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[Illustration: The Great Book-Collectors Charles & Mary Elton]
[Illustration: FABRI DE PEIRESC.]
The Great Book-Collectors
By Charles Isaac Elton
Author of 'Origins of English History'
'The Career of Columbus,' etc.
& Mary Augusta Elton
[Illustration]
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
MDCCCXCIII
Contents
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
CLASSICAL 1
CHAPTER II.
IRELAND--NORTHUMBRIA 13
CHAPTER III.
ENGLAND 27
CHAPTER IV.
ITALY--THE AGE OF PETRARCH 41
CHAPTER V.
OXFORD--DUKE HUMPHREY'S BOOKS--THE LIBRARY OF THE VALOIS 53
CHAPTER VI.
ITALY--THE RENAISSANCE 63
CHAPTER VII.
ITALIAN CITIES--OLYMPIA MORATA--URBINO--THE BOOKS OF CORVINUS 76
CHAPTER VIII.
GERMANY--FLANDERS--BURGUNDY--ENGLAND 87
CHAPTER IX.
FRANCE: EARLY BOOKMEN--ROYAL COLLECTORS 99
CHAPTER X.
THE OLD ROYAL LIBRARY--FAIRFAX--COTTON--HARLEY--THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 111
CHAPTER XI.
BODLEY--DIGBY--LAUD--SELDEN--ASHMOLE 124
CHAPTER XII.
GROLIER AND HIS SUCCESSORS 139
CHAPTER XIII.
LATER COLLECTORS: FRANCE--ITALY--SPAIN 158
CHAPTER XIV.
DE THOU--PINELLI--PEIRESC 169
CHAPTER XV.
FRENCH COLLECTORS--NAUDÉ TO RENOUARD 183
CHAPTER XVI.
LATER ENGLISH COLLECTORS 202
INDEX 221
List of Illustrations
PORTRAIT OF PEIRESC _Frontispiece_
(From an engraving by Claude Mellan.)
INITIAL LETTER FROM THE 'GOSPELS OF ST. CUTHBERT' 18
SEAL OF RICHARD DE BURY 38
PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF BEDFORD PRAYING BEFORE ST. GEORGE 59
(From the Book of Hours commonly known as the 'Bedford Missal.')
PORTRAIT OF MAGLIABECCHI 74
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)
BINDING EXECUTED FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH 112
(English jeweller's-work on a cover of red velvet. From a
copy of 'Meditationum Christianarum Libellus,' Lyons,
1570, in the British Museum.)
PORTRAIT OF SIR ROBERT COTTON 117
(From an engraving by R. White after C. Jonson.)
PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS BODLEY 126
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)
BINDING EXECUTED FOR GROLIER 141
(From a copy of Silius Italicus, Venice, 1523, in the British
Museum.)
PORTRAIT OF DE THOU 168
(From an engraving by Morin, after L. Ferdinand.)
CHAPTER I.
CLASSICAL.
In undertaking to write these few chapters on the lives of the
book-collectors, we feel that we must move between lines that seem
somewhat narrow, having regard to the possible range of the subject. We
shall therefore avoid as much as possible the description of particular
books, and shall endeavour to deal with the book-collector or
book-hunter, as distinguished from the owner of good books, from
librarians and specialists, from the merchant or broker of books and the
book-glutton who wants all that he sees.
Guillaume Postel and his friends found time to discuss the merits of the
authors before the Flood. Our own age neglects the libraries of Shem, and
casts doubts on the antiquity of the Book of Enoch. But even in writing
the briefest account of the great book-collectors, we are compelled to go
back to somewhat remote times, and to say at least a few words about the
ancient book-stories from the far East, from Greece and Rome, from Egypt
and Pontus and Asia. We have seen the brick-libraries of Nineveh and the
copies for the King at Babylon, and we have heard of the rolls of
Ecbatana. All the world knows how Nehemiah 'founded a library,' and how
the brave Maccabæus gathered again what had been lost by reason of the
wars. Every desert in the East seems to have held a library, where the
pillars of some temple lie in the sand, and where dead men 'hang their
mute thoughts on the mute walls around.' The Egyptian traveller sees the
site of the book-room of Rameses that was called the 'Hospital for the
Soul.' There was a library at the breast of the Sphinx, and another where
Cairo stands, and one at Alexandria that was burned in Julius Cæsar's
siege, besides the later assemblage in the House of Serapis which Omar
was said to have sacrificed as a tribute of respect for the Koran.
