Chapter III: Introduction

IT would be quite as great a fallacy to assume that a rich man is also a wise one, as to take for granted that he who has accumulated a large library is necessarily a learned man. It is a very curious fact, but none the less a fact, that just as the greatest men have the shortest biographies, so have they been content with the smallest libraries. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, Comte, Goethe had no collection of books to which the term library could fairly be applied. But though each preferred to find in Nature and in Nature's handiworks the mental exercise which less gifted men obtain from books, that did not prevent them from being ardent book-lovers. Shakespeare--to mention one only--must have possessed a Plutarch, a Stowe, a Montaigne, and a Bible, and probably half a dozen other books of less moment. And yet, with this poor show, he was as genuine a book-lover as Ben Jonson or my Lord Verulam. Lord Burleigh, Grotius, and Bonaparte are said to have carried their libraries in their pockets, and doubtless Shakespeare could have carried his under his arm.

If all great men have not been book-collectors in the manner which is generally understood by the phrase, it is certain that they have, perhaps without a single exception, been book-lovers. They appear, for the most part, to have made a constant companion of some particularly favourite book; for instance, St. Jerome slept with a copy of Aristotle under his pillow; Lord Clarendon had a couple of favourites, Livy and Tacitus; Lord Chatham had a good classical library, with an especial fondness for Barrow; Leibnitz died in a chair with the 'Argenis' of Barclay in his hand; Kant, who never left his birthplace, Königsburg, had a weakness in the direction of books of travel. 'Were I to sell my library,' wrote Diderot, 'I would keep back Homer, Moses, and Richardson.' Sir W. Jones, like many other distinguished men, loved his Cæsar. Chesterfield, agreeing with Callimachus, that 'a great book is a great evil,' and with La Fontaine--

'Les longs ouvrages me font peur
Loin j'épuiser une matière
Il faut n'en prendre que la fleur'--

hated ponderous, prosy, pedantic tomes. Garrick had an extensive collection on the history of the stage, but Shakespeare was his only constant friend. Gibbon was a book-collector more in the sense of a man who collects books as literary tools than as a bibliophile. But it is scarcely necessary just now to enter more fully into the subject of great men who were also book-lovers. Sufficient it is, perhaps, to know that they have all felt the blessedness of books, for, as Washington Irving in one of his most lofty sentences has so well put it, 'When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these [the comforts of a well-stored library] only retain their steady value; when friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, _these_ only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.'

It is infinitely easier to name those who have collected books in this vast and unwieldy London of ours, than it is to classify them. To adopt botanical phraseology, the _genus_ is defined in a word or two, but the species, the varieties, the hybrids, and the seedlings, how varied and impossible their classification! Most men have bought books, some have read a few, and others many; but beyond this rough grouping together we shall not attempt anything. One thing, however, the majority of book-collectors agree in, and that is in regarding their own generation as a revolution--they have, as Butler has described it in his picture of an antiquary, 'a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra.'

Differing in many, and often material, points as one book-collector does from another, the entire passion for collecting may be said to focus itself into two well-defined grooves. A man either collects books for his own intellectual profit, or out of pure ostentatious vanity. In the ensuing pages there will be found ample and material facts in regard to the former, so that we may say here all that we have to say regarding the latter. The second type of book-enthusiast has two of the most powerful factors in his apparently reckless career--his own book-greed, and the bookseller who supplies and profits by him.

'What do you think of my library?' the King of Spain once asked Bautru, the French wit, as he showed him the collection at the Escurial, at that time in the charge of a notoriously ignorant librarian.

'Your Majesty's library is very fine,' answered Bautru, bowing low; 'but your Majesty ought to make the man who has charge of it an officer of the Treasury.'

'And why?' queried the King.

'Because,' replied Bautru, 'the librarian of your Majesty seems to be a man who never touches that which is confided to him.'

There are many varieties of the ignorant collector type. The most fruitful source is the _nouveau riche_. Book-collecting is greatly a matter of fashion; and most of us will remember what Benjamin Franklin said of this prevailing vice: 'There are numbers that, perhaps, fear less the being in hell, than out of the fashion.' The enterprising individual who, on receipt of a catalogue of medical books, wired to the bookseller, 'What will you take for the lot?' and on a price being quoted, again telegraphed, 'Send them along,' was clearly a person who wished to be fashionable. Another characteristically amusing illustration of this type of book-collector is related by an old-established second-hand bookseller, who had bought at a country sale some two or three hundred volumes in a fair condition. But they were principally old sermons, or, what is worse, theology and political economy. He placed a sample lot outside his shop, leaving the bulk of the stock untouched. The little parcel attracted the attention of a stylishly dressed man, who entered the shop and said, 'I'll take these books, and, say, have you any more of this kind with this shield onto them?' pointing to the bookplate attached, which bore the arms and name of a good old county family. 'That box, sir, is full of books from the same house, and probably every book has the same bookplate, but I have not yet had time to examine them.' 'What's yer figger for them, any way? See here, I start back to Chicago to-morrow, and I mean to take these books right back along. I'm goin' to start a libery thar, and these books will just fit me, name and all. Just you sort out all that have that shield and name, and send them round to the Langham at seven sharp. I'll be round to settle up; but see, now, don't you send any without that name-plate, for that's my name, too, and I reckon this old hoss with the daggers and roosters might have been related to me some way.'

'I remember,' says the Marquis d'Argenson, in his 'Mémoires,' 'once paying a visit to a well-known bibliomaniac, who had just purchased an extremely scarce volume, quoted at a fabulous price. Having been graciously permitted by its owner to inspect the treasure, I ventured innocently to remark that he had probably bought it with the philanthropic intention of having it reprinted. "Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed in a horrified tone; "how could you suppose me capable of such an act of folly! If I were, the book would be no longer scarce, and would have no value whatever. Besides," he added, "I doubt, between ourselves, if it be worth reprinting." "In that case," said I, "its rarity appears to be its only attraction." "Just so," he complacently replied; "and that is quite enough for me."'

