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THE CONNOISSEUR'S LIBRARY
GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT
FINE BOOKS
[Illustration: Deucalion et Pyrrha repeuplant la Terre, Suivant l'Oracle
de Themis.]
FINE BOOKS
BY
ALFRED W. POLLARD
[Illustration: The Connoisseur's Library]
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: METHUEN & CO. LTD.
1912
TO
SIR EDWARD MAUNDE THOMPSON, G.C.B.
DIRECTOR AND PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
1888-1909
PREFACE
If the mere taking of trouble ensured good work, this contribution to
the _Connoisseur's Library_ should be entitled to the modest praise of
being "superior to the rest" of its author's book-makings, since it has
been ten years on the stocks and much of it has been written two or
three times over, either because the writer's own information had
increased or to take account of the successful researches of others. Yet
in the end defeat in one main point has to be acknowledged. The book was
begun with a confident determination to cover the whole ground, from the
beginnings of printing and printed book-illustration down to our own
day, and in the case of printing the survey has been carried through,
however sketchily. But the corresponding survey of book-illustration
ends, with rather obvious marks of compression and fatigue, about 1780,
leaving the story of a hundred and thirty years of very interesting
picture-work untold. Pioneering is always so exciting that recognition
of the impossibility of carrying out the full plan of the book within
the limits either of the present volume or of the author's working life
was not made without sincere regret. The subject, however, of the
abandoned chapter was not only very large, but very miscellaneous, and
the survey for it would have had to include at least three other
countries (France, Germany, and the United States) besides our own. To
one section, moreover, that of illustrations in colour, a separate
volume of this series has already been devoted. The author would,
therefore, fain console himself with the hope that in one or more other
volumes a competent account may be given by some other hand of the
wood-engravings, etchings, steel-engravings, and lithographs, with which
books have been decorated since 1780. The poorness of paper and print
with which these modern illustrated books have too often been
handicapped has caused collectors to take little interest in them--it
even suggested the unworthy excuse for the failure to write the missing
chapter that these are not really _Fine Books_, but only books with fine
pictures in them, and so are outside our subject. But both students and
collectors have their duties as well as their delights, and in view of
the high artistic value of quite a large proportion of these modern
illustrations, the preservation of clean and uncropped copies of the
books in which they occur and the tribute of careful cataloguing and
description are certainly their due.
While the desired completeness has not been attained the ground here
covered is still very wide, and for the book as a whole no more can be
claimed than that it is a compilation from the best sources--a list of
these will be found in the Bibliography--controlled by some personal
knowledge, the amount of which naturally varies very much from chapter
to chapter. The obligations incurred in writing it have thus been great,
and a sad number of these are to fellow-workers and friends--Proctor,
John Macfarlane, W. H. Allnutt, Konrad Burger, Dr. Lippmann, Anatole
Claudin, and the Prince d'Essling--who have died while the book has been
in progress. Among those still happily alive acknowledgment must
specially be made to Sir Sidney Colvin for help received from his
masterly introduction to the great monograph on _Early Engravers and
Engraving in England_ published by the Trustees of the British Museum;
to Mr. A. M. Hind for use made of the list of engravers and their works
in the same book; to Mr. Campbell Dodgson for dippings into the wealth
of information in his _Catalogue of German and Flemish Woodcuts in the
Print Room of the British Museum_ (Vols. I and II); to Mr. Gordon Duff
for help derived from his three series of Sandars Lectures on English
Printing, and to Mr. Evans for information obtained from his _American
Bibliography_. Among other obligations the chief is to the writers
(notably Mr. H. R. Plomer) of numerous papers contributed to the
_Transactions_ of the Bibliographical Society and to _The Library_, and
these are acknowledged with special pleasure.
A. W. P.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I. COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING 1
" II. BLOCK-BOOKS 19
" III. THE INVENTION OF PRINTING--HOLLAND 32
" IV. THE INVENTION OF PRINTING--MAINZ 44
" V. OTHER INCUNABULA 59
" VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING 83
" VII. EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS 100
" VIII. EARLY ITALIAN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS 123
" IX. EARLY FRENCH AND SPANISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS 143
" X. LATER FOREIGN BOOKS 165
" XI. FOREIGN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE 16TH CENTURY 180
" XII. PRINTING IN ENGLAND (1476-1580) 204
" XIII. ENGLISH BOOKS PRINTED ELSEWHERE THAN AT LONDON 224
" XIV. ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS 250
" XV. ENGRAVED ILLUSTRATIONS 267
" XVI. MODERN FINE PRINTING 297
BIBLIOGRAPHY 309
INDEX 319
LIST OF PLATES
I. Deucalion and Pyrrha repeopling the world. From Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_, Paris, 1767 _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
II. An author (Caxton?) presenting a book to Margaret of
Burgundy. Fifteenth century engraving inserted in the
Chatsworth copy of the _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_ 1
(From the plate made for the Bibliographical Society's edition
of Mr. Seymour De Ricci's _Census of Caxtons_.)