Asia Minor was celebrated for her libraries. There were 'many curious
books' in Ephesus, and rich stores of books at Antioch on the Orontes,
and where the gray-capped students 'chattered like water-fowl' by the
river at Tarsus. In Pergamus they made the fine parchment like ivory,
beloved, as an enemy has said, by 'yellow bibliomaniacs whose skins take
the colour of their food'; and there the wealthy race of Attalus built up
the royal collection which Antony captured in war and sent as a gift to
Cleopatra.
It pleased the Greeks to invent traditions about the books of Polycrates
at Samos, or those of Pisistratus that were counted among the spoils of
Xerxes: and the Athenians thought that the very same volumes found their
way home again after the victories of Alexander the Great. Aristotle
owned the first private library of which anything is actually recorded;
and it is still a matter of interest to follow the fortunes of his books.
He left them as a legacy to a pupil, who bequeathed them to his librarian
Neleus: and his family long preserved the collection in their home near
the ruins of Troy. One portion was bought by the Ptolemies for their
great Alexandrian library, and these books, we suppose, must have
perished in the war with Rome. The rest remained at home till there was
some fear of their being confiscated and carried to Pergamus. They were
removed in haste and stowed away in a cave, where they nearly perished in
the damp. When the parchments were disinterred they became the property
of Apellicon, to whom the saying was first applied that he was 'rather a
bibliophile than a lover of learning.' While the collection was at Athens
he did much damage to the scrolls by his attempt to restore their
worm-eaten paragraphs. Sulla took the city soon afterwards, and carried
the books to Rome, and here more damage was done by the careless editing
of Tyrannion, who made a trade of copying 'Aristotle's books' for the
libraries that were rising on all sides at Rome.
The Romans learned to be book-collectors in gathering the spoils of war.
When Carthage fell, the books, as some say, were given to native
chieftains, the predecessors of King Jugurtha in culture and of King Juba
in natural science: others say that they were awarded as a kind of
compensation to the family of the murdered Regulus. Their preservation is
attested by the fact that the Carthaginian texts were cited centuries
afterwards by the writers who described the most ancient voyages in the
Atlantic. When the unhappy Perseus was deprived of the kingdom of
Macedonia, the royal library was chosen by Æmilius Paullus as the
general's share of the plunder. Asinius Pollio furnished a great
reading-room with the literary treasures of Dalmatia. A public library
was established by Julius Cæsar on the Aventine, and two were set up by
Augustus within the precinct of the palace of the Cæsars; and Octavia
built another near the Tiber in memory of the young Marcellus. The gloomy
Domitian restored the library at the Capitol, which had been struck and
fired by lightning. Trajan ransacked the wealth of the world for his
collection in the 'Ulpiana,' which, in accordance with a later fashion,
became one of the principal attractions of the Thermæ of Diocletian.
The splendours of the private library began in the days of Lucullus.
Enriched with the treasure of King Mithridates and all the books of
Pontus, he housed his collection in such stately galleries, thronged with
a multitude of philosophers and poets, that it seemed as if there were a
new home for the Muses, and a fresh sanctuary for Hellas. Seneca, a
philosopher and a millionaire himself, inveighed against such useless
pomp. He used to rejoice at the blow that fell on the arrogant
magnificence of Alexandria. 'Our idle book-hunters,' he said, 'know about
nothing but titles and bindings: their chests of cedar and ivory, and the
book-cases that fill the bath-room, are nothing but fashionable
furniture, and have nothing to do with learning.' Lucian was quite as
severe on the book-hunters of the age of the Antonines. The bibliophile
goes book in hand, like the statue of Bellerophon with the letter, but he
only cares for the choice vellum and bosses of gold. 'I cannot conceive,'
said Lucian, 'what you expect to get out of your books; yet you are
always poring over them, and binding and tying them, and rubbing them
with saffron and oil of cedar, as if they could make you eloquent, when
by nature you are as dumb as a fish.' He compares the industrious dunce
to an ass at a music-book, or to a monkey that remains a monkey still for
all the gold on its jacket. 'If books,' he adds, 'have made you what you
are, I am sure that you ought of all things to avoid them.'