Another type which borders dangerously near to that which we have been describing is the collector who, not necessarily ignorant, collects for himself alone. The motto which Grolier adopted and acted upon--'Io Grolierii et amicorum'--might have been a very safe principle to go upon in the sixteenth century, but it would most certainly fail in the nineteenth, when one's dearest friends are the most unmitigated book-thieves. But perhaps even the too frequent loss of books is an evil to be preferred to the egoistical meanness of the selfish collector. Balzac gives in his 'Cousin Pons' a vivid delineation of such a person. The hero is a poor drudging music-teacher and orchestra-player, who has invested every franc of his hard-won earnings in the collecting of exquisite paintings, prints, bric-à-brac, and other rare mementoes of the eighteenth century. Despised by all, even by his kindred, trodden upon as a nobody, slow, patient, and ever courageous, he unites to a complete technical knowledge a marvellous intuition of the beautiful, and his treasures are for him pride, bliss, and life. There is no show in this case, no desire for show, no ambition of the despicable shoddy-genteel sort--a more than powerful creation of fiction. A strikingly opposite career of selfishness is suggested by the fairly well-known story of Don Vincente, the friar bookseller of Barcelona, who, in order to obtain a volume which a rival bookseller, Paxtot, had secured at an auction, set fire one night to Paxtot's shop, and stole the precious volume--a supposed unique copy of the 'Furs e ordinacions fetes per los gloriosos reys de Arago als regnicoes del regne de Valencia,' printed by Lambert Palmart, 1482. When the friar was brought up for judgment, he stolidly maintained his innocence, asserting that Paxtot had sold it to him after the auction. Further inquiry resulted in the discovery that Don Vincente possessed a number of books which had been purchased from him by customers who were shortly afterwards found assassinated. It was only after receiving a formal promise that his library should not be dispersed, but preserved in its integrity, that he determined to make a clean breast of it, and confess the details of the crimes that he had committed. In cross-examination, Don Vincente spurned the suggestion that he was a thief, for had he not given back to his victims the money which they had paid him for the books?

'And it was solely for the sake of books that you committed these murders?' asked the judge.

'Books! yes, books! Books are the glory of God!'

Vincente's counsel, in defence of his client, in this desperate strait maintained that there might exist several copies of the books found in his possession, and that it was out of the question to condemn, on his own sham avowal, a man who appeared to be half cracked. The counsel for the prosecution said that that plea could not be urged in the case of the book printed by Lambert Palmart, as but one copy of that was in existence. But the prisoner's counsel retorted by putting in evidence attested affirmation that a second copy was in France.

Up to this moment Vincente had maintained an imperturbable calm; but on hearing his counsel's plea he burst into tears. In the end, Don Vincente was condemned to be strangled, and when asked if he had anything more to urge, all he could utter, sobbing violently, was, 'Ah! your worship, _my copy was not unique_!'

Cousin Pons and Don Vincente are extreme instances of bibliomaniacs to whom the possession of a book was the supreme happiness of life. The man of Fiction and the man of Fact were at one in this passion of acquisitiveness. Don Vincente was compelled by hunger--_mala suada fames_--to become a book _seller_; and if it became a general rule for book-collectors to become booksellers there would, we venture to think, be a very material increase in police-court and, perhaps, criminal cases generally. Mr. G. A. Sala tells us an amusing story of the late Frederick Guest Tomlins, a historian and journalist of repute. In the autumn of his life Tomlins decided to set up as a bookseller. He purposed to deal chiefly in mediæval literature, in which he was profoundly versed. The venture was scarcely successful. A customer entered his shop one day and asked for a particular book, as marked in the catalogue. 'I had really no idea it was there,' meditatively remarked Mr. Tomlins, as he ascended a ladder to a very high shelf and pulled out a squabby little tome. Then he remained about five-and-twenty minutes on the ladder absorbed in the perusal of the volume, when the customer, growing impatient, began to rap on the counter with his stick. Thereupon Mr. Tomlins came down the ladder. 'If you think,' he remarked, with calm severity, to the intending purchaser, 'that any considerations of vile dross will induce me to part with this rare and precious little volume, you are very much mistaken. It is like your impudence. Be off with you!' A not altogether dissimilar anecdote is related by Lord Lytton in that curious novel 'Zanoni,' in which one of the characters is an old bookseller who, after years of toil, succeeded in forming an almost perfect library of works on occult philosophy. Poor in everything but a genuine love for the mute companions of his old age, he was compelled to keep open his shop, and trade, as it were, in his own flesh. Let a customer enter, and his countenance fell; let him depart empty-handed, and he would smile gaily, oblivious for a time of bare cupboard and inward cravings.

_À propos_ of a literary man turning bookseller, the experiment has often been tried, but it has generally failed. Second-hand bookselling seems to be a frequent experiment after the failures of other trades and callings. We have known grocers, greengrocers, coal-dealers, pianoforte-makers, printers, bookbinders, cheap-jacks, in London, adopt the selling of books as a means of livelihood. Sometimes--and several living examples might be cited--the experiment is a success, but frequently a failure. The knowledge of old books is not picked up in a month or a year. The misfortune which seems to dog the footsteps of many men in every move they make, does not fail to pursue them in bookselling. Some of them might almost say with Fulmer, in Cumberland's 'West Indian' (1771): 'I have beat through every quarter of the compass . . . I have blustered for prerogatives, I have bellowed for freedom, I have offered to serve my country, I have engaged to betray it . . . I have talked treason, writ treason. . . . And here I set up as a bookseller, but men leave off reading, and if I were to turn butcher I believe they'd leave off eating.'