III. The "Bona Inspiratio angeli contra vanam gloriam." From a
smaller version of the _Ars Moriendi_. Block-book from the
Lower Rhine, _c._ 1465 26
IV. Leaf 3a of a fragment of the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander
Gallus. One of the so-called "Costeriana" 32
V. Beginning, with printed capital, of the _Rationale
Diuinorum Officiorum_ of Gulielmus Duranti. Mainz, Fust and
Schoeffer, 1459 44
VI. Leaf 7b of the first book printed at Cologne, Cicero, _De
Officiis_, Ulrich Zel, not later than 1466 60
The space left in the sixth line from the foot stands for the
words _ab ostentatione_, which the printer apparently could
not read in his manuscript. The word _vacat_ at the end was
inserted to show that the space in the last line was
accidental and that nothing had been omitted.
VII. Leaf 41a of Cicero's _Rhetorica_, Venice, Nicolas Jenson,
1470, showing spaces left for a chapter heading and capital 84
VIII. Part of leaf 4a, with woodcut, from the _Geschicht von
dem seligen Kind Symon_ of Tuberinus. Augsburg, Gunther
Zainer, about 1475 100
IX. Woodcuts of Saracens and Syrians from Breidenbach's
_Sanctae Peregrinationis in montem Syon atque in montem Sinai
descriptio_. Mainz, Erhard Reuwich, 1486 114
X. Woodcut on leaf 1b of the _Egloga Theoduli_. Leipzig,
Conrad Kachelofen, 1489 116
XI. Page (sig. H 8 verso) from the _Psalterium Beatae Mariae
Virginis_ of Nitschewitz, showing the Emperor Frederick and
his son Maximilian. From a press at the Cistercian Monastery
at Zinna, _c._ 1493 118
XII. The Harrowing of Hell, with text, from leaf 4a of the
_Belial_ of Jacobus de Theramo. Haarlem, Bellaert, 1484. (Size
of the original, 7(1/4)" X 5") 120
XIII. Woodcut of the Betrayal. From leaf 14b of the
_Meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore_ attributed
to S. Bonaventura. Venice, Geronimo di Sancti, 1487. (Size of
original, 6(3/4)" X 5(1/4)") 124
XIV. Woodcut, De Atheniensibus petentibus regem, illustrating
Fable xxii. in the _Aesop_ printed at Naples, by Francesco
Tuppo, 1485 126
XV. Woodcut of Lorenzo Giustiniano preceded by a crucifer,
from his _Della vita religiosa_. Venice, 1494 130
XVI. Page with woodcut of the Procession to Calvary, from the
_Meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore_ attributed
to S. Bonaventura. Florence, Ant. Miscomini, _c._ 1495 138
XVII. Titlepage of _La Festa di San Giovanni_. Florence, Bart.
di Libri, _c._ 1495 140
XVIII. Leaf 5a, with woodcut of Death seizing an Archbishop
and a Chevalier, from the _Danse Macabre_. Paris, Gui
Marchant, 1491. (Size of original 8(3/4)" X 6(1/4)") 144
XIX. Leaf 2a, with woodcut of Adam and Eve, from a _Bible en
Francoys_. Paris, Antoine Verard, about 1505. (Size of
original, 9(3/4)" X 7") 150
XX. Page (sig. C 6 verso), with woodcut of the Massacre of the
Innocents, from the _Grandes Heures_. Paris, Antoine Verard,
about 1490. (Size of original, 7(7/8)" X 5(1/4)") 152
XXI. Page (sig. U 7 verso) from the edition of _Terence_,
printed by J. Trechsel at Lyon, 1493 160
XXII. Titlepage from the _Improbratio Alcorani_ of Ricoldus.
Seville, Stanislaus Polonus, 1500 162
XXIII. Hroswitha presenting her plays to the Emperor Otto I,
leaf 4b of the _Opera Hrosvite_. Nuremberg, Sodalitas Celtica,
1501 180
XXIV. Titlepage of Jornandes _De rebus Gothorum_. Augsburg,
1515 186
XXV. Page (leaf 246b) of a _Missale Romanum_, printed at
Venice by Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1518 194
XXVI. Title-cut from _Les dix premiers livres de l'Iliade
d'Homere, Prince des poetes, traduictz en vers Francois, par
M. Hugues Salel_. Paris, Jehan Loys for Vincent Sertenas, 1545 200
XXVII. Page from the _Fifteen Oes_. Westminster, Caxton, about
1490 204
XXVIII. First page of text from the first edition (left
incomplete) of Tyndale's _New Testament_. Cologne, 1525 224
XXIX. Part of sig. K 5 recto, with woodcut of Christ raising
the Centurion's Daughter, from the _Speculum Vitae Christi_ of
S. Bonaventura. Westminster, W. Caxton, about 1488 250
XXX. Titlepage of Bishop Fisher's Funeral Sermon on Henry VII.
London, W. de Worde, 1509 254
XXXI. Woodcut of the translator presenting his book to the
Duke of Norfolk, from Alexander Barclay's version of Sallust's
_Jugurtha_. London, R. Pynson, about 1520 256
XXXII. Portrait of the Author, from John Heywood's _The Spider
and the Flie_. London, T. Powell, 1556 260
XXXIII. Woodcut of Queen Elizabeth hawking, from Turberville's
_The Booke of Faulconrie_, 1575 264
XXXIV. Engraving of Christ in a mandorla from Bettini's _Monte
Santo di Dio_. Florence, Nicolaus Laurentii, 477. (Size of
original, 10" X 7") 268
XXXV. Last page of preface, giving the arms of the Bishop of
Wurzburg, from the Wurzburg _Agenda_. Wurzburg, G. Reyser,
1482 270
XXXVI. Titlepage of the _Dialogus_ of Amadeus Berrutus. Rome,
Gabriel of Bologna, 1517 274
XXXVII. Engraved portrait of the Author by Theodore de Bry
after J. J. Boissard, from the _Emblemata_ of Denis Le Bey.
Frankfort, De Bry, 1596 280
XXXVIII. Page 22 from the _Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man_
by Quarles, the engraving by W. Marshall, London, 1638 286
XXXIX. Page, with engraving after Eisen, from Dorat's _Les
Baisers_, La Haye et se vend a Paris, Lambert, 1770 292
