Our failure to realise the requirements of Illustrated Books--The
French School--La Fontaine's _Contes et Nouvelles_,
1762--Imperfect conception of what constitutes a thoroughly
complete copy--The Crawford copy--Comparative selling values of
copies--The _Fables_ of the same author--Dorat--La
Borde--Beaumarchais--Contrast between the English and French
Schools--Process-printing--The _Edition de Luxe_--Its proper
destination and limit--The Illustrated Copy--Increasing
difficulty in forming it--Unsatisfactory character of the
majority of specimens--Analogy between the French taste in books
and in _vertu_--Temper of the foreign markets--The Anglo-American
collector--The Parisian _gout_--The famous mud-stained volume of
tracts in the British Museum--Foreign translations of early
English tracts.
OF the _Illustrated Book_, the _Illustrated Copy_, and the _Edition de
Luxe_ we have spoken a few words elsewhere.[2] These are three forms
of competition, which represent as many sources of danger and
disappointment to the inexperienced. When we refer to illustrated
books we of course signify books with woodcuts and other graphic
embellishments from the earliest period, such as the Block Books, the
_Game and Play of the Chess_, the Caxton _AEsop_, the _Nuernberg
Chronicle_, 1493, the _Poliphilo_, 1499, the _Ship of Fools_, 1497,
and the _Dance of Death_; collections of Portraits and Views; down to
the productions of the modern school, and comprising the popular
abridgments of Crouch or Burton, of which an idea may be gained from
the list printed at the end of Bliss's _Reliquiae Hearnianae_, 1857, and
the cheap editions of romances and story-books brought out by sundry
stationers at prices ranging from threepence to a penny in the closing
years of the seventeenth century. In the English series, independently
of the woodcuts which incidentally occur in the books printed by
Caxton and his immediate successors and the _Emblem_ series, there are
Roeslin's _Birth of Mankind_, by Raynald, 1540, Braun's _Civitates
Orbis Terrarum_, Gemini's _Anatomy_, 1545, Godet's _Genealogy of all
the Kings of England_, 1563, Saxton's _Maps_, Holinshed's
_Chronicles_, 1577, Harington's _Ariosto_, 1591, Holland's
_Baziologia_, 1618, and _Heroeologia_, 1620, the various works
illustrated by Pass, Elstracke, Hollar, Barlow, and others, Vicars's
_England's Worthies_, 1645, Ricraft's _Survey of England's Champions_,
1647, and other publications by Ricraft with engravings, till we come
down to the pictorial histories of England by Bishop White, Kennett,
and Rapin and Tindal, Pine's _Horace_, and Buck's _Views_. No doubt
among these there are interesting specimens for the respective
periods. It is noticeable that in the Holinshed of 1577 the
illustrations are frequently repeated without regard to the context.
The engravings by Hollar and Barlow are the most pleasing. But the
_Basiliologia_, 1618, is the rarest book in the whole range of this
class of literature. Pine's _Horace_, even in the first edition,
1733, with the _Post Est_ reading, is common enough; and it has been
found uncut. So far as we are concerned, we should prefer it in the
original morocco. As a text it is of no account.
Coming lower down, we may specify or emphasise a few _chefs
d'oeuvre_, such as Hogarth's Prints in the first or best states,
Turner's _Liber Studiorum_, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Graphic Works, and
Lodge's _Portraits_. But we are neither so wealthy nor so advanced as
our French and German neighbours in this direction, and the former may
be affirmed to stand alone in the possession of a class of books with
engravings germane to the national genius and to the feeling and
spirit of the time which produced such masterpieces in their way. Of
works illustrated by copper-plates, that by Roeslin on Midwifery,
1540, above-named, seems to be the first in chronological order; but
both this and the Gemini of 1545 probably owed their embellishments to
foreign sources.
Our own country is probably weakest in this department; many of the
engravings in our early literature are direct copies from the German,
Dutch, or French masters; the names of some of our leading artists are
those of foreigners; and we have comparatively little to show of
strictly original work till the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, when we may place our national efforts side by side with
uninterrupted Continental series from the middle of the fifteenth. We
are also poorly provided with books of reference enabling amateurs to
form an idea of the extent of the field and of the relative
practicability and costliness of given classes or lines, whereas the
foreign collector enjoys the advantage of many excellent and fairly
trustworthy manuals. We want a General Guide to English Illustrated
Literature, which should exhibit its sources and inspiration, and the
epochs and schools into which it is divisible.
