The Book-Collector Part 15

Even the outrageous prices asked for the articles, of which the condition was ordinarily poor, could not have brought Longmans anywhere near home; and the catalogue was expensively printed. Yet one would like, very much indeed like, to put down thirty golden sovereigns for _Shakespeare's Sonnets never before imprinted_, 1609, and fifty for Anthony Munday's _Banquet of Dainty Conceits_, 1588. The Rev. J. M. Rice obtained the latter in 1815; it was sold at his auction in 1834 for eighteen guineas, and when it next occurred among George Daniel's books in 1864, was bought by Mr. Huth against Sir William t.i.te for 225. The _Sonnets_ of 1609 would at present be worth 250. As regards the bulk of the lots, however, one might almost read shillings for pounds. Sir Francis Freeling had an interleaved copy, in which he entered acquisitions. Through his official connection with the Post-Office he procured many prizes from the country districts. d.i.c.k of Bury St. Edmunds stood him in good stead.

What Dibdin euphemistically christened the _Lincoln Nosegay_ was a second pair of bellows applied about the same date to the reddening flame of bibliographical ardour. It was a descriptive list of certain books which the Doctor had prevailed on the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral to sell to him for five hundred guineas, and which he divided between Mr. Heber and Lord Spencer. The collection was part of the benefaction of Dean Honeywood, and it was a shameful betrayal of trust. Our cathedral libraries still retain a host of treasures, notwithstanding all this sort of pillage; and the dim religious light which is shed around lends an air of sanct.i.ty to the spot sufficient, one might have thought, to arrest the hand of the marauder.

This was the height of the Bibliomania. Dibdin had in 1811 brought out his work so called. Perhaps it was hardly wise so to accentuate the pa.s.sion on paper. He lived to publish the _Bibliophobia_.

The _Bibliotheca Heberiana_, in thirteen parts, 1834-36, which in its realisation showed a strong revulsion, or at least a marked decline, from the cometary period, 1812-25, is the most stupendous a.s.semblage of literary treasures and curiosities ever brought together by an individual in this country. Heber was a scholar and a reader of his books; he has made memoranda on a large number of the fly-leaves; and these have been occasionally transferred to the catalogue, of which the Early English poetical portion, a singularly rich one, was edited and annotated by John Payne Collier. In using the Heber Catalogue, its mere extent and diversity ought to suffice as a warning that the prices are not in the least degree trustworthy; the cla.s.sics and some of the early typography went pretty high; and the Early English books were only saved from being given away by the active compet.i.tion of Mr W. H. Miller, who secured nearly everything of account at very moderate figures, and by the commissions held by Collier for the Duke of Devonshire, who bought the rarest of the old plays. The British Museum was scarcely in evidence there. It was enjoying one of its periodical slumbers.

The poetical section of the library embraced not only the lion's share of all the rarest books of the cla.s.s offered for public sale in Heber's time, but an immense a.s.sortment of articles which he acquired privately from Thorpe, Rodd, and others, of whom he was the infallible resource whenever they fell in with books or tracts or broadsides which he did not possess, or of which he perhaps possessed _only one copy_.

It was not merely that Heber distanced all that went before him or have succeeded him, so far as the extent and variety of his collections go, but that with his insatiable acquisitiveness he combined so much of the bibliographer and _litterateur_. It was fairly easy for certain men with more limited means and views, such as Malone, Steevens, Douce, Brand, Chalmers, Bright, Bliss, Laing, Bandinel, Turner, Locker, Corser, and a legion more, to pose as judges of the merits of their possessions; but how comparatively little was theirs to grasp! In the case of Heber the range of knowledge was immense; and he was equally at home with all departments and all periods. He had his modern side and his interest in current affairs, and a scholarly insight into the vast literary and bibliographical acc.u.mulations which it was his bent and pride to form, beyond any one whom we can call to mind. We do not include in this sort of category the Harley, Roxburghe, Grenville, Spencer, Blandford, Ashburnham, and Huth libraries, whose owners were collectors pure and simple.