XL. Engraving by W. W. Rylands after Samuel Wale, from
Walton's _Compleat Angler_. London, T. Hope, 1760 296
[Illustration: _Engraving of an Author, possibly CAXTON, Presenting a
Book to Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, prefixed to the Chatsworth copy
of the 'Recuyell.'_]
FINE BOOKS
CHAPTER I
COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING
From the stray notes which have come down to us about the bibliophiles
of the later Roman Empire it is evident that book-collecting in those
days had at least some modern features. Owing to the abundance of
educated slave-labour books were very cheap, almost as cheap as they are
now, and book-collectors could busy themselves about refinements not
unlike those in which their successors are now interested. But in the
Middle Ages books were by no means cheap, and until quite the close of
the fourteenth century there were few libraries in which they could be
read. Princes and other very wealthy book-buyers took pleasure in
possessing finely written and illuminated manuscripts, but the ruling
ideals were mainly literary and scholastic, the aim (the quite right and
excellent aim) being to have the best books in as many subjects as
possible. After printing had been invented the same ideals continued in
force, the only difference being that they could now be carried out on a
larger scale. Libraries like those formed in the sixteenth century by
Archbishop Cranmer and Lords Arundel and Lumley, or that gathered in
France by the historian De Thou, were essentially students' libraries,
and the books themselves and the catalogues of them were often
classified so as to show what books had been acquired in all the
different departments of human knowledge. Even in the sixteenth century,
when these literary ideals were dominant, we find some examples of
another kind. In Jean Grolier, for instance, we find the book-lover
playing the part, too seldom assumed, of the discriminating patron of
contemporary printing and bookbinding. Instead of collecting more old
books than he could find time to read, Grolier bought the best of his
own day, but of these sometimes as many as four or five copies of the
same work that he might have no difficulty in finding one for a friend;
and whatever book he bought he had bound and decorated with simple good
taste in Venice or at home in France. It would be an excellent thing if
more of our modern collectors, instead of taking up antiquarian hobbies,
were content to follow Grolier's example. Books always look best when
clad in jackets of their own time, and this in the future will apply to
the books of the twentieth century as much as to any others. Moreover,
there is more actual binding talent available in England just now than
at any previous time, and it is much to be desired that modern Groliers
would give it scope, not in pulling about old books, but in binding
beautifully those of our own day.
Grolier found a modest imitator in England in the person of Thomas
Wotton, but with some at least of the Elizabethan book-lovers the havoc
wrought in the old libraries by the commissioners of Henry VIII and
Edward VI provoked an antiquarian reaction which led them to devote all
their energies to collecting, from the unworthy hands into which they
had fallen, such treasures of English literary and bookish art as still
remained. Putting aside John Leland who worked (to what extent and with
what success is not quite clear) for Henry VIII, Matthew Parker,
Archbishop of Canterbury, was the earliest of these antiquaries, to the
great benefit of the libraries of Lambeth Palace and of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, though as to how he came by his books perhaps the
less said the better. Parker was soon followed by Sir Robert Cotton,
whose success in gathering books and documents illustrating English
history was so great that his library was sequestered and very nearly
altogether taken from him, on the plea that it contained state papers
which no subject had a right to possess. Owing to the carelessness and
brutality of the previous generation, Cotton's opportunities were as
great as his zeal in making use of them, and at the cost of his fortune
he laid the foundations of a national library. Humbler men imitated him
without being able to secure the same permanence for their collections,
more especially Humphrey Dyson, a notary, who seems to have acquired
early printed books and proclamations, with the same zeal which Cotton
devoted to manuscripts. Many of his treasures passed into the hands of
Richard Smith, the Secondary of the Poultry Compter, but at his sale
they were scattered beyond recall, and the unity of one of the most
interesting of English collections was thus unkindly destroyed. Both
these men, and some others of whom even less is known, worked with a
public aim, and already Sir Thomas Bodley had gone a step further by
founding anew the University Library at Oxford on lines which at once
gave it a national importance. This it preserved and developed for over
a century and a half, and has never since lost, though no national help,
unfortunately, has ever been given it, save the right already conceded
by the Stationers' Company, of claiming a copy of any new English book
offered for sale.