Of course, it stands with the present description of literary
monuments as it does with the normal book. An enterprise which should
aim at being exhaustive would prove excessively serious in point of
outlay, and would hardly be so satisfactory as one either on a
miscellaneous or a special principle.
Meanwhile, it is desirable that statements offered in catalogues of
various kinds should aim at accuracy as far as possible. It is
singular what a vitality resides in errors when they have been pointed
out by experts, and ought to be recognised. The auctioneers seem to
keep the type of certain notes standing, as they are repeated in
catalogue after catalogue without any other gain than that of
misleading such as know no better. One familiar acquaintance of this
class is the _dictum_ that the copper-plates in Hugh Broughton's
_Concent of Scripture_, 1596, are the earliest of the kind executed in
England, although they had not only been preceded by the prints in
Harington's _Ariosto_, 1591, but by those accompanying the _Birth of
Mankind_ by Roeslin, 1540, and the _Anatomie Delineatio_ of Thomas
Gemini, 1545.
The average collector, who possesses tolerable judgment, and has the
authorities at his elbow, cannot go far astray if he buys what pleases
him among the ordinary books of medium price, and may acquire examples
of every period and place of origin, as opportunities arise. Or he may
limit himself to early German, Dutch, Italian, or French books with
woodcuts, to the French illustrated literature of the eighteenth
century, to volumes with engravings by Bewick, Stothard, or
Bartolozzi, or to modern works with proof-plates, etchings, and other
choice varieties. It is literally impossible to fix any _maximum_ or
_minimum_ of cost in this case; so much depends in graphic
publications on niceties of difference; and a law prevails here
analogous to that which governs the Print, that is to say, that a more
or less slight point of detail vitally affects values. Let us take
such a familiar instance as Lodge's _Portraits of Illustrious
Personages_. One may have a copy in Bohn's Libraries for a dozen
shillings; and one may give seventy or eighty sovereigns for a
large-paper copy with india proofs of the four-volume folio edition of
1821. On the whole, the twelve-volume quarto book is almost
preferable, as in the folio there is the disadvantage of three volumes
having copper-plates and one (the fourth) steel engravings, and the
quarto is obtainable for L20 or L25 in morocco.
Very few of the English portraits in the engraved series antecedent to
Lodge are trustworthy, as this branch of specialism was not properly
studied and understood down to the present century, and even the heads
executed by Houbraken are not unfrequently apocryphal. Such a
criticism applies less to royal personages than to private
individuals, of whom the painted likenesses were apt, after the lapse
of years, to be not so easily identifiable.
We have excellent monographs on Bewick and Bartolozzi by Mr. Hugo and
Mr. Tuer respectively; and there is the delightful biography of
Stothard by Mrs. Bray, 1851, with profuse illustrations of his various
artistic productions and progressive style. Many of the scarcer
examples of Bartolozzi have been imitated. To the collector who limits
his interest to artists in book-shape, the first editions on large or
largest paper of the _Birds_, _Quadrupeds_, and _Select Fables_ of
Bewick are most familiar and most desirable. Stothard is seen to
advantage in the engravings to Ritson's _English Songs_, 1783. Much of
his work lies outside the mere library. For a general view of that
branch of the subject, Jackson and Chatto's _Treatise on Wood
Engraving_, 1839, may be recommended, so far as the printed book is
concerned.
We do not dwell on the modern illustrated literature, which demands
less study, and offers few features of interest, especially that
produced at home. Too large a proportion of it, however, whatever may
be the origin, is indifferent in quality and permanent worth.
Publications are at present, like other commodities, prepared with a
main eye to sale; the sense of pride and honour on the part of the
producer is dulled; he manufactures in gross. There are the showy
volumes of Yriate on Venice, Florence, and other subjects, with
letterpress written apparently to accompany blocks and plates in the
publisher's warehouse.
