarity and one or two of which no copies are at present
known. On the other hand, certain Elizabethan volumes, purporting to
have proceeded from Irish presses, are generally believed to have an
English origin, while others with German imprints of a later date
(second half of the seventeenth century) are absolutely proved to have
been clandestinely executed at home.
A very fair and comprehensive idea of the salient features in the
present series may be gained from the Grenville and Huth catalogues
and from Hazlitt's _Collections_ (General Index). Considerable stress
is laid by collectors on a large-paper copy with the _Decisions_
filled in in MS., the Memorandum, &c., of the _List of Claims_, 1701,
in connection with the Irish forfeitures. But in fact a copy of this
work is always available, when any one wants it, which is seldom
enough.
There was no _regular_ printing here till the beginning of the
seventeenth century, although one or two Marian tracts falsely purport
to have come from the Waterford press. Dublin had a printer, John
Frankton, who worked from 1601 to 1620 or thereabout, and produced
many books, tracts, and broadsheets, some not yet recovered; the city
also boasted a Society of Stationers in 1608, and many volumes
appeared at London "Printed for the Partners of the Irish Stock,"
referring to the Plantation of Ulster. The places in Ireland itself,
where the art of typography was pursued, were Dublin, Cork, Waterford,
Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Belfast (as in the section just dismissed).
But the rarest articles in the earlier series emanated from London or
from Continental presses, the writings of Nicholas French and
Cranford's _Tears of Ireland_, 1642, taking a prominent rank in the
latter category.
The leading collectors on Irish lines have been Sir Robert Peel, Mr.
Grenville, Mr. Huth, Mr. Bradshaw, Canon Tierney, Mr. Shirley, and
Bishop Daly.
In the English series I have supposed the admission of a certain
number or proportion of foreign books, which are of catholic interest,
and have acquired a standing among many classes of collectors whose
bias is principally national. But there are two other series of very
unequal extent, importance, and costliness, which more directly appeal
to the buyers of these islands, namely, the earlier Anglo-American
literature belonging to the Colonial period, and the American
reproductions of the favourite books of Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt,
Thackeray, and others in the present century. The latter category
enters into the department of curiosities, and has yet to acquire
bibliographical importance. In one or two cases, works issued at home
in numbers have been published in the States in book-form prior to
their appearance here. This happened with the _Yellow-Plush
Correspondence_, reprinted direct from _Fraser's Magazine_ at
Philadelphia in 1838, and curious as the writer's earliest separate
publication. These papers were not collected in England till 1841.
The products of the Colonial period include all the books emanating
from American presses between 1640, the date of the _Bay Psalm-Book_
at Cambridge, N.E., from the press of Stephen Day, and the Declaration
of Independence. There has been a disposition to treat the whole of
this output of printed matter with a special tenderness and reverence
on political grounds; but it obviously is of a very mixed and unequal
character, and, as time goes on, there must be a continuous winnowing
process, and a consignment to oblivion of a vast assortment of the
dullest theology and of political _ephemerides_. There will always
remain a rich heirloom to our American kinsfolk and ourselves of
historical nuggets in the shape of narratives of the fortunes and
careers of the Pilgrim Fathers, their experiments in statecraft, their
religious trials, their early superstitions and strange intolerance of
personal liberty in a land chosen by its settlers for liberty's sake;
and of course there is a section of literary products appertaining to
the New World, namely, ritualistic ordinances, liturgical manuals, and
collections of statutes, which derive what one is bound to term an
artificial interest from the local circumstances, or, in other words,
from the place of origin. A theological treatise, a Bible, a volume of
prayers, or a law-book, published in England in the second half of the
seventeenth century, may be worth from sixpence to a sovereign; if it
bears the imprint of Boston, Cambridge (N.E.), New York, Philadelphia,
or New London, its value may be computed in bank-notes. The _Laws of
Massachusetts_, 1660, was lately sold for L109, and the _Papers
Relating to Massachusetts Bay_, 1769, for L8, the latter in boards.
The reason (so far as there is any) for this inflation is twofold: the
patriotic sentiment which leads American amateurs to desire the oldest
and most precious typographical and historical monuments of their
country, and, secondly, the perhaps less justifiable enthusiasm of
some Englishmen for books which, as they may plead, are the offspring
of the States while they were still English settlements. A copious and
fairly contemporary view of the extensive family of works belonging to
the earlier Anglo-American library may be found in the bibliographies
of Stevens, Sabin, and Harrisse, and in the Grenville, Huth, Lenox,
and Tower catalogues. There is not only no line of collecting which is
more difficult and more costly than the present, but none which,
within the last twenty years, has, so far as first-rate rarities are
concerned, more seriously advanced, even inferior copies of certain
books fetching at times five times as much as good ones did in the
seventies. Just lately the call appears to come from the other side of
the Atlantic. There are two or three new bidders. That is sufficient.