The Book-Collector Part 11

Editions of the New Testament.

Editions of the Prayer-Book.

Royal Books:-- (i) With autograph notes by the owner.

(ii) With inscription by the giver.

(iii) With both.

(iv) In binding identifiable with a royal personage.

Books which possess the signatures of n.o.ble or ill.u.s.trious individuals, politicians, statesmen, soldiers.

The same categories apply.

Books with literary inscriptions:-- (i) Presentation copies with author's inscription.

(ii) With his inscription and additional matter by him.

(iii) With inscription by recipient.

(iv) With autographs and MSS. notes by both.

Foreign books:-- Monastic and mediaeval.

With MS. matter of historical or genealogical interest.

Books from royal or n.o.ble libraries.

Books of literary interest.

Monastic inscriptions are generally limited in their interest to casual light shed by them on personages connected with the inst.i.tution or on some local circ.u.mstance.

Of royal books, genuine and otherwise, the number has had a tendency to increase through the successive dispersion of old libraries everywhere, combined with the additional facilities for gaining access to those which still remain intact. The Henry VIII. _Prayer-Book_ on vellum is the only copy known in any state of the edition of 1544, and may not have been publicly issued with this date.

Some of the royal memoranda are of signal interest and curiosity. On the back of the t.i.tle, under the royal arms, the king himself says: "Remember thys wrighter wen you doo pray for he ys yours noon can saye naye. Henry R." At the pa.s.sage: "I have not done penance for my malice," the same hand inserts in the margin: "trewe repentance is the best penance;" and farther on he makes a second marginal note on the sentence: "thou hast promysed forgyveness," . . . "repentance beste penance." This was a sort of family common-place book. Inside the cover Prince Edward (afterward Edward VI.) writes: "I will yf you will." The volume, which contains other matter of great historical value, appears to have been given by Henry VIII. shortly before his death to his daughter Mary; for on a small piece of vellum inside the cover he has written: "Myne owne good daughter I pray you remember me most hartely when you in your prayere do shew for grace to be attayned a.s.surydly to yr lovyng fader Henry R." The Princess subsequently gave it to her stepmother, Catherine Parr, and it has a motto and signature of that lady's second husband, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Admiral.

The old king, we observe, grew rather nervous about the future just at the last, and he at all events admitted that there was room for contrition.

A companion volume and monument was the copy of the Sarum _Horae_ of 1520, printed on vellum, in the second portion of the Ashburnham sale.

This precious book belonged to the Parr family, including the mother of Queen Katherine Parr, and at any rate contained an inscription in the hand of the Queen's brother, and of those of members of the Carew, Vaux, Tailboys, Nevill, and other families, besides being in beautiful condition; and the same library yielded a second copy of _Hours_, 1512, which had pa.s.sed through the hands of Henry VIII. himself, as attested in one place by his autograph memorandum: "Pray yow pray for me your loving cousin Henry Rex." Such relics appear to bring back before us the dead players on the human stage, divested of all but their more redeeming characteristics.

In the British Museum we have the _Great Bible_ of 1540 on vellum, which enters into the present category by reason of its a.s.sociation with the same prince, though in a different way. On the reverse of the fly-leaf occurs: "This Booke is presented vnto your most excellent highnesse by youre loving, faithfull, and obedient subiect and daylye Oratour, Anthonye Marler, of London, Haberda.s.sher." Truly a gift worthy of a king; and there it remains, a precious link with the past and a splendid memorial of the citizen of London who laid it at his sovereign's feet.

Propriety and sympathy of costume go very far indeed to establish and augment the estimation of printed volumes with ma.n.u.script tokens of former proprietorship. The collector who chooses this field of activity has to weigh the correlation and harmony between the volume itself and the individual or individuals to whom it once appertained.