Perhaps, if we seek something more elevated and creditable, it will be
in certain periodicals conducted on higher lines than those to which
the ordinary publisher has from financial exigencies to be bound; and
of these there are several both in France and England--nay, in Italy,
in Australia.
The Illustrated Book, as we are familiar with it here, affords
innumerable examples of varied treatment, as the school of design and
the public taste differ or fluctuate from century to century, from age
to age, and even from season to season. We do not speak of the cheaper
literature in this class, accompanied by engravings so intolerably
poor as to disarm criticism, but to the higher efforts of the artist
to respond to the author, and to appeal more directly to the eye. In
this country, however, we have not so far been so fortunate, or
otherwise, as to attain the Continental ideal of what the graphic
portion of a literary performance should be; and the question is
intimately associated, particularly in France and among foreign buyers
of the French school, who are numerous in all parts of the world, with
that of binding, inasmuch as a volume possessing pictorial
embellishments of whatever kind must fulfil all requirements in that
respect no less than in the outward vesture, and what may be termed
the complemental book-plate.
One of the eighteenth-century French productions which answers most
thoroughly to the just foregoing description, is the "Fermiers
Generaux" edition of the _Contes et Nouvelles_ of La Fontaine, 2 vols.
8vo, 1762. The ordinary copies of this work, of which the whole charm
lies in the meretricious plates by Eisen (for the text is inoffensive
enough), are distinguished by the presence or otherwise of two or
three plates in a particular state, those left as originally printed
being preferred, because they offer certain unconventional details
subsequently modified. But, in fact, to make a perfect exemplar of the
work, to satisfy the demand of a rigid connoisseur, you have to
combine features in the shape of proofs before letters and vignettes
taken off separately, besides extra engravings by other artists not
strictly belonging to the edition, until you have a complete album of
_bijoux indiscrets_, and in the old French morocco by Derome or
Bozerian a L200 lot. The Earl of Crawford's copy, which was to have
been sold at Sotheby's in July 1896 (No. 493 of catalogue), was a
masterpiece of this description; but it was withdrawn. It has since
been sold to another noble lord--the Earl of Carnarvon.
A copy of the normal _decouvert_ type of the _Contes et Nouvelles_,
1762, may be had, according to condition and binding, for between L10
and L50. It has been said of the extra plates to the _Contes et
Nouvelles_ of La Fontaine that their rejection as part of the
published work ought to be a matter neither of surprise nor of
regret, for they are not only flagrantly indecent, but are poor and
unsatisfying from an artistic point of view. Another favourite edition
of the _Tales_ is that with the plates by Romeyn de Hooge, 1685, 2
vols. 8vo; but you must have it on fine paper in old morocco.
Looking at the illustrated editions of the _Tales_ generally, the
plates, except the charming head and tail pieces, do great injustice
to the text, which the author can hardly have foreseen the possibility
of being deformed and discredited by such forced and exaggerated
constructions of his meaning.
The edition of La Fontaine's _Fables_ by Oudry, 4 vols. folio,
1755-59, is almost equally sought by connoisseurs, though on somewhat
different grounds. Some copies in one of the plates, where there is a
tavern sign, have on the board a lion rampant. In the Bibliotheque at
Paris is a copy on largest paper bound for Marie Antoinette with
original decorations by Oudry himself on the covers; it is only a
single book out of thousands which they have there, yet it might make
a day's sale, and a remunerative one, in Wellington Street in the
Strand! Boccaccio, 5 vols. 8vo, 1757, with plates by Eisen, Gravelot,
and others, enters into this series; it is not an uncommon book, and
is found with a French and an Italian text, of which the former is
generally preferred. It is necessary to secure a copy in all respects
faultless. But far more important and relatively costly are the
_Baisers_ of Dorat, 1770, printed on _grand papier de Hollande_, with
the title in red and black, and, above all, Laborde's _Choix de
Chansons_, 1773, always a dear publication when the state is right,
and excessively difficult to obtain with proof plates; the Magniac
copy was bought by Mr. Quaritch at Phillips's a few years since for
upwards of L200, and sold by him, we believe, to Lord Carnarvon.
Another copy, with the plates in unlettered proof state, is marked
L250 in Pearson & Co.'s Catalogue, 1897-98. _La Folle Journee_, by
Beaumarchais, with engravings of the same period and character, is
also a charming production, and commands a good price.