Bodley's munificent donation marked an epoch in the history of English
book-collecting because its tendency was to make private book-collecting
of the kind which was then admired incongruous and even absurd. When
there were no public libraries open to scholars, for a great man to
maintain a splendid library in his own house and allow students to read
in it was worthy of Aristotle's [Greek: megalopsychos], the man who does
everything on a scale that befits his dignity. But in proportion as
public collections of books and facilities for obtaining access to them
are increased, the preservation of a library on a large scale in a
private house, where none of the inmates have any desire to use it,
becomes an easy and justifiable object of satire. A man without
literary instincts who inherits a fine library is indeed in a parlous
state, for if he keeps it he is as a dog in the manger, and if he sells
it he is held up to opprobrium.
That considerations of this kind were beginning to have weight is shown
by the rapidity with which during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries one private collection after another drifted into public
ownership. In some cases there were intermediate stages. Thus Archbishop
Usher's books were not bequeathed to Trinity College, Dublin, but were
purchased for it by the subscriptions of the soldiers of Cromwell's army
in Ireland. The manuscripts of Sir Simeon d'Ewes remained in the
possession of his family for nearly a century, were then purchased by
Harley, and came to the British Museum with Harley's collection.
Stillingfleet's manuscripts were in the same temporary ownership; his
printed books came to Dublin through the public spirit of Archbishop
Marsh. So again Bishop Moore's books were purchased for the University
Library at Cambridge by George I. Thus even when a collector was not
inspired by, or could not afford to indulge, public motives, respect for
his memory or desire to benefit an institution often brought his books
to a safe haven. But more often the munificence was personal and direct.
For some cause not quite easy to see the flow of benefactions to English
libraries has dwindled sadly of late years,[1] so that journalists with
short memories write of gifts and bequests to American libraries as if
they were unprecedented. Even of late years, however, the foundation of
the John Rylands Library, Chancellor Christie's gifts and bequest to the
Victoria University, the Sandars legacy to the University Library,
Cambridge, and Mr. Alfred Huth's bequest to the British Museum of any
fifty books it might choose to select from his fine collection, show
that the stream is not quite dried up, while for nearly two centuries
and a half from the foundation of the Bodleian it ran with splendid
freedom. Thus Archbishop Williams gave noble gifts of books to S. John's
College, Cambridge, and to the Chapter House Library at Westminster
Abbey; Selden's books enriched the Bodleian; Laud was a generous
benefactor alike to the Bodleian, to S. John's College, Oxford, and to
the library of Lambeth Palace; Sir Kenelm Digby gave both to Bodley and
to Harvard; Ralph Sheldon benefited the Heralds' College; Pepys (through
his nephew) bequeathed his collection to Magdalene College, Cambridge;
Archbishop Marsh founded a library at Dublin; Richard Rawlinson gave his
manuscripts to the Bodleian, and Harley arranged that his should be
offered to the nation.
The example of the men who bought under the influence of an intention to
bestow their books on some public institution naturally affected others,
and was responsible for a good deal of rather haphazard collecting in
the eighteenth century. The private modern library was often confused
with the antiquarian collection, and the antiquarian collection itself
was seldom dominated by any central idea. Yet collectors who devoted
themselves to one subject and knew thoroughly well what they were aiming
at were already coming into existence, and these also, when their work
was done, were inspired by an honourable ambition to preserve it intact,
and so the libraries were once more enriched. Thus Garrick, guided by
his professional interest, devoted himself to early plays, and
bequeathed his collection to the British Museum. Malone bought the books
which were useful to him as a student of Elizabethan literature, more
especially of Shakespeare, and bequeathed them to the Bodleian, while
Capell left his similar collection to Trinity College, Cambridge. The
library of Natural History books brought together by Sir Joseph Banks
and bequeathed by him to the British Museum is another example of
well-defined collecting, though of a different sort. Among men who were
not themselves specialists the vogue lay in the direction of first
editions of the Greek and Latin classics and of a few Italian and
English authors of special merit, together with books illustrating the
history of printing down to about the year 1480 or 1485. The early
classics seem to have been the indispensable element in any collection
of the first rank, and they appear with monotonous regularity in the
libraries of George III, of the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, and of
Thomas Grenville, which all three passed to the British Museum; in the
Spencer Collection, now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester; and in
the Sunderland Library, sold at auction in 1881-3. When these prizes
were secured the collector seems to have felt himself free to follow his
individual taste in supplementary purchases, and the Grenville Library
is a fine proof of the broader interests of its possessor. Two notable
collectors, Heber, the last of the great book-gluttons, and William
Henry Miller, founder of the famous Christie-Miller Library at Britwell,
cut themselves free from the cult of the _editio princeps_, the latter
(despite a taste for modern Latin verse) devoting himself to English
poetry, while Heber added to this the literatures of France, Italy, and
Spain.