There can be no doubt about the fact that Englishmen as a rule do not attach sufficient importance to book-buying. If the better-class tradesman, or professional man, spends a few pounds at Christmas or on birthday occasions, he feels that he has become a patron of literature. How many men, who are getting £1,000 a year, spend £1 per month on books? The library of the average middle-class person is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the cruelest possible commentary on his intelligence, and, as a matter of fact, if it contains a couple of volumes worthy of the name of books, their presence is more often than not an accidental one. A few volumes of the _Sunday at Home_, the _Leisure Hour_, _Cassell's Magazine_, or perhaps a few other monthly periodicals, carefully preserved during the twelve months of their issue, and bound up at the end of the year--with such stuff as this is the average Englishman's bookcase filled. Mark Pattison has gone so far as to declare that while the aggregate wealth of the United Kingdom is many times more than it was one hundred and fifty years ago, the circle of book-buyers, of the lovers of literature, is certainly not larger, if it be not absolutely smaller. It may be urged that a person with £1,000 per annum as income usually spends £100 in rent, and that the accommodation which can be got for that amount does not permit of one room being devoted to library purposes. This may be true, but this explanation is not a valid excuse, for a set of shelves, 13 feet by 10 feet 6 inches, placed against a wall will accommodate nearly one thousand octavo volumes--the genius of the world can be pressed into a hundred volumes. An American has advised his readers to 'own all the books you can, use all the books you own, and as many more as you can get.' The advice is good, and it is well to remember that by far the majority of great book-collectors have lived to a ripe old age. The companionship of books is unquestionably one of the greatest antidotes to the ravages of time, and study is better than all medical formulas for the prolongation of life.

The man who has resolved upon getting together a collection of first-class books may not unreasonably be appalled at the difficulties which stand in the way. And what, indeed, it may be asked, will become of the hundreds and thousands of books which are now all the fashion? How many will survive the levelling process of the next half a score of years, and how few will be known, except to bibliographers, half a century hence? The lessons of the past would aid us in arriving at some sort of conclusion as regards the future, if we were inclined to indulge in speculation of this vain character. It will, however, be interesting to point out that of the 1,300 books printed before the beginning of the sixteenth century, not more than 300 are of any importance to the book-collector. Of the 50,000 published in the seventeenth century, not more than perhaps fifty are now held in estimation; and of the 80,000 published in the eighteenth century not more than 300 are considered worth reprinting, and not more than 500 are sought after.

In a curious little book, 'L'An 2440, rêvue s'il en fut jamais,' published in Paris a century ago, there is a very quaint description of the process by which, in an improved state of society, men would apply themselves not to multiply books, but to gather knowledge. The sages of the political millennium exhibited their stores of useful learning in a cabinet containing a few hundred volumes. All the lumber of letters had perished, or was preserved only in one or two public libraries for the gratification of a few harmless dreamers that were tolerated in their laborious idleness. This pleasant little picture, drawn by M. L. S. Mercier, of the state of things five centuries hence, is in strong contrast to the painful plethora of books of the present day. Dr. Ingleby, the famous Shakespearian scholar, is credited with the idea of establishing a society for the purpose of procuring books which no one else would buy; but this society (the 'Syncretic Book-club') could not have had any success if the vast quantities of unsaleable rubbish which one meets with on every hand are to be taken into account. Doubtless Dr. Ingleby would have included in his scope such books as Lord Lonsdale's 'Memoir of the Reign of James II.,' 1803, which fifty years ago sold for 5-1/2 guineas, but which, within the past few months, has declined to two shillings!

There was a time when even old and unsaleable books had a commercial value. Before the cheapening of paper, a second-hand bookseller had always the paper-mill to fall back on, and the price then paid, £1 10s. per cwt., was one inducement to dispose of folios and quartos which remained year in and year out without a purchaser. The present price of waste-paper is half a crown a hundredweight, so that the bookseller is now practically shut out of this poor market. Indeed, an enterprising bibliopole was lately offering 'useful old books,' etc., at 3s. 6d. per cwt., free on the rails, provided not less than six hundredweight is bought. 'To young beginners,' he states, 'these lots are great bargains'; but whether he means young beginners in literature or young beginners in trade, is an open question. In either case, 'useful old books' at the price of waste-paper are a novelty. There is a certain amount of danger in the wholesale destruction of books, for posterity may place a high value, literary and commercial, on the very works which are now consigned to the paper-mill. Unfortunately, posterity will not pay booksellers' rent of to-day. Just as those books which have the largest circulation are likely to become the rarest, so do those which were at one time most commonly met with often, after the lapse of a few decades, become difficult to obtain. In one of his 'Echoes' notes, Mr. G. A. Sala tells us that, in the course of forty years' bookstall-hunting, he has known a great number of books once common become scarce and costly--_e.g._, Lawrence's 'Lectures on Man'; Walker's 'Analysis of Beauty'; Millingen's 'Curiosities of Medical Experience'; Beckford's 'Vathek' in French; Jeremy Bentham's works; and Harris's 'Hermes.' Possibly the disappearance of these and many other books may be attributed to certain definite causes. For example, in the early years of this century one of the commonest books at 1s. or 1s. 6d. was Theobald's 'Shakespeare Restored'; but fifty years later it was a very rare book. The interest in Shakespeare and his editors had become quite wide-spread in literary circles, and literature in any way bearing on the subject found ready purchasers.