Of the Grenville Catalogue, as an independent work, it is less usual to think and speak, because the library which it describes has long formed part of the British Museum, and very few are now living who can remember it under the roof of its excellent founder in Hamilton Place.

The books have now during some years const.i.tuted an integral part of the New General Museum Catalogue; there is scarcely any department of literature in which they did not contribute importantly to enrich and complete the national stores. But Mr. Grenville was particularly strong in early typography and Irish and English history.

The catalogue of Mr. George Daniel's singular and precious collection, disposed of in 1864, was an ordinary auctioneer's compilation; except that many of the owner's MSS. notes written on the fly-leaves were introduced by way of whetting the appet.i.tes of compet.i.tors; and to say that a vein of hyperbole pervaded these remarks is a mild expression; they emanated, we have to remember, from an accountant. The books, however, spoke for themselves. The printed account of them, viewed as a work of reference, must be read _c.u.m grano salis_--_c.u.m multis granis_. The sale was the starting-point of a new epoch and school in prices. Nothing of the kind on so extended a scale in that particular way had so far been seen before.

Collier's _Bibliographical Catalogue_, 1865, is an enlargement of his Bridgewater House Catalogue, 1837, without the ill.u.s.trations. The two volumes are full of curious and readable matter, and as they usually deal with the _libri rarissimi_, we have to accept the accounts and extracts in the absence of the originals. To many this may be indifferent; to a few it may be a serious drawback, since, rightly or wrongly, the fidelity and accuracy of the editor have been more than once called in question. Mr Collier's book, however, is merely serviceable as a guide to the character of the works described; he does not offer an opinion on the selling values, nor does he always render the t.i.tles correctly. One signal fault distinguishes the undertaking from what may be regarded as a commercial point of view; and it is the refusal or failure to recognise the momentous changes in the bibliographical rank of a number of books through the discovery between 1837 and 1865 of additional copies. Like most of us when we are advanced in life, he thought more of what was true when he was young, than of what was so at the time of writing.

The _Collectanea Anglo-Poetica_ of the Rev. Thomas Corser, in eleven parts, of which some were posthumous, const.i.tutes a very proud monument to the memory of an accomplished clergyman of limited resources, who during the best part of his life devoted his thought and surplus money to the acquisition of one of the richest a.s.semblages of Early English Poetry ever formed by any one, as he succeeded in obtaining many works in this extensive series not comprised even in the Heber Catalogue. Mr. Corser bought much privately; but he was largely indebted for his bibliographical good fortune to such sales as those of Jolley, Chalmers, Bright, and Wolfreston (1844-56). Of his catalogue as an authority and guide the value is unequal; the portions edited by himself are excellent and exhaustive, but it is not so with those which Mr. James Crossley superintended. A complete copy of the sale catalogue is a _desideratum_ for the follower in this gentleman's footsteps; but he would have to spend more money than Mr. Corser did by some thousands.

Of the Huth Catalogue, 1880, we can only say that it is a splendid gathering in a comparatively short period of various cla.s.ses of books obtained from the sales in London and elsewhere, and from private sources, and selected on account of condition and interest rather than with a view to completeness. In its character it is emphatically miscellaneous; but is very strong in Early English literature, owing to the opportunities which the founder enjoyed through the dispersion in his time of so many fine libraries of that cla.s.s, especially those of Daniel and Corser, and perhaps we may add of George Smith the distiller. But there was scarcely any sale here or on the Continent from which Mr. Huth was not enabled to add to his stores. He was a very rich man; but he was not a book-hunter, and he was both inconsistent and capricious. He had, in fact, no definite plan, and took each purchase on its own merits. His Catalogue, which he did not live to see completed, is unusually free from errors, but not quite so much so as he antic.i.p.ated and desired. Nevertheless, it will always be an useful guide and an honourable memorial.