Despite the exceptions we have mentioned, in almost all of the
collections of the early years of the nineteenth century two different
ideals were combined: the student's ideal of the best books in the best
editions, and the antiquary's ideal of the books by which the history of
printing and its kindred arts could be most vividly illustrated. The
combination is still common, for one of a Beckett's comic histories
(though I am not prepared to assert that this is a "best book") still
figures as the first entry in many sale catalogues which contain also
incunabula assuredly not bought for their literary interest. It is more
easy to defend such a medley on the ground of sentiment than of logic.
Whoever uses books has reason to be grateful to the men who invented or
diffused the art of printing, and may be interested in learning
something about them. Yet it can hardly be denied that to collect
various kinds of books from an antiquarian, aesthetic, or any other
well-defined point of view, not directly literary, is an independent
pursuit in its own right, just as to collect old or beautiful china or
silver is an independent pursuit, whether or no the china or silver be
used for eating or drinking from. It will be said, of course, that on
this view books are no better than china (or postage stamps), and there
are indeed some strange instances of men who have fallen below their
possibilities and have collected books, and not without success, despite
a most amazing indifference to their contents. This reduces the joy they
can get from their hobby to the bare pleasure of collecting for the sake
of collecting, an ignoble delight in indulging acquisitiveness, redeemed
to some extent by the higher pleasure of overcoming difficulties and
observing the rules of the game. But the ignorant book-collector, until
he has educated himself, is like a rose-fancier who cannot distinguish
one odour from another. By the time they attract the collector books
have become, or are on the road to becoming, so precious that their
primary usefulness has to be left dormant. To use them constantly for
our daily reading would approach the fault which the Greeks called
[Greek: hubris], the arrogance which makes a man esteem himself so
highly that he thinks nothing too good for his own use. But even when
this limitation is recognized, for those who can appreciate them they
preserve all the associations of their primary use, and it is because
these associations are so delightful and so various that the bookman
claims that his form of collecting is the best of all.
What then are the associations and qualities which give books value in
the eyes of a collector? We may answer the question negatively in the
first instance by reducing to their proper importance the two qualities
which are popularly supposed to be the most attractive to the
book-hunter--rarity and age. If a book is otherwise uninteresting, what
is it the better for being rare? In passing it may be noted that unless
a book is interesting for other reasons its rarity is necessarily an
unknown quantity. Sir Sidney Lee's Census of the extant copies of the
First Folio Shakespeare, a comparatively common book, but of supreme
interest for its associations, is a striking example of the zeal with
which every discoverable copy of a valuable book is now hunted down.
Those whose business it is to gather such information can tell in the
case of dozens of books of much less importance exactly how many copies
have been discovered and in whose possession they remain. But in the
case of a book of little interest the most that can be said is that it
is "undescribed," and it may be "undescribed" not in the least because
it is really rare, but because no bibliographer has troubled himself to
make a note of it. Were some real point of interest discovered in it the
chances are that the attention thus attracted would speedily bring to
light other copies, as in the case of the school magazine to which Mr.
Kipling was found to have contributed. Of this the first set catalogued
sold for over L100, with the result that so many others were unearthed
that the price speedily sank to less than as many shillings.
Granted, however, that it could be proved that a dull book is not merely
undescribed, but absolutely, what so few works are, unique, in what way
does this make it of interest to the collector? A great library might
buy it for a trifle out of compassion, or under the idea that its
registration in a catalogue might help to piece out a genealogy, or that
it might count as another unit in statistics (a poor reason), or justify
its purchase in some other haphazard way. But considerations of this
kind, such as they are, cannot affect private collectors. A really dull
book is merely a nuisance, and whether only one copy of it, or many, can
be proved to exist, nobody wants it. If this be so we are justified in
saying that, although as soon as a book is found desirable for any other
reason its rarity becomes of paramount importance in determining its
price, Rarity by itself is of no interest to collectors.
The attractiveness bestowed by Age cannot be treated quite so summarily,
because although the same line of argument can be followed, it has to
be helped out by an explanation arising from a particular case. No
collector would value a dull sermon printed in 1800 any higher than a
dull sermon printed in 1900, and if we go back two centuries instead of
one, in the case of a book printed in London its value is none the
greater for the extra hundred years. If, however, the sermon chanced to
have been printed in 1700 in some provincial town, its age would
distinctly be an element of value. Down to 1693 printing was only
permitted in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and (after the outbreak of the
Civil War[2]) at York. When the restraining Act was dropped in 1693
printing made its way, not very rapidly, into one provincial town after
another. Hence a dull sermon with a provincial imprint may be dear to
the heart of some local antiquary as the first-fruit of the press in his
neighbourhood.