We have usually to content ourselves with the interest resident in an autograph, with or without further particulars; it is a book, perhaps, which formed part of the library of a distinguished Elizabethan or Jacobean writer or public character; but, if it were not, its worth might be nominal. Again, the book is possibly one of great value, and exhibits an early autograph and MSS. notes; it would be better without them. Find the copy of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593, given by Shakespeare to Lord Southampton, the poet's copy of the _Faery Queen_, 1590-96, Sir Fulke Greville's copy of Sydney's _Arcadia_, 1590, or a book of Voyages belonging to Drake or Raleigh, and it is worth a library, and a good one too. The nearest approach we have yet made to this kind of combination is the first folio Montaigne and the original edition of Lord Brooke's works, 1633, with the signature of Jonson, and the Spenser of 1679 with the notes of Dryden, unless the _Paradise Lost_, 1667, with Milton's presentation to a bookbinder at Worcester be authentic.

We must not omit in the present connection the copy of the prose story-book of _Howleglas_, given in 1578 with others by Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey. But an almost equally covetable possession was the copy just referred to of Milton's _Paradise Lost_, 1667, which occurred only the other day at a sale, where it was, as too often happens, mis-described, and brought 70. It bore on a small slip inlaid in a fly-leaf: "For my loving ffreind, Mr. Francis Rea, Booke binder in Worcester these," and on another piece of paper: "Presented me by the Author to whom I gave two doubl sovereigns" = 4, nearly as much as the poet had for the copyright. The story of the book is unknown to us; it seems eminently likely that the first memorandum was written by Milton; but whether it belonged to a wrapper forwarding the gift, or to a letter accompanying it, is problematical.

Rea of Worcester must be the same individual who is described as having re-bound in June 1660 the Jolley and Ashburnham copy of Higden's _Polychronicon_, printed by Caxton, 1482; but there an earlier owner, Richard Furney, calls him "one Rede of Worcester."

At Trinity, Cambridge, there is the edition of Spenser, 1679, with a memorandum on the fly-leaf by Jacob Tonson, testifying to the MSS.

notes in the book being by Dryden, and at Wootton formerly was the _Faery Queen_, 1596, John Evelyn's cypher in gold down the back of the cover and seventeen lines in his autograph on the fly-leaf.

Among our dramatists, Ben Jonson is conspicuous by the number of copies of his own performances which he presented to royal and n.o.ble personages or to private friends. Of three gift-copies of his _Volpone_, 1607, one has an inscription to John Florio, the other to Henry Lambton of Lambton. The almost unique large-paper one of _Seja.n.u.s_, 1605, in the Huth Collection, was given to the poet's "perfect friend," Francis Crane. In the Museum are the _Masque of Queens_ and the _Masque of Blackness and Beauty_ offered to the queen of James I. But of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and many others, we have not a single memorial of this kind. Of Ma.s.singer there is one: the copy of his _Duke of Milan_, 1623, received from him by Sir F. Foljambe. In the case of Taylor the water-poet, the nearest approach to anything of the sort is the MS. note of the recipient of a copy of his Works, 1630.

Of two equally prominent poets of the same epoch, Daniel and Drayton, the latter seems to have had a partiality for inscribing his autograph in presentation copies of his books, while of Daniel in this way we do not recollect to have met with a single example.

Very engaging, on account of its manly and cordial tone, is the autograph epistle by Sir Richard Fanshawe accompanying an extant copy of his translation of Guarini's _Faithful Shepherd_, 1648. The whole production may be seen in the Huth Catalogue (p. 633), where we inserted it as a favourable sample of this kind of poetry or verse.

The lines are headed: "To my deare friend Mr. Tho. Brooke with Pastor Fido before an entended voyage," and commence:--

"This to the man I most affect I send, The faithfull Shepherd to as true a friend.

There on each page thou'lt tenderest pa.s.sion see, But none more tender than my own for thee."

The volume belongs to the series of memorials, which we possess in not too ample abundance, of the regard entertained by men of letters of former days for each other, or for their intimates, and ranks with the priceless copies of his own books presented by Jonson to some of his distinguished contemporaries. If he, or any one else, made gifts of such things to the greatest of them all, every trace of such an incident has apparently disappeared.

Rarity of occurrence is not by any means an imperative feature in influencing or determining the value of inscriptions. No examples are probably more abundant than the books of Izaak Walton, either with an ordinary note of presentation, or with MSS. notes in the writer's hand, if not with both; yet they invariably command a liberal price from the admission of Walton by common acknowledgment into the select circle of literary men, whose works we love for the sake of the author.