Several monographs, dealing in a brief or cursory way with an entire library, or more fully with a section of it, may be noticed. The Ashburnham hand-list, 1864, now (1897-98) supplemented by the sale catalogue; the Chatsworth Catalogue, which does not include the books at Devonshire House, and Lord Crawford's catalogue of his Ballads and Broadsides. There are special accounts of several of the College Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Hartshorne's _Book Rarities_, 1829, a disappointing yet suggestive volume. We ought to remind the reader that the catalogue of Trinity, Cambridge, embraces Capell's _Shakesperiana_, and that there are separate hand-lists of Malone's and Douce's books at the Bodleian, of the Dyce and Forster bequests at South Kensington, of the Society of Antiquaries'

Broadsides, and of the Shakespearian treasures formerly at Hollingbury Copse. We have two editions of Blades's book on Caxton's press, Maitland's two Lambeth Catalogues, Botfield's _Cathedral Libraries_, and Edmond's Lists of the Aberdeen printers, 1886.

It is eminently likely that of the Rylands-Spencer library we shall have in the fulness of time a new catalogue, superseding Dibdin's publications, and of course embracing all the personal acquisitions of Mrs. Rylands, apart from the grand Althorp lot. In the capable hands of Mr. Duff it ought to turn out well.

In the _Book Lover's Library_, Mr. H. B. Wheatley has dedicated two or three volumes to the topic of forming and cataloguing a library. The object of these technical undertakings is clearer, perhaps, than their general utility; for, as a rule, a man likes to follow his own plan, and scarcely two normal collections of the average kind resemble one another, or are susceptible of similar treatment. The idea broached by Mr. Wheatley was, of course, not a new one. Gabriel Naude, librarian to Cardinal Mazarin, and subsequently keeper of the Royal Collection, printed a sketch of what in his opinion was necessary to const.i.tute a library, and this our Evelyn put into an English dress in 1661, and dedicated to Lord Clarendon. The plan of Naude was naturally that of a Frenchman accustomed to extensive a.s.semblages of literary monuments, and was not suited to the English taste, unless it might be in the case of a rich n.o.bleman, to whom s.p.a.ce and cost were alike indifferent. It was not likely to meet with adoption even by Evelyn himself, of whose acquisitions we know enough to judge that he followed his own personal sentiments rather than professional or technical advice. It rarely occurs that in the less ambitious types of library there are any bibliographical details likely to prove serviceable to the public; and the extent of knowledge gained by the owner in the course of his own experience should suffice to qualify him to become, where time is presumably not an object, his own cataloguer. For all that can be required is a hand-list on the scale of the Douce or Malone separate catalogues, where a t.i.tle seldom occupies more than a single line. Plentiful ill.u.s.trations of our meaning will be found by any one who opens the Grenville or Huth Catalogue, and perceives the wide discrepancy between the essential information and the descriptive and critical accounts. The primary motive in drawing up a view of the contents of ninety-nine libraries out of a hundred is the facilitation of reference, combined with an excusable personal pride; but a great deal of repet.i.tion and redundancy and useless expense are incurred by the literal transcript of the t.i.tles of books more or less familiar to all who are interested in them.

A very heavy proportion of the Early English entries in the Huth Catalogue are duplicates of those in the writer's _Collections_, and the same would be the case if the long-expected book on the Britwell heirlooms were to make its appearance. It would be, to a large extent, _bis cocta_.

In a private catalogue detailed explanation is required in the interest of bibliography, only where (i.) the owner happens to possess an unrecorded book; or (ii.) an unknown impression; or (iii.) a variant copy. Defects in important items should be particularised; in others the word _imperfect_ is sufficient; and it is best to indicate from what source they have come to the immediate repository. Take a few instances:--

Reynard the Fox, 1st edit. The Inglis copy. Folio, W. Caxton, Westminster, 1481.

Hannay (Patrick), Poems. The Huth copy. 8vo, London, 1622.

Holinshed (Raphael), Chronicles, 2 vols. The Sunderland copy.

Wants the plan of Edinburgh Castle. Folio, London, 1577.

Shakespeare (W.), Plays, 1st edit. The Napier copy, wanting the verses. Folio, London, 1623.