Just as the disappearance of certain books sends their prices up considerably in the market, so the unexpected appearance of others has just the reverse effect. Until quite recently one of the scarcest of the first editions of the writings of Charles Dickens was a thin octavo pamphlet of seventy-one pages, entitled 'The Village Coquettes: a Comic Opera. In two Acts. London: Richard Bentley, 1836.' So rare was this book that very few collectors could boast the possession of it, and an uncut example might always be sold for £30 or £40. About a year before his death, Dickens was asked by Mr. Locker-Lampson whether he had a copy; his reply was: 'No, and if I knew it was in my house, and if I could not get rid of it in any other way, I would burn the wing of the house where it was'--the words, no doubt, being spoken in jest. Not long since, a mass of waste-paper from a printer's warehouse was returned to the mills to be pulped, and would certainly have been destroyed had not one of the workmen employed upon the premises caught sight of the name of 'Charles Dickens' upon some of the sheets. The whole parcel was carefully examined, and the searchers were rewarded by the discovery of nearly a hundred copies of 'The Village Coquettes,' in quires, clean and unfolded. These were passed into the market, and the price at once fell to about £5. The most curious things turn up sometimes in a similar manner. A little sixpenny bazaar book ('Two Poems,' by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, 1854) was for a long time extremely rare, as much as £3 or £4 being paid for it when it occurred for sale. Suddenly it appeared in a bookseller's catalogue at 2s., and as every applicant could have as many as he wanted, it then leaked out that the bookseller, Mr. Herbert, had purchased about 100 copies with books which he purposed sending to the mill. Even 'remainders' sometimes turn out to be little gold-mines. The late Mr. Stibbs bought the 'remainder' of Keats's 'Endymion' at 4d. per copy. We do not know what he realized by this investment, but their value for some years has been £4 and upwards.

The subject of book-finds is one about which a volume might be written. Every 'special' collector has his fund of book-hunting anecdotes and incidents, for, where the rarity of a well-known book is common property, there is not usually much excitement in running it to earth. The fun may be said to begin when two or three people are known to be on the hunt after a rare and little-known volume, whose interest is of a special character. To take, as an illustration, one of the most successful book-hunters of modern times, the late Henry Stevens, of Vermont. Until Mr. Stevens created the taste for Americana among his fellow-countrymen, very few collectors considered the subject worth notice. And yet, in the space of a quarter of a century, he unearthed more excessively rare and unique items than the wildest dreamer could have supposed to exist. Books and pamphlets which were to be had for the proverbial old song when he first came to this country quickly became the objects of the keenest competition in the saleroom, and invariably found buyers at extravagant prices. As an illustration, although not an American item, we may mention that when a copy of the Mazarin Bible was offered at Sotheby's in 1847, the competitors were an agent of Mr. James Lenox (Stevens' client) and Sir Thomas Phillipps in person; the latter went to £495, but the agent went £5 better, and secured the prize at the then unheard-of price of £500. At first Mr. Lenox declined to take the book, but eventually altered his mind, wisely as it proved, for although at long intervals copies are being unearthed, the present value of Mr. Lenox's copy cannot be much short of £4,000. During 1854 and 1855 Mr. Stevens bought books to the value of over 50,000 dollars for Mr. Lenox, and on reviewing the invoices of these two years, 'I am confident,' says Mr. Stevens, 'that, if the same works were now' (1887) 'to be collected, they would cost more than 250,000 dollars. But can so much and so many rare books ever be collected again in that space of time?' In December, 1855, Mr. Stevens offered Mr. Lenox in one lump about forty Shakespeare quartos, all in good condition, and some of them very fine, for £500, or, including a fair set of the four folios, £600, an offer which was accepted, and it may be doubted whether such a set could now be purchased for £6,000. Mr. Lenox was for over ten years desirous of obtaining a perfect copy of 'The Bay Psalter,' printed by Stephen Daye at Cambridge, New England, 1640, the first book printed in what is now the United States, and had given Mr. Stevens a commission of £100 for it. After searching far and wide, the long-lost 'Benjamin' was discovered in a lot at the sale of Pickering's stock at Sotheby's in 1855. 'A cold-blooded coolness seized me, and advancing towards the table behind Mr. Lilly, I quietly bid, in a perfectly neutral tone, "Sixpence"; and so the bids went on, increasing by sixpences, until half a crown was reached and Mr. Lilly had loosened the string. Taking up this very volume, he turned to me and remarked, "This looks a rare edition, Mr. Stevens; don't you think so? I do not remember having seen it before," and raised the bid to 5s. I replied that I had little doubt of its rarity, though comparatively a late edition of the Psalms, and at the same time gave Mr. Wilkinson a sixpenny nod. Thenceforward a "spirited competition" arose between Mr. Lilly and myself, until finally the lot was knocked down to Stevens for 19s.' The volume had cost the late Mr. Pickering 3s. It became Mr. Lenox's property for £80. Twenty-three years later another copy was bought by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt for 1,200 dollars.

In a letter to Justin Windsor, the late J. Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps gave some very curious and interesting information respecting book-collecting in the earlier half of the present century. 'About the year 1836,' he wrote, 'when I first began hunting for old books at the various stalls in our famous London city, black-letter ones and rare prints were "plenty as blackberries," and I have often found such things in unlikely places and amidst a mass of commonplace rubbish, exposed for sale in boxes labelled, "These books and pamphlets 6d. or 1s. each," outside an old bookseller's window, where another notice informed the passer-by that "Libraries were purchased or books bought;" and thus plainly showed how such now indeed rarities came into the possession of an ignorant bibliopole. It was not, however, till about 1840 that I turned my attention to the more special work of collecting Shakespeare quartos, in which, I may say, I have been very successful. It was at one of George Chalmers' sales that I first bought one or two, and after that I hunted for them in all parts of the country, and met with considerable success, often buying duplicates, and even triplicates, of the same edition and play. At one time I possessed no less than three copies of the very rare quarto edition of "Romeo and Juliet," 1609, and sometimes even had four copies of more than one of the other quartos. Not so very long before this period, old Jolley, the well-known collector, picked up a Caxton at Reading, and a "Venus and Adonis," 1594, at Manchester, in a volume of old tracts, for the ignoble sum of 1s. 3d. Jolley was a wealthy orange-merchant of Farringdon Street, London, and entertained me often with many stories of similar fortunate finds of rare books, which served to whet my appetite only the more. But I was soon stopped in my book-hunting career by the appearance all at once on the scene of a number of buyers with much longer purses than my own, and thus I was driven from a market I had derived so much pleasure from with great regret. Some time afterwards circumstances rendered it desirable that I should part with a large number of my book-treasures by auction and to the British Museum; but even then I retained enough to be instrumental in founding the first Shakespearian library in Scotland, by presenting to the University of Edinburgh, amongst other rarities, nearly fifty copies of original quartos of Shakespeare's plays, printed before the Restoration, and to keep sufficient myself of the rarest and most valuable examples.'