After the building of Constantinople a home for literature was found in
the eastern cities; and, as the boundaries of the empire were broken down
by the Saracen advance, learning gradually retired to the colleges and
basilicas of the capital, and to the Greek monasteries of stony Athos,
and Patmos, and the 'green Erebinthus.' Among the Romans of the East we
cannot discern many learned men, but we know that there was a multitude
ready to assist in the preservation of learning. The figures of three or
four true book-lovers stand out amid the crowd of _dilettanti_. St.
Pamphilus was a student at the legal University of Beyrout before he was
received into the Church: he devoted himself afterwards to the school of
sacred learning which he established at Cæsarea in Palestine. Here he
gathered together about 30,000 volumes, almost all consisting of the
works of the Fathers. His personal labour was given to the works of
Origen, in whose mystical doctrine he had become a proficient at
Alexandria. The martyrdom of Pamphilus prevented the completion of his
own elaborate commentaries. He left the library to the Church of Cæsarea,
under the superintendence of his friend Eusebius. St. Jerome paid a visit
to the collection while he was still enrolled on the list of
bibliophiles. He had bought the best books to be found at Trêves and
Aquileia; he had seen the wealth of Rome, and was on his way to the
oriental splendour of Constantinople: it is from him that we first hear
of the gold and silver inks and the Tyrian purple of the vellum. He
declared that he had never seen anything to compare with the library of
Pamphilus; and when he was given twenty-five volumes of Origen in the
martyr's delicate writing, he vowed that he felt richer than if he had
found the wealth of Croesus.
The Emperor Julian was a pupil of Eusebius, and became reader for a time
in the Church at Cæsarea. He was passionately fond of books, and
possessed libraries at Antioch and Constantinople, as well as in his
beloved 'Lutetia' on the island in the Seine. A sentence from one of his
letters was carved over the door of his library at Antioch: 'Some love
horses, or hawks and hounds, but I from my boyhood have pined with a
desire for books.'
It is said that another of his libraries was burned by his successor
Jovian in a parody of Alexander's Feast. It is true, at any rate, that
the book-butcher set fire to the books at Antioch as part of his revenge
against the Apostate. One is tempted to dwell on the story of these
massacres. In many a war, as an ancient bibliophile complained, have
books been dispersed abroad, 'dismembered, stabbed, and mutilated': 'they
were buried in the earth or drowned in the sea, and slain by all kinds of
slaughter.' 'How much of their blood the warlike Scipio shed: how many on
the banishment of Boethius were scattered like sheep without a shepherd!'
Perhaps the subject should be isolated in a separate volume, where the
rude Omar, and Jovian, and the despoilers of the monasteries, might be
pilloried. Seneca would be indicted for his insult to Cleopatra's books:
Sir Thomas Browne might be in danger for his saying, that 'he could with
patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could he with a few
others recover the perished leaves of Solomon.' He might escape by virtue
of his saving clause, and some excuse would naturally be found for
Seneca; but the rest might be treated like those Genoese criminals who
were commemorated on marble tablets as 'the worst of mankind.'
For several generations after the establishment of the Eastern Empire,
Constantinople was the literary capital of the world and the main
repository of the arts and sciences. Mr. Middleton has lately shown us in
his work upon Illuminated Manuscripts that Persia and Egypt, as well as
the Western Countries, 'contributed elements both of design and technical
skill which combined to create the new school of Byzantine art.'
Constantinople, he tells us, became for several centuries the main centre
for the production of manuscripts. Outside the domain of art we find
little among the Romans of the East that can in any sense be called
original. They were excellent at an epitome or a lexicon, and were very
successful as librarians. The treasures of antiquity, as Gibbon has said,
were imparted in such extracts and abridgments 'as might amuse the
curiosity without oppressing the indolence of the public.' The Patriarch
Photius stands out as a literary hero among the commentators and critics
of the ninth century. That famous book-collector, in analysing the
contents of his library for an absent brother, became the preserver of
many of the most valuable classics. As Commander of the Guard he led the
life of a peaceful student: as Patriarch of Byzantium his turbulence rent
the fabric of Christendom, and he was 'alternately excommunicated and
absolved by the synods of the East and West.' We owe the publication of
the work called _The Myriad of Books_ to the circumstance that he was
appointed to an embassy at Bagdad. His brother wrote to remind him of
their pleasant evenings in the library when they explored the writings of
the ancients and made an analysis of their contents. Photius was about to
embark on a dangerous journey, and he was implored to leave a record of
what had been done since his brother had last taken part in the readings.