If we go back another sixty years from 1700 we reach another typographic
zone, as we may call it, within which some slight interest attaches to
all examples of English printing, for the end of the year 1640 is the
limit of the special catalogues of early books published by the British
Museum, the Cambridge University Library, and the John Rylands Library,
Manchester. The first and last of these have indexes of printers; in the
second the primary arrangement is typographical. Thus all books which
are old enough to have been printed before the end of 1640 are thereby
invested with some slight interest solely as products of English
presses. When we get back to before 1600 we are in the period covered by
the different editions of the _Typographical Antiquities_ of Joseph
Ames. When we go back another hundred years we are within the fifteenth
century; printing has been introduced into England for less than
twenty-five years, and the smallest fragment of a book from one of the
early presses at work at Westminster, Oxford, St. Albans, or the City of
London, is esteemed as of interest and importance.
Thus if we go far enough back Age does add to the interest of a book,
but only by bringing it under another influence, that the interest of an
English fifteenth century book is due to its importance in the history
of printing and not to its antiquity being easily demonstrated by the
fact that a contemporary unadorned manuscript of the same work will
probably have only a fraction of the value of the printed edition. There
are, of course, other cases in which age may be said to have some
secondary influence, as in the case of books dealing with social
customs, ballads and the like. But here it is still more evident that
the social or literary interest is the primary consideration, and that
this cannot be created, though it is greatly enhanced, by Age.
Having thus to the best of our ability abated the pride both of Age and
Rarity, we come back to our original question as to what are the
qualities and associations which give books value in the eyes of a
collector.
The only good qualities which a book can possess in its own right are
those of strength and beauty of form. Everything else about it is
inherent in no single edition, though association of ideas may give
greater dignity to one edition than to another. Type, paper, ink,
presswork, the arrangement of the page, and also (though not quite in
the same way or to the same extent) the illustrations, are all part and
parcel of the book itself, and may be combined, at least so bookmen
believe, in a really beautiful unity. No doubt as to this students run
some risk of losing their sense of proportion. I myself am conscious,
for instance, that I have looked at so many fifteenth century woodcuts,
as compared with other works of art, that I distinctly overrate them.
Mr. Robert Proctor, who knew more about fifteenth century books than any
other man has ever known, or is ever likely to know, once said to me in
all seriousness, that he did not think he had ever seen an ugly one.
Allowing, however, for this very human tendency to set up our own
esoteric standard, there yet remains a more generally recognizable
beauty of form which some books possess in a higher degree than others,
and to collect such beautiful books independently of any other kind of
attraction would be no unworthy pursuit. As a matter of fact, bookmen
are more inclined to make beauty of form a secondary consideration to
which, as to age and rarity, they pay attention, but without adopting it
as the basis of their collection.
As a secondary consideration the attention collectors pay to beauty can
hardly be exaggerated in respect to the condition of copies, the ratio
of an unusually good to an unusually bad copy of the same book, even if
the bad copy have no leaves actually wanting, being often as ten to one.
The unusually bad copy, indeed, would often have no selling value at all
were it not that it may be useful to students and so win a purchaser at
a small price. The collector should leave it severely alone, partly
because such "working copies" are the rightful perquisite of poor
scholars, partly because, as he presumably buys books for his pleasure,
he defeats his own object if, except in the case of the very rarest, he
buys copies at which he cannot look without regretting that their
headlines are cut off or the paper rotten through bad cleaning. Mr.
Frederick Locker recorded in his catalogue that his copy of Blake's
_Songs of Innocence and of Experience_ had been cut down by a previous
owner to the dimensions of the old covers of a washing-book. I think it
was his chivalry, his piety toward Blake's memory, that induced him to
rescue it from this dishonour. Had he bought such a poor copy simply
because it was cheap, he would have fallen far below his standard as a
collector.
Putting on one side beauty of form, the interest of books in the eyes of
a collector lies in their associations, historical, personal, or purely
literary. For reasons touched on already but which we may now consider
more fully, among historical associations those connected with the
history of printing fill a very large place. As we have said before, the
invention of an art by which books were so greatly cheapened and
multiplied was an event of almost unique importance in the social
history of Europe, and everything which throws light on the first
discovery, on the manner in which it was carried from one country and
city to another, and on the methods and lives of the early printers, is
of interest, and in its degree and measure, of importance. Moreover,
just as foxes are hunted because they show such good sport, so these
early books are collected because the study of them combines in a
singular degree the charms of scientific and historical discovery, with
all sorts of literary, social, and human side-interests. The claim which
Henry Bradshaw put forward that antiquarian bibliography must be studied
scientifically has been perverted by the unwise into the assertion that
bibliography is a Science, or as they are sometimes pleased to put it,
an Exact Science, till sensible people are wearied of the silly phrase.
But the claim itself is absolutely true, and the gifts which enabled Mr.
Proctor to classify, exactly or approximately, any fragment of early
printing according to its country, place, printer, and date, if employed
on any other field of scientific inquiry would easily have gained him a
Fellowship of the Royal Society, besides the European recognition which,
in his own small field, was already his before he died.