The minutiae into which the enthusiasts for the graphic French
literature produced in the closing years of the ancient regime permit
themselves to enter is rather bewildering to a novice or an outsider,
and certainly asks as much study as it can well be worth. The
cultivation of the pursuit has naturally brought into existence a
small library of monographs, of which that by Cohen is one of the best
known and the most frequently quoted. There is an equal degree of
difference between the pictorial features of books produced in England
and on the Continent during the past and the present centuries. In
France there still reigns the spirit of enterprise conducive to the
execution of high-class work; but among ourselves it is painful to
contemplate the decline, not of power, but of encouragement, and the
unhealthy tendency to a style of illustration which will not probably
be very creditable to the country in retrospect. A collection of
modern illustrated works of mixed origin may well dispense, except by
way of sample and contrast, with much of the fantastic and
preposterous creations of some of the latter-day masters.
The _Edition de Luxe_, the _Large_, _Larger_, and _Largest Paper_, the
copy on yellow paper, blue paper, writing paper, on _papier de
Hollande_, _de Chine_, or _d'Inde_, or on Japanese vellum, the very
limited impression, are among the fancies and demands of the
omnivorous past. A short study of the supplement to Bonn's _Lowndes_
and of Martin's _Privately Printed Books_ will suffice to show that
not only a library, but a tolerably extended one, might be formed of
these classes of literature exclusively; and indeed the thing has been
more than once actually done. Utterson, Halliwell, Laing, Maidment,
Eyton, Turnbull, and others have contributed to leave to us a
voluminous inheritance of now rather neglected and undervalued
curiosities of this kind. But even here the discriminating collector
may still advantageously pick out items worth buying and holding, for
in the case of every artificial _furore_ the good, bad, and
indifferent are apt to rise and to fall together, while it is reserved
only for the first to experience a revival--the Revival of the
Fittest.
The Illustrated Copy is an indefinite quantity as to character and
importance or estimation, since no two correspond. Nearly all those
which have been formed are more or less unequal, even where there has
been no regard to cost, and every care has been exercised in the
selection of objects; for there is a chronic tendency to become
complete. But so far as the normal undertaking of this class is
concerned, we usually perceive a few desirable and appropriate prints
or drawings as a sort of _piece de resistance_, and the remainder is
made up anyhow. Even such a book as the Pennant's _London_ in the Huth
Collection strikes us as unsatisfactory on the ground stated; there is
a share of merit in the choice of embellishments; there is also too
considerable a residuum of comparative rubbish; and if it is so here,
the reader may judge how the matter stands with illustrated books of
the ordinary stamp made up for sale. There is one remark to be
offered. The really fine prints and other similar productions are too
valuable to treat in this way, as they would necessarily render the
work, when it was ready for the client, too expensive. A Pennant, for
example, exclusively composed of first-rate material, and tolerably
representative in regard to names and localities, would be worth
thousands of pounds. The time for securing prizes for this purpose at
a moderate figure has gone by. The catalogues advertise copies
"extensively and tastefully" illustrated with hundreds or thousands of
portraits and views; and the bidding or demand, as the case may be, is
carried to L20, L50, or L100. Our advice is, Not to touch. It is
preferable to have a few chosen examples in a portfolio.
It is not always that the Illustrated Copy is restricted to
engravings and other works of art. Autograph letters enter into the
plan, and facsimiles of title-pages or other cognate and more or less
relevant objects. One of the most recent enterprises of this nature--a
Boswell's _Johnson_--cost the actual possessor about L10,000; it was
extended to forty-two volumes, and aimed at having a token of some
kind of every one mentioned in the text. So we advance. It was deemed
a piece of extravagance when, forty or fifty years ago, the late Sir
William Stirling-Maxwell expended about L1000 in forming an
illustrated copy of his own _Cloister Life of Charles V._
The Nature-printing, Autotype, Photogravure, Collotype, and other
processes strike us as hardly falling within the category here
contemplated, although that they are material accessions to our
resources is undoubted. They are the fruit of a combination between
nature and mechanical science; their fidelity for portraiture and
technical purposes may be granted; but they do not realise the notion
of artistic embellishment or interpretation, nor are they capable of
rendering with anything approaching truth the more delicate and subtle
touches of the miniaturist.