Sometimes the notes of a former possessor have a considerable literary interest, as, for example, the copy of Stowe's 'Survey of London,' 1618, presented to the Penzance Library by the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, who has written, under date December 24, 1867, the following note: 'This is a favourite book of mine. I like to read of London as it was, with the bright Thames crowded with fish, and its picturesque architecture. . . . I should not have discarded this volume for any library, had I not this day picked up a beautiful _large paper_ copy of it, the only one in that condition I ever saw or heard of.'

As an illustration of the enhanced value possessed by books having notes written in them by their owners, it may be mentioned that when the great Mr. Fox's furniture was sold by auction after his death in 1806, amongst the books there happened to be the first volume of Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' which apparently had been given by the author to Fox, who wrote on the fly-leaf this note: 'The author at Brooks' said there was no salvation for this country, until six heads of the principal persons in the administration were laid on the table. Eleven days after, this same gentleman accepted a place of "lord of trade" under those very ministers, and has acted with them ever since.' This peculiarly nasty little note sent the value of the odd volume up to £3 3s. Gibbon, writing in his 'Autobiography' of Fox, says, 'I admired the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a child,' an opinion which he might have modified if he had lived to read the foregoing note. When Canning's books, for the most part of an exceedingly commonplace and uninteresting character, came under the hammer at Christie's in 1828, the competition was extremely keen for all volumes which bore the great statesman's autograph, and as most of the books contained more or less elaborate indications of Canning's proprietorship, his executors received nearly double the sum which they could reasonably expect. Similar illustrations occur every year at book-auctions.

The idiosyncrasies of collectors might make quite as long a chapter as that of books which have belonged to famous persons, and it is for the same reason that we have to deal briefly with each. It is curious that almost as soon as book-collecting became at all general, the 'faddy' man came into existence. Dr. John Webster, of Clitheroe, who died June 18, 1682, aged seventy-two, for example, had a library which was rich in books of romance, and what was then termed 'the black art'; but Webster was the author of a rare volume on witchcraft, so that his books were his literary tools--just as, a century later, John Rennie, the distinguished civil engineer, made a speciality of mathematical books, of which he had a collection nearly complete in all languages. Dr. Benjamin Moseley's library, which was sold by Stewart in March, 1814, was composed for the most part of books on astrology, magic, and facetiæ. The Rev. F. J. Stainforth, whose library was sold at Sotheby's in 1867, collected practically nothing but books written by or relating to women; he aimed to secure not only every book, but every edition of such books. He was a most determined book-hunter, and when Holywell Street was at its lowest moral ebb, this eccentric gentleman used to visit all the bookshops almost daily, his inquiry being, 'Have you any women for me to-day?' Mr. Stainforth, who died in September, 1866, was for many years curate of Camden Church, Camberwell, and was from 1851 incumbent of All Hallow's, Staining, the stipend of which was about £560, and the population about 400. 'Bless my books--all my Bible books, all my _hocus pocus_, and all my _leger-de-main_ books, and all my other books, whether particularly mentioned at this time or not,' was the prayer of a Scotsman of about a century and a quarter ago, and so perhaps the Rev. Mr. Stainforth thought, if he did not utter occasionally some such petition.[xxix-A]

Half a century ago one of the most inveterate frequenters of book-auctions was a certain Dr. G., of diminutive stature, on account of an awkward deviation of the spine. At that time the appearance of a private purchaser at a sale was a very rare event, and one which, when it occurred, invariably met with a more or less hostile reception from the fraternity. Dr. G.'s first appearance produced a good deal of sensation. The hunchback, it is true, was rather shabbily dressed, but 'l'habit ne fait pas le moine,' and is certainly no trustworthy index to the pockets of the wearer. Excitement reached fever-heat when a Wynkyn de Worde was put up and persistently contested for by the doctor, who ran it up against the booksellers present (some of whom quickly desisted from the fun for fear of burning their fingers), one of whom, far exceeding his commission, obstinately refused to give in until the book was knocked down to him to his own dismay, and the delight and ironical compliments of his colleagues. After this _contretemps_ the doctor had it pretty much his own way; his name was duly entered on the sale catalogue, and his address was known. The next day our bookseller, sobered by reflection, called on the doctor, confessed his sin of the previous day, humbly asked for absolution, and offered him the book at an immense loss on the sale price. 'If you were,' replied the doctor, 'to bring the book at my door for nothing, I would take it with a pair of tongs and drop it into the gutter.' It was a puzzle to everyone what the little doctor did with all his purchases, which were limited chiefly to classical books. At his death, however, it transpired that he bought for the various Universities of the United Kingdom. The doctor's son, a poor curate, entered his late father's library for the first time, and found there a mass of books, which occupied nearly a month in selling, and realized, to his delight, a large sum of money.

The contempt with which Dr. G. received the bookseller's proposal is peculiarly typical of the book-collector. If he cannot obtain what he wants just exactly when he wants it, he does not care about it. The book-collector is doubtless too prone to despise everything which is not quite in his line, forgetting that all branches of literature contribute in some degree, greater or lesser, to the bulk of human knowledge. No man can be universal, even if he had the wealth of a dozen Rothschilds, or the mental vigour and versatility of a hundred Gladstones.