The notation of differences in copies of the same book, even if it is not one of supreme value, is always apt to be useful. Of literary comment the supply is discretionary, so long as it is new, pertinent, and interesting. The transfer to the catalogue of any inedited ma.n.u.script matter on the fly-leaves or margins, or of any proprietary marks, is eminently desirable.

For French literature, which is so largely collected in England, the _Manuel du Libraire_, &c., of Brunet, 7 vols. 8vo, 1860-78, with the works of Cohen and Gay, is the standard authority. The two latter, so far as they go, are more exhaustive than the _Manuel_, which is nearly as incomplete as our Lowndes, and not much more accurate. A new edition has been mooted; it is a clear _desideratum_. For value Brunet is scarcely more serviceable than its English a.n.a.logue, and the book is, curiously enough, particularly unsafe in such a field as the French books of former times, where so much depends on fact.i.tious conditions barely intelligible to an ordinary English or American consulter.

Two books which perhaps equally appeal to the English and Continental collectors are those just mentioned: Cohen, _Guide de l'Amateur de Livres a Gravures du XVIII^th siecle_, 5^me ed. 8^o, 1886-90, and Gay, _Bibliographie des Ouvrages relatifs a l'Amour, aux Femmes, au Mariage, et des Livres Facetieux_, 3^me ed. 12^o, 1871, 6 vols.

Both, but especially the first, are essential for guidance in the choice of a cla.s.s of publication of which the innumerable variations and the artificial prices necessitate the utmost caution on the part of an intending buyer.

There are, in fact, no topics to which an amateur or student can direct his notice or limit himself where he will not have been preceded, so to speak, by a path-finder; nor does the narrowness of the range always ensure brevity or compactness of treatment, since the Schreiber _Playing Cards of all Countries and Periods_, which to a certain extent enter into the literary category, occupy in the Account by Sir A. W. Franks three folio volumes; but a satisfactory view of the subject is to be gained from the works by Singer and Chatto, 1816-48. As a rule, editors of this cla.s.s of publication are more modest and compressed. There are the bibliographies on Angling by J.

R. Smith and Westwood; on Tobacco, by Bragge (1880); on Dialect books, by J. R. Smith (at present capable of great expansion); on Bewick, by Hugo; on Bartolozzi, by Tuer; on Tokens, by Williamson and by Atkins; on Coins and Medals, by a numerous body of gentlemen specified in a section of the writer's _Coin Collector_, 1896. In the English and American series are the well-known volumes by Henry Stevens and by Sabin, and the sumptuous catalogue of the early Laws and Statutes by Mr. Charlemagne Tower. In the Chetham Society's series, Mr. Jones, late Chetham's Librarian, printed an elaborate list of all the old English books and tracts relating to Popery.

There are many ways in which compilers of works of reference are in danger of perpetuating mistakes as to books, where they rely on secondary authorities. No account of an old book is, in the first place, ent.i.tled to credence unless it has been drawn up by the describer with the book itself before him; and when it is considered that not one individual in ten thousand can even then be trusted to copy what is under his eyes, and that there are, and always have been, those who have thought fit to exercise their ingenuity by falsifying dates and other particulars, there cannot be much room for surprise that our bibliographies, and those of every other people, are partly made up of material which never existed. Errors are heirlooms, of which it is hard to get rid.

The extent to which rare books are multiplied, as regards varieties of impression, by misdescriptions in catalogues, is remarkable and serious, and the bibliographer is not unfrequently confronted with statements of his ignorance of copies in sales of which he has not thought it worth while to indicate the true facts. But it is our individual experience that it is impossible to be too minute in pointing out snares for the unwary, and indeed for all who work at second-hand.