The following inscription in contemporary MS. occurs on the reverse of the Old Testament t.i.tle to a Cranmer's Bible of 1540: "Thys byble ys John Crogdens, Cytyzen and merchant taylor of London, dwellynge in Wattlynge Street at y^e syne of Y^e Whyte Horse, 1550."

Occasionally more or less curious personal traits or family clues are yielded by the memoranda on fly-leaves. A Latin Testament of 1563 bears: "e libris Thomae Northcote e dono Joh. Rolle Armig. de Stephenstone in agro Devoniensi;" a copy of Jewell's Sermons, 1583, has "John Willoughby, 1591," and "Amor vincit omnia." In the Savile copy of Sir Thomas More's Works, 1557, we read: "de dono H. Savile anno 1600; found by Mary Savile, Dec. 12, 1635, amongst other books at Metheby: for my daughter Mary Savile."

If the reader will cross over with us into Scotland for a moment or so, we will introduce him to a very interesting relic in the shape of a Latin Aristotle of 1526, in which a Cistercian monk of Kinloss Abbey, Andrew Langland, has enshrined two metrical compositions from his own pen; an epitaph on the Regent Murray, and an epistle to Joannes Ferrerius, Professor at Kinloss, 1542, and continuator of Hector Boece. The epitaph is dialogue-wise between the Bishop of Orkney, who was absent from the funeral, and Ferrerius, who attended it.

At the sale of the library of the Duke of Leeds, a large-paper copy of Wycherley's _Miscellany Poems_, 1704, apparently given by the poet to Lord Treasurer Danby, produced the outrageous price of 46. A far more interesting example was that which he presented to Mistress Mary Twysden, as noticed in the _Bibliographer_. A more important souvenir was the Latin Testament given by Pope to Bolingbroke in 1728 (Christie's, April 3, 1895, No. 339); and a yet stronger sympathy must be felt with the Juvenal and Persius, 8vo, Amsterdam, 1684, which once belonged to T. Killigrew, and subsequently to Pope, whose English version occupies the interleaves, if the description given by Wake of Derby be correct, as the book itself we have not seen.

We approach a different cla.s.s of consideration when we leave behind us the more or less fact.i.tious and artificial attractions of early bindings and autograph memoranda, and pa.s.s to books which owe their extrinsic interest to a mere signature, as in the case of the copy of Florio's _Montaigne_, 1603, which belonged to Shakespeare, and possesses his autograph on the fly-leaf, and of which the _provenance_, as stated by Madden in his pamphlet, 1838, favours the authenticity; and again, in that of Mr. Collier's copy of Drayton's _Shepheard's Garland_, 1593, which bears on the t.i.tle-page the signature of Robert, Earl of Ess.e.x.

There quite casually fell into our own hands a copy of one of Archbishop Usher's books, a stray from Manchester, with "Humfrey Chetham's Booke, 1644," on fly-leaf, and with it came a MS. on vellum, also formerly Chetham's, of the _Stimulus Conscientiae_ in English verse. They long lay in a garret at Pennington Hall, Leigh, Lancashire, the seat of the Hiltons, with whom Chetham was intimate, if not connected.

We meet with a surprise now and then, as when such a work as the English _Reynard the Fox_ of 1681-84 carries on its face a proof of the prior ownership of Beau Nash: "Rich. Nash Arm. Bathoniae, 1761,"

but it is quite natural to find the autograph of Sir Joshua Reynolds accompanying a series of French plates ill.u.s.trative of the _Odyssey_, 1639.

In old books, and in new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the t.i.tle-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory _caveat_ against the malappropriator, and brings the Almighty without scruple into the witness-box, in case any varlet should make free with his property:--

"Hic liber est meus, Testis est Deus; Si quis me quaerit, Hic nomen erit."

"Will. Morsse, 1678."