The book-hunter has, however, his good traits, which sometimes require a good deal of finding, it is true. We need not dwell at great length on his apparently unconquerable habit of beating down the prices, for the custom is too well known to require much explanation; but a view of the other side of the picture is only fair. A few years ago a well-known bookseller catalogued a copy of the 'Book of Job' at a very low figure. A wealthy collector, whose purchases were generally closed on the judgment of a distinguished bookman, asked to have the copy sent on approval. It was despatched; but came back within a few days. No explanation was volunteered: when, however, the collector came into the shop a short time after, he was asked why he had returned the book. His answer was to the effect that he could not persuade himself that the illustrations were really by Blake, particularly as the price asked was so low. A week or so after this a distinguished art-critic, hearing of the whereabouts of this copy, asked to have it on approval: in sending it the bookseller enclosed a note to the effect that some doubt had been expressed as to the genuineness of the plates. In a few days came a cheque from the man of art for £10 over and above the catalogue price, and a note to the effect that the illustrations were not only unquestionably by Blake, but in the finest possible state.

Last summer a certain bookseller sold, after some considerable amount of haggling, a very fine Missal for £65, which was £5 less than its catalogue price. A few weeks after the purchaser called and paid the additional £5, explaining that a friend of his had taken a violent fancy to the book, and begged to be allowed to possess it at £70. Another honest book-collector, discovering that he had bought a book considerably cheaper than an example had been sold at Sotheby's, and £2 less than Mr. Quaritch had asked for a similar copy, sent his bookseller a present of a parcel of books to make up the difference in the two amounts.

With these few introductory and perhaps desultory pages, the reader is invited to the more solid feast provided for his delectation in the following pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[xxix-A] Mr. Stainforth's collection ranged over 300 years, and, amid much utter rubbish, there were a few things of considerable rarity, notably one of only three complete copies known of T. Bentley's 'Monument of Matrones,' 1582, formerly in the libraries of Herbert, Woodhouse, Heber and Bliss. It included two autograph letters of the Right Hon. T. Grenville, and realized £63; Anne Bradstreet's 'Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America,' 1650, £12 10s.; and a copy of Dame Juliana Berners' 'Booke of Hauking,' etc., £13. Nearly fifty items appear under the name of Aphra Behn; whilst there are twenty-one editions of Jane Porter's 'Poems,' which realized the grand total of 14s. The library comprised 3,076 lots (representing, perhaps, twenty times that number of volumes), and realized the total of £792 5s.

THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON

EARLY BOOK-HUNTING.

THOSE who have studied the earlier phases of English history will readily understand that the terms book-hunting in England and book-hunting in London are by no means synonymous. The passion for books had manifested itself in various and remote parts of this country long before London had developed into a place of importance; when, indeed, it was battling from without and within with conflicts which seemed to predict complete annihilation. But the growth of London is essentially typical of the growth of the nation, and of the formation of the national character. When it was laying the foundation of its future greatness London had no thought of intellectual pursuits, even if Londoners themselves had any conception of an intellectual life. For any trace of such unthought-of, and perhaps, indeed, unheard-of, articles as books, we must go to localities far remote from London--to spots where, happily, the strife and din of savage warfare scarcely made themselves heard. The monasteries were the sole repositories of literature; to the monk alone had the written book any kind of intelligence, any species of pleasure. To him it was as essential as the implements of destruction to the warrior, or the plough to the husbandman. The one had no sympathy, no connection, with the other, only in so far that the events which transpired in the battlefield had to be recorded in the _scriptorium_. Although London was a place of importance at a very early stage of the Roman occupation, it was not in any sense an intellectual centre for centuries after that period.

Indeed, it might be laid down as a general principle that the farther the seeker went from London the more likelihood there was of meeting with books. To Northumbria, from the end of the sixth to the end of the seventh century, we shall have to look for the record of book-buying, for during that period books were imported in very considerable quantities; abbeys arose all along the coast, and scholars proportionately increased. In a letter to Charlemagne, Alcuin speaks of certain 'exquisite books' which he studied under Egbert at York. At Wearmouth, Benedict Biscop (629-690) was amassing books with all the fury of half a dozen ordinary bibliomaniacs. He collected everything, and spared no cost. At York, Egbert had a fine library in the minster. St. Boniface, the Saxon missionary, was a zealous collector. There were also collections--and consequently collectors--of books at places less remote from London--such as Canterbury, Salisbury, Glastonbury, and even St. Albans; but of London itself there is no mention.

Scarcely any such thing as book-hunting or book-selling could possibly have existed in London before the accession of Alfred, who, among the several ways in which he encouraged literature, is said to have given an estate to the author of a book on cosmography. Doubtless, it was after the rebuilding of the city by Alfred that, in the famous letter to Wulfseg, Bishop of London, he takes a retrospective view of the times in which they lived, as affording 'churches and monasteries filled with libraries of excellent books in several languages.' Bede describes London, even at the beginning of the eighth century, as a great market which traders frequented by land and sea; and from a passage in Gale we learn that books were brought into England for sale as early as 705. With the reconstruction of London, the wise government, and the enthusiastic love for letters which animated the great Saxon King, the commerce of the capital not only increased with great rapidity, but the commerce in books between England and other countries, particularly from such bibliopolic centres as Paris and Rome, began to assume very considerable proportions. If, as is undoubtedly the case, books were continually being imported, it follows that they found purchasers. By the beginning of the eleventh century there were many private and semi-private collections of books in or near London. The English book-collectors of the seventh century include Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth, and Bede; those of the eighth century, Ina, King of the West Saxons, and Alcuin, Abbot of Tours; whilst the tenth century included, in addition to Alfred, Scotus Erigena, Athelstan, and St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.