The Club or Society for the communication to members, and through them to the public generally, of literary and archaeological material previously existing only in MS. or in unique printed copies, was at the outset very restricted in its zone and its scope; but, in spite of the circ.u.mscribed interest felt by general readers in the more abstruse or obscure provinces of research, the movement, at first confined to scholars and patrons of literature, at length became universal in its range and distribution. There is no country pretending to culture without several of these inst.i.tutions. In Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, they have long abounded. They have rendered accessible an enormous body of inedited or unknown material for history, archaeology, and biography; and after all deductions for indiscretion and dilettantism, they may be p.r.o.nounced the medium for having shed new and precious light on well-nigh all branches of human science. To the book-collector they appeal less in a possessory sense than as works of reference. Where they enter into his plan is in the practice, which some of them have followed, of striking off on vellum or other special substance half a dozen copies, which from their _presqu' uniquity_ (this is as good a phrase as _rarissime_) have ere now bred unchristian sentiments among compet.i.tors for the _bijoux_ in the _belles lettres_. The book-hunter's motto is _Pulchra quae difficilia_; he reverses the common saying.

There is so far no exhaustive Guide to the Club literature, but the supplementary volume to Bohn's _Lowndes_ contains a fairly complete view of it down to 1869. The additions since that date have been incessant and almost innumerable. The British Museum General Catalogue registers them all under the mediaeval heading of _Academies_.

It is right and necessary that the inexperienced collector should be put on his guard against the reprehensible and dishonest practice of some professional vendors in advertising or offering for disposal books of which the leaves are not entirely genuine, which are deficient in supplemental matter recognised as part of the work, or whose bindings are sophisticated in a manner only capable of detection by a connoisseur or a specialist. There are wily persons who systematically and habitually insert in their catalogues items which they have acquired with the distinct proviso that they were defective, and have naturally acquired at a proportionate price. The forms of deception are infinitely various; but the leading points demanding attention and verification are apt to be:--

The Frontispiece.

The Portrait.

The Half-t.i.tle.

The Errata.

Supplement or Postscript.

Starred pages.

Extra sheets inserted.

Plates.

Extra Plates.

The intending purchaser must take care to satisfy himself that there are no facsimile or reprinted leaves, no catchword erased to cancel a deficiency, no mixture of editions, and no wrong or re-engraved portrait or frontispiece, or false date inserted or inconvenient one erased; and that the copy has not been unskilfully cleaned. It is _caveat emptor_ indeed.

The most surprising pains are undertaken by certain persons to mislead the collector who is not very much indeed on his guard, and who yearns for the possession of some current prize. A case lately occurred in which the well-known copy of the scarce portrait of Milton, with the famous verses beneath it, attached to the first edition of the _Poems_ in 1645, had been actually split and laid down on old paper to make it resemble the original print, and in the same way a plate belonging to Lovelace's _Lucasta_, 1649, representing Lucy Sacheverell, being frequently deficient, and making a good deal of the value of the book, has been ere this soaked off from the modern reproduction in Singer's _Select Poets_, and "lined" to communicate to it the aspect of a genuine impression mounted.

Other forms of deception and danger lie in the exact reproduction of ancient or early books, not always with any mischievous or fraudulent intention. Such a piece of _supercherie_ as the _History of Prince Radamanthus_, professedly re-printed from a unique copy by Wynkyn de Worde, or the _Life and Death of Mother Shipton_, dated 1687, and actually issued in the latter half of the last century, are scarcely apt to impose on any but the most un.o.bservant. It stands differently, however, with the _Declaratioun of the Kings maiesties intention and meaning toward the lait acts of parliament_, 1585, republished in 1646 in facsimile: with Marlowe's _Ovid_, originally printed in 1596, and repeatedly brought out without any change in the text down to 1630: with Sir John Hayward's _Life of Henry IV._, 1599, similarly reproduced, and (in French literature) with the eighteenth-century edition of the works of Rabelais, purporting to have come from the Lyons press in 1558. These difficulties require on the part of buyers one of two things: an experienced eye or a trustworthy counsellor. The version of Ovid's _Elegies_ by Marlowe in a re-issue of no value is constantly sold for the right one, suppressed by authority, although Dyce, in his edition of the poet, 1850, points out the differences.

One has to study not merely the external characteristics of an old book, but the paper, water-mark, type. It is scarcely conceivable that the reprint by Pepys of the _Order of the Hospital of St.

Bartholomew_, 1557, could be mistaken for the genuine impression; the paper and type alike betray it.