Of the whimsical entries in old English books the diversity is endless. On the fly-leaf of a copy of Roger Edgworth's _Sermons_, 4to, 1557, occurs: "Bryen O'rourke his hand and writting by fore G.o.d and man." A singular application of the Holy Scriptures presents itself in a couple of _IOU_'s written by James Haig of Prettisides in Longwood, co. Wilts, on the back of the t.i.tle to a New Testament of 1584. There is a curious, almost pathetic form of this habit of writing in books, practised from very early days down to our own, when we may easily remember how Lamb and Coleridge used to fill the blank leaves of a work of common interest, as it kept pa.s.sing to and fro like a messenger, till the worth of the ma.n.u.script matter left that of the printed far behind indeed. In a mild kind of way this sort of thing was already going on in the sixteenth century. A copy of the English version of the _Paraphrase_ of Erasmus on the New Testament, 1548, pa.s.ses similarly between two Tudor-period intimates, and there is this: "Mr. Dunes, I woulde wish you to peruse V. chapter of Marke, and there you shall finde great comforte to your soules health. Thus fare you well in the Lorde. Wyllyam Byrde."

In the copy of Shakespeare's _Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_, 1599, bound up with an early edition of _Venus and Adonis_, a former owner represents with perfect justice, that although he gave three-halfpence for the two volumes in one, a corner of a leaf was defective; and there has been furthermore a profound arithmetical computation that if this gentleman and his heirs or a.s.signs had invested the amount in good securities, the capital at this moment would have reached the vicinity of 1000.

In a copy of Stow's _Survey_, 1633, which once belonged to Sir Thomas Davies, Lord Mayor of London in 1676, we encounter a memorandum on the fly-leaf: "I pray, put in the loose leaues Carefully. John Meriton.

For Mr. Richardson, bookbinder in Scalding Alley." Richardson bound for Pepys. In an odd volume of _Sandford and Merton_, which fell in Dr. Burney's way, and which he gave to his daughter--Johnson's "little Burney"--he wrote:--

"See, see, my dear Fan, Here comes, spick and span, Little Sandford and Merton, Without stain or dirt on; 'Tis volume the second, Than the first better reckoned; Pray read it with glee, And remember C. B.

"April 18, 1786."

Beauty has been said to depend on Variety, and so we ought not to object to examples selected from widely different sources.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS

_From the original Water-colour Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, in possession of Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London_]

Horace's _multa renascentur_ comes into our mind when we stumble on a remark by Wodhull the collector in an _Acta Apostolorum_ printed at Oxford in 1715: "In May, 1810, Mr. Leigh, auctioneer, told me that a copy of this edition had lately sold for 20, observing, 'these are the times to sell books, not to buy them.'" A more notable man, William Beckford, appears in a copy of the original French _Vathek_, 1787, as the second person of the drama by reason of the written matter referring to him, and being in the hand of M. Chavannes of Lausanne. The note occupies the whole of the available s.p.a.ce on the t.i.tle, and is as follows:--"A la demande de M. Beckford je me suis charge de corriger son Ma.n.u.scrit et de le faire imprimer a Lausanne.

M. Beckford en quittant Lausanne se hata de le faire imprimer a Paris au Prejudice de l'Imprimeur de Lausanne, et je dus menacer M. Beckford de mettre dans les papiers son infidelite . . . et M. B. se hata de dedomager l'Imprimeur pour eviter la publicite."

So far as books with the autographs and MSS. notes of men of the modern school, such as Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, and Sh.e.l.ley, are concerned, the opportunities for securing specimens have certainly grown more numerous. We have already in the places specified above furnished many ill.u.s.trations of this section, and they might be readily extended.

In the foreign department there is a perfectly inexhaustible store of material under a variety of heads: evidences of ownership and descent, biographical suggestions, historical links and side-lights, dated armorial _ex libris_. In 1869 the author met with a thick 4to volume, including the Cologne edition of the _Legenda Sancti Albani Martyris_, printed about 1475, on the fly-leaf or cover of which was a list of contents made in 1475; and in the Hopetoun copy of the _Ethica_ of Aristotle the original owner had established the place of printing, otherwise unspecified, by a MS. note, dated 1469, in which he stated that the book was presented to him by its typographer, "Johannes Mentelin Argentin."

In a copy of the works of Petrarch in Latin, folio, 1501, occurs on the t.i.tle: "Liber Antonij kressen juris vtriusq. doctoris emptus venecijs ligatus nurenberge Mcccccv;" and the n.o.ble old volume (now in the British Museum) is accompanied by a memoir of Kressen, printed about 1600, of uniform size, with a splendid portrait of the interesting Nuremberger.