But it cannot be said, with due regard to truth, that London was in any sense a seat of learning, or a popular resort for learned men, until well on into the thirteenth century. Doubtless many consignments of books passed through the city on the way to their respective destinations.

Edward I. may be regarded as the first English monarch who took any interest in collecting books; most of his, however, were service books. They are mentioned in the Wardrobe Accounts (1299-1300) of this King, and are only eleven in number. These he may have purchased in 1273 in France, through which he passed on his way home from Palestine. But it is much more probable that he had no thought of books when hurrying home to claim the crown of his father. Contemporary with Edward was another book-collector of a very different type, an abbot of Peterborough, Richard of London, who had a 'private library' of ten books, including the 'Consolation of Philosophy,' which he may have formed in London. But quite the most interesting book-collector (so far as we are concerned just now) of this period is Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London. A minute catalogue of this collection is among the treasures of St. Paul's Cathedral, and has been privately printed. In this case, the price of each book is affixed to its entry; the total number of volumes is one hundred, their aggregate value being £116 14s. 6d., representing, according to Milman's estimate, £1,760 of our present money. Twenty-one Bibles and parts of Bibles were valued at £19 5s. Twenty-two volumes in this collection deal with canon and civil law, four with ecclesiastical history, and about an equal number with what may be designated science and arts, the rest being of a theological character. The entries run thus:

'Tractatus fr'is Dertti'i de proprietatibus rerum.
Libellus instructionum.
Liber Avicennæ.
Liber naturalis.'

The two last-named are respectively the highest and lowest priced items in the list--for books of a single volume only--the 'Liber Avicennæ' being valued at the very high figure of £5, and the 'Liber Naturalis' at 3s. A Bible in thirteen volumes is valued at £10; and a 'little Bible' at £1. The total value of the property of this Bishop was scheduled at about £3,000.

In spite of civil strife and foreign complications, the taste for literature made great strides during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with the very natural consequence of an increased demand for, and supply of, books. And the curious thing is that book-collecting was gradually passing away from the monks, and becoming exceedingly popular with the laity. 'Flocks and fleeces, crops and herds, gardens and orchards, the wine of the winecup, are the only books and studies of the monks.' The Franciscans, who (like the Dominicans) came to England in 1224, were expressly forbidden 'the possession of books or the necessary materials for study.' When Roger Bacon joined this order, he was deprived of his books. St. Francis himself, it seems, was once 'tempted to possess books'--by honest means, let us hope, although the point is not quite clear--and he almost yielded to the temptation, but finally decided that it would be sinful. The plague of books seems to have troubled this poor saint's soul, for he hoped that the day would come when men would throw their books out of the window as rubbish.

In proof of the theory that laymen at a very early period became book-collectors, the most interesting example which we can quote is that of Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1315, and who bequeathed his library to Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire, where it had already been deposited during his lifetime. Beginning with this preamble, 'A tus iceux qe ceste lettre verront ou orrount. Guy de Beauchamp, Comte de Warr. Saluz en Deu. Nous avoir bayle e en lagarde le Abbé e le covent de Bordesleye, lesse a demorer a touz jours les Romaunces de souz nomes; ces est assaveyr,' the bequest recites, with great minuteness, a remarkably interesting list of books. This list ('escrites ou Bordesleye le premer jour de may, le an du regñ le Roy Edw{d} trentime quart') is in the Lambeth Library, but it is reprinted by Todd in his 'Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer,' pp. 161, 162. This list is of more than ordinary interest, chiefly because the collection formed by a layman gives us a very good insight into the class of books which the early nobility of England read, or, at all events, collected. Religious books, of course, formed the background of the library, but there were many romances, such, for instance, as those of King Arthur, of 'Josep alb Arimathie e deu Seint Grael,' of 'Troies,' etc. There was also a book 'De Phisik et de Surgie.'

This collection contained between forty and fifty volumes, in which was included pretty nearly the entire range of human knowledge as it then extended. It is well to remember in connection with this bequest that, at the same time, or, more correctly, in 1300, the academical library of Oxford consisted of a few tracts kept in chests under St. Mary's Church.

With the greatest book-collector of this period, Richard de Bury (1287-1345), the author of the 'Philobiblon,' unfortunately, we have little to do, as his book expeditions appear to have been confined almost entirely to foreign countries. He collected books from every source open to him, and wrote of his passion with a warmth of eloquence of which even Cicero might have been proud. His most important book transaction, which comes within the purview of the present volume, relates to the gift by an Abbot of St. Albans of four volumes to De Bury, then Clerk of the Privy Seal, viz., Terence, Virgil, Quintilian, and Hieronymus against Rufinus. In addition to these, the Abbot sold him thirty-two other books for fifty pounds of silver. When De Bury became Bishop this 'gift' troubled his conscience, and he restored several of the books which had come into his possession in a perfectly honest and legitimate manner, whilst others were secured from the Bishop's executors. One of the volumes acquired in the latter manner is now in the British Museum. It is a large folio MS. on the works of John of Salisbury, and bears upon it a note to the effect that it was written by Simon (Abbot of St. Albans, 1167-1183), and another to the following effect: 'Hunc librum venditum Domino Ricardo de Biry Episcopo Dunelmensi emit Michael Abbas Sancti Albani ab executoribus predicti episcopi anno Domini millesimo ccc{o} xlv{to} circa purificationem Beate Virginis.'