The _Edition de Luxe_ is dilettantism _in extremis_. It is a movement
which seems to rest on a false theory and basis. It should have
limited itself to _nugae literariae_, to _bagatelles_, which no mortal
sought to read, and which might be harmlessly printed on any material,
of any latitude and longitude, in any type, or else to graphic works
where the luxury would more comfortably and more suitably make itself
manifest in illustrations varied and duplicated to whatever extent it
pleased the issuer, or was calculated to gratify his clients. But to
apply the principle to books so essentially appealing to practical
readers as Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and others, was an unfortunate
step and precedent, which has thrown on the market a large amount of
stock not easily moved even at a heavy discount on the published
price.
Merely looking at the _bibliophile_ pure and simple, and shutting our
eyes to those phases of book-collecting, where the principle or sole
aim is educational or religious, we incline to the conclusion that
foreigners, and above all the French, are less practical than
ourselves, and lay far greater stress on sentiment.
The French, and we may perhaps add the Anglo-French school of
book-collecting, works on lines which to a normal lover of books must
at first appear rather mysterious and strange, if not absolutely
irrational. The closest analogy which it is in our power to suggest is
the almost parallel sentiment and policy in regard to other branches
of inquiry--china, furniture, numismatics. The Frenchman and his
English disciple have no respect whatever as _collectionneurs_ for
substantial value, and agree in ignoring everything, good, bad,
indifferent, outside a prescribed limit.
The temper of the foreign markets, especially the French one, is so
essentially different from that of England, that it demands an almost
life-long study of the subject to comprehend the true principles by
which they are guided and influenced. In what we are just now urging,
we must of course be understood to allude to the _amateur_ pure and
simple,--in fact, if it may be said without offence, to the virtuoso.
There are foreign book-collectors, as there are English, who seek
copies of works within their lines, whatever those lines may be, for
the sake of information and reference. The collector has no such aim.
He aspires to make himself master of so many items answering to
certain inexorable postulates laid down by the experts in such
matters. His taste has happened to take a bibliographical direction
and shape; it is hardly a literary one; and the objects of his
pursuit, instead of being pictures, prints, antiquities, gems, or
coins, are things in book-form.
Monsieur and his British satellite cultivate exclusively what is
French, just as in the numismatic department Monsieur will only buy
French coins or Franco-Italian ones, or the money of Monsieur's direct
ancestors, the Greeks and Romans. It is the same principle throughout;
and the undoubted fact is before us that, if the article to be sold is
right in all respects, the price is marvellous. One can understand a
high appreciation of some superb or unique example of ancient
typography, of a book which has belonged to a famous person, or of a
manuscript like the _Bedford Missal_ or the _Hours_ of Anne of
Brittany. One can understand, again, the enthusiasm for an unrecorded
old poem, romance, or play, for a production by an eminent author
supposed to have perished, or for a precious relic such as the Manesse
MS., presented by the German Emperor Frederic to the library at
Heidelberg, from which it had been taken by the French during the wars
of the Revolution. But the Parisian _gout_ is less intent on such
matters than on flimsy and effeminate specialities. A copy of a book,
it does not signify how valuable intrinsically it may be, is worth
nothing in the eyes of _Monsieur_ and _Monsieur d'Angleterre son ami_,
unless it is in a particular vesture, with a particular _ex libris_,
and of a particular measurement in _millesimes_. _MM. les amateurs_
reject not merely calf, but that vellum wrapper and that stitched
paper envelope so dear to us English--so dear that when one of us has
given hundreds of pounds for a book thus clothed, rather than commit
it to a binder, we employ him to make us a case for the gem. The
volume of tracts which Charles I. borrowed of Thomason the stationer,
and let fall in the mud, what could Monsieur do with it? Absolutely
nothing. But the British Museum cherishes the relic, and would not on
any account, we solemnly believe, suffer the stains to be removed.
They are the credentials, the link between the king and ourselves.
On the subject of French books in regard to their bindings we shall
have more to say below.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Four Generations of a Literary Family_, 1897, ii. 371.