A large proportion of early printed books are without any indication
whatever of their place of origin, printer, or date. The dates are
obscured by the quickness or slowness of individual printers in adopting
various improvements--sheet-numbering, leaf-numbering, printed capitals,
titlepages, methods of imposition, etc.--which thus become uncertain and
delusive landmarks. The place of origin is obscured by the existence of
almost identical types in different cities and even in different
countries. A fortiori the identity of the individual printer may baffle
research from types being transferred or copied in all but one or two
letters of the fount, which thus become the sole means of
differentiating them. As helps the bibliographer has, in the first
place, such a classification of the two or three thousand fifteenth
century types as he is able to carry in his head. This, in proportion to
its completeness, enables him to narrow down the field to be
investigated. Some small typographical peculiarity, the way in which the
illuminator or rubricator has filled the blank spaces, the note which by
good fortune he may have appended in this or some other known copy
saying when he finished his work, similar notes by early purchasers
which occasionally give the date of their bargain, these and other
points may all help forward the happy moment of final identification.
Such a hunt as this may sound alarmingly difficult, as if it were all
over five-barred gates and inconveniently hedged ditches. But facsimiles
and other aids have been greatly multiplied of late years; many a book
can be run down and the identification verified in a few minutes, and
the possibility of hunting successfully in one's own library presupposes
the purchase of many books giving full information as to their origin.
These, while offering the means of identifying other books, will
themselves raise no questions, so that the collector's life need not be
unceasingly strenuous.
The side-interests of these old books are very varied. Many of them, at
least to eyes trained to perceive it, are of great beauty. Others,
although the half century during which printing was in its infancy
produced few masterpieces of literature, have real literary interest.
More than any other single event the invention of printing hurried on
the transition from the medieval world to the modern, but while many
printers in Italy nearly ruined themselves by the zeal with which they
helped forward the classical renaissance, all over Europe the medieval
books which were still read were seized on for the press, so that in the
books printed between 1470 and 1490 we are presented with a conspectus
or summary of medieval literature. Caxton printed the works of Chaucer
and Gower and prose renderings of the old romances. The Italian presses
were busy with Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante. The enormous size of the
great Speculum or Encyclopaedia of Vincent de Beauvais did not deter the
printers of France and Germany, and the ponderous tomes of medieval
theology and law seem to have found a ready market. Above all, the
highest skill available in the best equipped workshops was employed
almost ceaselessly in the production of beautiful and often magnificent
editions of the service-books of the Church for the use both of priests
and laity, and it is hardly possible to dabble much in old books without
acquiring an interest in liturgiology.
Owing to this fact, that the early presses were so largely occupied with
printing the works of the previous three centuries, there is
comparatively little human interest in incunabula on their literary
side. Instead of authors we have mostly to deal with editors, an
assertive and depreciatory race, always vaunting their own accuracy and
zeal and insisting on the incredible blunders by which previous editions
had been deformed past recognition. We receive, however, no small
compensation in the personal details which many of the early printers
give us about themselves. Titlepages, though they occur at haphazard in
a few books of the early seventies (and there is one still earlier
example), did not become common till about 1490, and even twenty years
later we find many books still without them. The information which we
now expect to find on a titlepage was given in a paragraph, mostly at
the end of the book, to which bibliographers have agreed to give the
name "colophon," from [Greek: kolophon], the Greek for a "finishing
stroke." As we have already noted, in many books no information of this
kind is given, but when printers, or their proof readers or editors,
took the trouble to write a colophon at all, they had no reason to
confine themselves to the severe brevity and simplicity of statement
which marks the modern titlepage. It was in colophons that editors cast
stones at their predecessors, or demanded sympathy for the severity of
their own labours, and it is in colophons that we find the expressions
of the printer's piety and pride, his complaints of his troubles with
his workmen and rivals, his pleas for encouragement, and occasionally,
penned by another hand, the record of how he was struck down by death in
the midst of his work. I have never heard of any one making a
representative collection of books with interesting colophons, but
collecting has taken many worse forms.
To lend grace to their colophons, or sometimes as a substitute for them,
the early printers and publishers often used a woodcut containing their
mark, sign, or device. Like the colophon itself, this was printed as a
token of the master's pride in his work and his desire that it might be
recognized as his, and many printers' marks are very decorative and even
beautiful. Comparatively neglected until recently, within the last few
years the devices used in various countries have been almost
exhaustively reproduced in facsimile, thus leaving few chances of fresh
discovery.
The mention of devices brings us to a very interesting section of early
printed books, and one which has attracted only too much attention of
recent years, those decorated with the primitive cuts on wood or metal
with which fifteenth century printers endeavoured to imitate the glories
of illuminated manuscripts, or to increase the popularity of their books
with not too critical readers. Occasionally, as in the metal cuts in the
best editions of the French Horae, in the Florentine and Venetian
woodcuts of the last ten years of the century, and in the best work of
other countries, these early pictures possess real beauty. Often they
are badly spoilt by the incompetence of the cutters, who were working
without the aid of modern gravers or modern methods of preparing the
wood. The early German wood-cutters, whilst their outlines are often
less graceful than those of their French and Italian competitors, had a
special gift for characterization, and the quality of their work is much
more uniform, perhaps because even before the invention of printing with
movable types they were an organized craft. But in almost all fifteenth
century cuts there is a certain naive simplicity which captivates those
who allow themselves to study it, until they are apt, as the present
writer has confessed is probably true of himself, to rate it too
highly. As is the case with the more ambitious artists in oils of the
same periods, wherever there was any demand for book-illustrators a
local school with strongly marked characteristics at once appears. The
work of the Augsburg cutters can be told at a glance from that executed
at Strassburg, and the styles predominant at Venice and Florence, at
Milan and Naples are all absolutely distinct. With one or two exceptions
we know nothing, until after 1500, of the men who designed or cut these
illustrations, and (except in the case of those of the Low Countries)
hardly any attempt has been made, or seems possible, to subdivide the
work done in any given locality so as to group it under individual
masters. Otherwise the problems of fifteenth century book-illustrations
are much like the problems of the types with which they harmonize so
well, and the collector can either devote himself to representing as
fully as possible the work done in any single district, or range at
large over the Continent (as regards fifteenth century illustrations
England may almost be left out of account) and collect a few good
specimens of each school.