A curious and long-lived misapprehension prevails respecting certain works from the press of Thomas Berthelet, at the foot of the t.i.tle-pages of which we find the date 1534; but the latter forms part of the woodcut in which the letterpress is enclosed, and was retained in publications posterior to the year named, and the same is, to a slighter extent, the case with Robinson's _Reward of Wickedness_, where the figures 1573 occur at the end within an engraved border employed for other purposes, the particular production by one of the guards set over Mary, Queen of Scots, having probably appeared some years after.

CHAPTER XV

Fluctuations in the value of books--The prices of books comparative--Low prices adverse to the sale of books in certain cases--Great difficulty in arriving at the market-price of very rare volumes--Influence of the atmosphere--Reflections on the utility and prudence of collecting--The collector, as a rule, pays for his amus.e.m.e.nt--The cla.s.ses which chiefly buy the dearer books--Bookselling a speculation--The question of investment--Runs on particular kinds of books or particular subjects--Quotations of prices realised to be read between the lines--Careful consideration of certain problems essential to security of buyers--The bookseller's point of view--Books which are wanted, and why--Capital publications and universally known authors--Tendency to estimate earlier and middle period literature by its literary or artistic qualities--Collectors in the future--Interest in prices current--Some notable figures--The most precious books of all countries--Two imperfect copies of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ bring 2900--Henry VIII.'s own copy on vellum of a volume of Prayers, 1544, with MSS. notes by him and his family--Lady Elizabeth Tirrwhyt's _Prayers_, 1574, bound in gold--_Book of St. Alban's_, 1486, and _Chronicles of England_, printed at St. Alban's--The _Lincoln Nosegay_--American buyers and their agents--Composition of an average auction-room--An early example of a book-lottery.

THE fluctuations and revolutions in the mercantile value of old English books present phenomena to our consideration of an instructive and occasionally of a tantalising character. No one has the power to foresee what future changes time may bring forth. It is the fashion with the vendor to force a purchase on his client, because, says he, this book cannot recur for sale, or this cla.s.s of books is rising; but that is a _facon de parler_, nothing more. We are apt to sigh over the times when unique Caxtons could be had--ay, in our grandsires'

time--for less than 20. In the sixteenth century twenty pence paid for them. But let us recollect that our estimation of an article depends on its cost so largely. What we acquire cheaply we hold cheaply. Should we have heard of many of our great modern collectors had old quotations survived? We have known personally one or two who would not dream of taking a volume at a low price; you had, as it were, to adjust it to their meridian. They failed to perceive how anything could be worth having if it was to be secured for a song. A hundred-dollar author might be barely admissible; a dollar man would be a disgrace to the collection.

As regards the strange vicissitudes of the tariff for second-hand books prices, there is an ill.u.s.trative note from Robert Scott, the celebrated dealer, to Pepys, dated June 30, 1688, where he offers his customer four books for 34s., namely:--

Campion and Others' "History of Ireland" 12 0 Harding's "Chronicle" 6 0 Sir John Pryce's "Defensio Hist. Brit." 8 0 Barclay's "Ship of Fools" [1570] 8 0

The value set on the second and fourth items would now, if they were poor copies, be vastly in excess of the figures named by Scott; but for the other two a bookseller of the present day might not expect much more than Pepys was asked more than two hundred years ago.

The anecdotes of bargains picked up from day to day at the present time are plentiful, and (except for the fortunate finder) exasperating enough. But if we go back to a period when there were no auctions, no organised book depots, no newspapers, no railways and other such facilities, and men lived practically in separate communities, there can be no feeling of astonishment that our own early literature, like that of all other countries, has descended to us in an almost inconceivably shrunk volume. Books, and more especially pamphlets and broadsheets, were acquired, and, after perusal, flung away. There were not only no booksellers, in our sense, but down to the seventeenth century no systematic book-buyers. The library, as we understand the term and the thing, is a comparatively modern inst.i.tution. Even the products of the Caxton press, very early in the next century, had sunk in commercial value to almost nothing; they were procurable for pence, nor did they acquire any appreciation till the reign of George III.