The answer of Photius was the book already mentioned: he reviews nearly
three hundred volumes of the historians and orators, the philosophers and
theologians, the travellers and the writers of romance, and with an even
facility 'abridges their narrative or doctrine and appreciates their
style and character.'
The great Imperial library which stood by St. Sophia had been destroyed
in the reign of Leo the Iconoclast in the preceding age, and in an
earlier conflagration more than half a million books are said to have
been lost from the basilica. The losses by fire were continual, but were
constantly repaired. Leo the Philosopher, who was educated under the care
of Photius, and his son and successor Constantine, were renowned as the
restorers of learning, and the great writers of antiquity were collected
again by their zeal in the square hall near the Public Treasury.
The boundaries of the realm of learning extended far beyond the limits of
the Empire, and the Arabian science was equally famous among the Moors
of Spain and in the further parts of Asia. We are told of a doctor
refusing the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, 'because the carriage
of his books would have required four hundred camels.' We know that the
Ommiad dynasty formed the gigantic library at Cordova, and that there
were at least seventy others in the colleges that were scattered through
the kingdom of Granada. The prospect was very dark in other parts of
Western Europe throughout the whole period of barbarian settlement. We
shall not endeavour to trace the slight influences that preserved some
knowledge of religious books at the Court of the Merovingian kings, or
among the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Burgundians. We prefer to pause at
a moment preceding the final onslaught. The letters of Sidonius afford us
a few glimpses of the literary condition of Southern Gaul soon after the
invasion of Attila. The Bishop of Clermont gives us a delightful picture
of his house: a verandah leads from the _atrium_ to the garden by the
lake: we pass through a winter-parlour, a morning-room, and a
north-parlour protected from the heat. Every detail seems to be complete;
and yet we hear nothing of a library. The explanation seems to be that
the Bishop was a close imitator of Pliny. The villa in Auvergne is a copy
of the winter-refuge at Laurentum, where Pliny only kept 'a few cases
contrived in the wall for the books that cannot be read too often.' But
when the Bishop writes about his friends' houses we find many allusions
to their libraries. Consentius sits in a large book-room when he is
composing his verses or 'culling the flowers of his music.' When he
visited the Prefect of Gaul, Sidonius declared that he was whirled along
in a stream of delights. There were all kinds of out-door amusements and
a library filled with books. 'You would fancy yourself among a
Professor's book-cases, or in a book-shop, or amid the benches of a
lecture-room.' The Bishop considered that this library of the Villa
Prusiana was as good as anything that could be found in Rome or
Alexandria. The books were arranged according to subjects. The room had a
'ladies' side'; and here were arranged the devotional works. The
illuminated volumes, as far as can now be judged, were rather gaudy than
brilliant, as was natural in an age of decadence; but St. Germanus was a
friend of the Bishop, and as we suppose of the Prefect, and his copy of
the Gospels was in gold and silver letters on purple vellum, as may still
be seen. By the gentlemen's seats were ranged the usual classical
volumes, all the works of Varro, which now exist only in fragments, and
the poets sacred and profane; behind certain cross-benches was the
literary food of a lighter kind, more suited to the weaker vessels
without regard to sex. Here every one found what would suit his own
liking and capacity, and here on the day after their arrival the company
worked hard after breakfast 'for four hours by the water clock.' Suddenly
the door was thrown open, and in his uniform the head cook appeared and
solemnly warned them all that their meal was served, and that it was as
necessary to nourish the body as to stuff the mind with learning.
When the barbarians were established through Gaul and Italy the libraries
in the old country-houses must have been completely destroyed. Some faint
light of learning remained while Boethius 'trimmed the lamp with his
skilful hand'; some knowledge of the classics survived during the lives
of Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville. Some of the original splendour may
have lingered at Rome, and perhaps in Ravenna. When Boethius was awaiting
his doom in the tower at Pavia, his mind reverted to the lettered ease of
his life before he had offended the fierce Theodoric. His philosophy
found comfort in thinking that all the valuable part of his books was
firmly imprinted on his soul; but he never ceased regretting the walls
inlaid with ivory and the shining painted windows in his old library at
Rome.