It has been made a cause of complaint recently against bibliographers
that they know more of the work done at any insignificant fifteenth
century press than of the history of printing at any subsequent time. It
is not easy to coerce men into taking up any sections of a subject
beyond those in which they are interested, and the supposed culprits
have at least this much justification for their neglect of the later
work that very little of it repays examination. Until 1465, save for
some possible Dutch experiments, Germany enjoyed the monopoly of
printing. From 1465 to about 1530 she shared the primacy in it with
Italy, though during most of this period Italy was slightly ahead; from
1530 to about 1570 France was far in advance of the rest of Europe;
after 1570 there was a higher technical level in the Low Countries than
elsewhere, and Plantin and the Elzevirs gained individual reputations.
But there was very little good taste even in the Low Countries, and
from a typographical standpoint the seventeenth century is a Sahara with
hardly any oases. From this wilderness the eighteenth century, under the
guidance of France and England, timidly felt its way back to a kind of
trim neatness, but the positive experiments of Baskerville and the
Didots, and in Italy of Bodoni, were not very exciting, and at present
are quite out of fashion. In the nineteenth century the work of the
Whittinghams in England deserves more attention from collectors than it
has received, and throughout the whole period any one working on
historical lines, with the desire to illustrate the vicissitudes of the
art of printing and not merely its successes, has an ample field. But
for positive excellence, after the period of "origins," the French books
of the middle of the sixteenth century offer almost the only hunting
ground in which the fastidious collector is likely to find an attractive
quarry, and it is no use to try to tell any other tale.
Of the later book illustrations a somewhat better account may be given.
Owing to the steady deterioration of paper and presswork, which was the
real cause of the typographical decline, woodcuts by the end of the
sixteenth century had gone quite out of fashion, the old simple style
having been lost and no printer being able to do justice to the finer
work on which designers insisted. But copper engravings throve in
Germany and the Low Countries, and when the fashion of engraved
frontispieces and titles took root in England in the last years of the
century it was pursued with considerable success for a couple of
generations, while in the eighteenth century the French _livres a
vignettes_ attained an extraordinary brilliancy and elegance, and
Gravelot and other French engravers bestowed some of their skill on
English books.
The use of wood, now worked with the graver and no longer with the
knife, was revived in England by Bewick about 1784, and was pursued with
varying success for over a century, great technical skill and, at least
in the "sixties," very fine design being marred by the poverty and
often the tawdriness of its typographical setting. Despite these
drawbacks, the collectors who are bestowing attention on all this
wood-engraved work of the nineteenth century will probably reap their
reward.
When wood engraving was killed a few years ago by the extraordinary
perfection attained, at a much smaller cost, by the process block, its
fate was shared by the line-engraved illustrations which had appeared
fitfully throughout the century, and had lingered on in the beautiful
work of C. H. Jeens, who died in 1879, and in the use of old plates. As
the wood engraving was killed by the half-tone block, so the line
engraving disappeared before the photogravure, and the colour processes
now being rapidly perfected threaten to reduce all black and white
illustrations to unimportance. In so far, however, as the new processes
necessitate the use of heavily loaded papers as a condition of their
being even tolerably well printed, the least antiquarian of collectors
may be forgiven for neglecting the books illustrated by them. Some of
them can only be preserved by every plate being backed with sound paper,
and a hundred years hence of all this illustrated work, much of it
really beautiful, which is now being produced in such quantities, very
little will remain. The modern Groliers whom we tried to call forth at
the beginning of this chapter will need to be experts both in paper and
in leather if they are to leave behind them any permanent record of
their good taste. But this is only a crowning proof of how urgently they
are needed.
It would be pleasant to glance briefly at some of the more literary
considerations which bring books within the collector's scope. But the
scheme of this series restricts the subject of the present volume to
books which are prized either for their typographical beauty, their
place in the history of printing, or the charm of their illustrations.
This is in itself so large a field that no more pages must be wasted on
introducing it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Even Mr. Carnegie will only help to found new libraries, not to
make old ones more efficient.
[2] During the Civil War itself presses were also set up temporarily
at Newcastle-on-Tyne, at Shrewsbury, and perhaps elsewhere.