The catalogue of the library of the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, in the Cottonian Collection, British Museum, and printed for the first time at length in Edward's 'Memoirs of Libraries' (i. 122-235), is a remarkable list of the most extensive collection of books at that time in this country. It was formed at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. This library was well furnished with works in science and history, and particularly so with the classics--Aristotle, Cicero, Lucan, Plato, Suetonius, Seneca, Terence, and Virgil. The extreme probability is that London was the highway through which the greater part of this and other early libraries passed. If, early in the fifteenth century, the book-hunter in London possessed few opportunities of purchasing books, he would have found several very good libraries which were open to his inspection. There was, for example, a very considerable collection in the Franciscan monastery, which once stood on the site now occupied by Christ's Hospital, Newgate Street. The first stone of this monastery was laid in October, 1421, amid much pomp, by the then Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Whittington, who gave £400 in books. It was covered in before the winter of 1422, and completed in three years, and furnished with books. From Stow's 'Survey' we learn that one hundred marks were expended on the transcription of the works of Nicholas de Lira, to be chained in the library, and of which cost John Frensile remitted 20s. One of the chained books, 'The Lectures of Hostiensis,' cost five marks. From another source we learn that a Carmelite friar named John Wallden bequeathed to this library as many MSS. as were worth 2,000 pieces of gold.

Anthony à Wood refers to the oft-repeated charge of the book-covetousness of the mendicant friars, which, in fact, was carried to such an extreme 'that wise men looked upon it as an injury to laymen, who therefore found a difficulty to get any books.' Of the same period, there is a very curious anecdote in Rymer's 'Foedera' about taking off the duty upon six barrels of books sent by a Roman cardinal to the Prior of the conventual church of St. Trinity, Norwich. These barrels, which lay at the Custom-house, were imported duty free.

Neither the book-hunger of the mendicant friars, nor the difficulties which surrounded the importation of books, appears to have militated greatly against the growing passion. We have the name, and only the name, of a very famous book-hunter--John of Boston--of the first decade of the fifteenth century, whose labours, however, have been completely blotted out of existence by the dispersed monasteries. But there were many other collectors whose memories have been handed down to us in a more tangible form, even if their collections of books are almost as abstract and indefinite as that of John of Boston. During the first quarter of the fifteenth century, we have quite a considerable little group of royal book-collectors--Henry IV., Henry V., and his brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The last-named was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic bibliophile of the four, but whilst his extensive gifts of books to the University of Oxford may be said to have formed the foundation of the library there, they were in the following century destroyed by the mob. A few examples of his gifts are now preserved in the British Museum and at Oxford. His books were estimated at a very high figure, the value placed on 120 of them (out of the total of 600) being no less than £1,000. The memory of the Duke of Bedford's library is best perpetuated by the famous Bedford Missal, or Book of Hours, perhaps the most splendid example of fifteenth-century illustration. It is now in the British Museum, where it has been since 1852. The history of this missal, perhaps the most interesting in existence, is too well known to be dealt with here (see p. 109).

Henry V. was undoubtedly fond of books. Rymer refers to two petitions to the Council after the King's death for the return of valuable books of history, borrowed by him of the Countess of Westmoreland, and of the priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and not returned, though one of them had been directed to be delivered to its owner by the King's last will. The elegantly illuminated copy of Lydgate's 'Hystory, Sege, and Destruccion of Troye,' 1513, in the Bodleian, is doubtless the copy which Lydgate gave to Henry V. At Cambridge there is the MS. of a French translation of Cardinal Bonaventure's 'Life of Christ,' with the note 'this wasse sumtyme Kinge Henri the fifeth his booke,' etc.

Henry VI. does not appear to have cared for books, and it is not surprising, what with wars abroad and excessive taxation, plague and famine at home, that literary tastes received a severe check. We get several glimpses of the dearth of books. In the MS. history of Eton College, in the British Museum, the Provost and Fellows of Eton and Cambridge are stated, 25 Henry VI., to have petitioned the King that he would be pleased to order one of his chaplains, Richard Chestre, 'to take to him such men as shall be seen to him expedient in order to get knowledge where such bookes [for Divine service] may be found, paying a reasonable price for the same, and that the sayd men might have the choice of such bookes, ornaments, and other necessaries as now late were perteynyng to the Duke of Gloucester, and that the king would particular[ly] cause to be employed herein John Pye--his stacioner of London.'

Book-importation by the galleys that brought the produce of the East to London and Southampton had assumed very considerable proportions during the fifteenth century; but the uncertainties which attended it were not at all favourable to its full development. Book-production was still progressing in the immediate neighbourhood of London. At St. Albans, for example, over eighty were transcribed under Whethamstede during this reign, a number which is peculiarly interesting when the degeneracy of the monasteries is remembered. Neither Edward IV. nor Richard III. seems to have availed himself of the increasing plenty of books. The library of the former was a very unimportant affair. From the Wardrobe Account of this King (1480) we get a few highly interesting facts concerning book-binding, gildings, and garnishing: 'For vj unces and iij quarters of silk to the laces and tassels for garnysshing of diverse Bookes, price the unce xiiij_d._--vij_s._ x_d._ ob.; for the making of xvj laces and xvj tassels made of the said vj unces and iij of silke, price in grete ij_s._ vii_d._' These moneys were paid to Alice Claver, a 'sylk-woman.' And again 'to Piers Bauduyn, stacioner, for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called "Titus Livius," xx_s._; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke of the Holy Trinitie, xvj_s._; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called "Frossard," xvj_s._; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called the Bible, xvj_s._; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called "Le Gouvernement of Kinges and Princes," xvj_s._; for bynding and dressing of the three smalle bookes of Franche, price in grete vj_s._ viiij_d._; for the dressing of ij bookes whereof oon is called "La Forteresse de Foy" and the other called the "Book of Josephus," iij_s._ iiij_d._; and for bynding, gilding and dressing a booke called the "Bible Historial," xx_s._'

The only incident which calls for special mention in the two next short reigns is a law, 1 Richard III., 1483, by which it was enacted that if any of the printers or sellers of printed books--the 'great plenty' of which came from 'beyond the sea'--'vend them at too high and unreasonable prices,' then the Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, or any of the chief justices of the one bench or the other, were to regulate the prices.

BOOK-HUNTING AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING.