L'tffARY THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON. * His soul was never so staked dozvn as in a booksellers shop. Roger North. THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Ibtstortcal anb otber StuMes ot Collectors ant) Collecting WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS W. ROBERTS Author of The Earlier History of English Bookselling,' '^ Printers Marks.' etc. ^v ^^ LONDON ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 1895 V n CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE - - - - - - - - xiii INTRODUCTION - ' - - - - - - XV EARLY BOOK-HUNTING ...... i BOOK-HUNTING AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING - 12 FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW - - - - - 44 BOOK-AUCTIONS AND SALES - - - - - 98 BOOKSTALLS AND BOOKSTALLING . - - - - 149 SOME BOOK-HUNTING LOCALITIES - - - - - 1 68 WOMEN AS BOOK-COLLECTORS - - - - - 259 BOOK THIEVES, BORROWERS, AND KNOCK-OUTS - - - 274 SOME HUMOURS OF BOOK-CATALOGUES - - - - 293 SOME MODERN COLLECTORS .----- 299 INDEX --------- 323 ^"::>c,W>2>l J ""^ *L c~**-^n NIA? ii^-^ v'.=-. A-: i 1-v UO--1 ■^'t. " ^m ;,:■•"■ =?===^=--i L2^==Jjjj^'==>.S:^^|, J ^^^^J LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. * HIS SOUL WAS NEVER SO -STAKED DOWN AS IN A BOOKSELLER'S SHOP.' — ROGER NORTH ----- Frontispiece IN A SCRIPTORIUM ------- 2 LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY - - - - - - 5 ROMAN BOOKS AND WRITING MATERIALS - - - - II EARL OF ARUNDEL'S BADGE - - - - - l6 SIR ROBERT COTTON- - - - - - - 21 SIR JULIUS C.*:SAR'S TRAVELLING LIBRARY - - - 22 ARCHBISHOP USHER ------- 26 WOTTON HOUSE IN 1840 - - -• - - - 28 MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD - - - - - 29 SIR HANS SLOANE'S MONUMENT - - - - "30 LITTLE BRITAIN IN 1550 - - - - - "33 CHARLES, THIRD EARL OF SUNDERLAND - - - "37 LONDON HOUSE, ALDERSGATE STREET, 1808 - - - 40 ST. BERNARD'S SEAL ------- 43 MR. AUSTIN DOBSON - - - - - - "45 WILLIAM BECKFORD, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - 48 GEORGE JOHN, EARL SPENCER - - - - "51 JOHN, DUKE OF ROXBURGHE, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - " $2 A CORNER IN THE ALTHORP LIBRARY - - - "53 MICHAEL WODHULL, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - "57 GEORGE NICOL, THE KING'S BOOKSELLER - - - - 60 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN, BIBLIOGRAPHER - - - 63 REV. C. MORDAUNT CRACHERODE, M.A., BOOK-COLLECTOR - 65 J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS - - - - - '71 CANONBURY TOWER, GEORGE DANIEL'S RESIDENCE - - ^^ SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE - - - - "76 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ' HIS SOUL WAS NEVER SO -STAKED DOWN AS IN A BOOKSELLER'S SHOP.' — ROGER NORTH ----- Fro?itispiece IN A SCRIPTORIUM ------- 2 LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY - - - - - - 5 ROMAN BOOKS AND WRITING MATERIALS - - - - II EARL OF ARUNDEL'S BADGE - - - - - l6 SIR ROBERT COTTON- - - - - - - 21 SIR JULIUS C.t:SAR'S TRAVELLING LIBRARY - - -12 ARCHBISHOP USHER ------- 26 WOTTON HOUSE IN 1840 - - - - - - 28 MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD - ■ - - -29 SIR HANS SLOANE'S MONUMENT - - - - "30 LITTLE BRITAIN IN 1550 - - - - - - 2>2> CHARLES, THIRD EARL OF SUNDERLAND - - - "37 LONDON HOUSE, ALDERSGATE STREET, 1808 - - - 40 ST. BERNARD'S SEAL ------- 43 MR. AUSTIN DOBSON ------- 45 WILLIAM BECKFORD, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - 48 GEORGE JOHN, EARL SPENCER - - - - "51 JOHN, DUKE OF ROXBURGHE, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - "52 A CORNER IN THE ALTHORP LIBRARY - - - "53 MICHAEL WODHULL, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - "57 GEORGE NICOL, THE KING'S BOOKSELLER - - - - 60 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN, BIBLIOGRAPHER - - -63 REV. C. MORDAUNT CRACHERODE, M.A., BOOK-COLLECTOR - 65 J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS - - - - - - 71 CANONBURY TOWER, GEORGE DANIEL'S RESIDENCE - - T^ SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE - - - - - 76 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE lamb's cottage at COLEBROOK row, ISLINGTON - - 77 WILLIAM HAZLITT ------- 78 THOMAS HILL, AFTER MACLISE - - - - - 79 SAMUEL ROGERS'S HOUSE IN ST. JAMES'S PLACK - - - 81 SAMUEL ROGERS ._.---- 82 ALEXANDER DYCE, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - -83 W. J. THOMS, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - - 88 HOLLINGBURY COPSE, THE RESIDENCE OF THE LATE MR. HALLI- WELL-PHILLIPPS - - - - - - "91 JOHN DUNTON, BOOK-AUCTIONEER IN 1698 - - - lOI SAMUEL BAKER, THE FOUNDER OF SOTHEBV'S - - - I02 SAMUEL LEIGH SOTHEBY ------ 104 MR. E. G. HODGE, OF SOTHEBY'S - - - - - I05 A FIELD-DAY AT SOTHEBY'S ------ I06 KEY TO THE CHARACTERS IN THE ' FIELD-DAY AT SOTHEBY'S ' - I07 R. H. EVANS, BOOK-AUCTIONEER, l8l2 - - - - I09 JOHN WALKER, BOOK-AUCTIONEER, 1 776 - - - - 112 STAIRCASE AT PUTTICK AND SIMPSON'S - - - "113 THE LATE HENRY STEVENS, OF VERMONT- - - "US MR. JAMES CHRISTIE, 'THE SPECIOUS ORATOR' - - - II7 BENJAMIN HEATH, BOOK-COLLECTOR, 1 738 - - - 1 23 SPECIMEN OF TYPE OF THE MAZARIN BIBLE - - " I25 A CORNER IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM - - - - 1 27 ALDUS, FROM A CONTEMPORARY MEDAL - - - - 1 29 THE FIFTY-SEVEN ALTHORP CAXTONS - - - "134 FROM 'GAME AND PLAY OF CHESSE,' BY CAXTON - - - 135 SPECIMEN OF THE TYPE OF 'THE BOKE OF ST. ALBANS ' - I37 SPECIMEN PAGE OF TYNDALE'S TESTAMENT, 1 526- - - I38 JOHN MURRAY, OF SACOMB, BOOK-HUNTER - - - I39 TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION OF 'THE COMPLEAT ANGLER ' I44 FROM THE ' PILGRIM'S PROGRESS,' PART II. - - T 145 CORNELIUS WALFORD, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - "152 THE SOUTH SIDE OF HOLYWELL STREET - - - - 153 EXETER 'CHANGE IN 1 826 - - - - - "154 A BARROW IN WHITECHAPEL - - - - "155 A BOOK-BARROW IN FARRINGDON ROAD - - - - 1 58 A FEW TYPES IN FARRINGDON ROAD - - - "159 HENRY LEMOINE, AUTHOR AND BOOKSELLER - - - 161 THE LATE EDMUND HODGSON, BOOK- AUCTIONEER - - 1 64 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, 1606. FROM THE GRACE COLLECTION 169 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi THOMAS BRIITON, 'THE SMALL-COAL MAN,' COLLECTOR OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND MSS. - - - - - 173 DUKE STREET, LITl'LE BRITAIN, FORMERLY CALLED DUCK LANE 1 75 CHARLES LAMB, AFTER D. MACLISE - - - - 177 OLD HOUSES IN MOORFIELDS - - - - - 1 78 JONES AND CO. (SUCCESSORS TO LACKINGTON) - - - 180 INTERIOR OF LACKINGTON'S SHOP - - - - - 181 LACKINGTON'S HALFPENNY - - - - - - 1 82 THE POULTRY IN I550 - - - - - - 184 THE OLD MANSION HOUSE, CHEAPSIDE - - - - 1 85 GILBERT AND FIELD'S SHOP IN COPTHALL COURT - - 1 86 E. GEORGE'S (LATE CLADDING'S) SHOP, WHITECHAPEL ROAD - 188 MIDDLE ROW, HOLBORN, 1865 - - - - "195 WILLIAM DARTON, BOOKSELLER - - - - - 197 INTERIOR OF DARTON'S SHOP, HOLBORN HILL - - - I98 JAMES WESTELL'S, II4, OXFORD STREET - - - - 20O SALKELD'S shop — 'IVY house' — IN CLAPHAM ROAD - - 203 JOHN BAGFORD, SHOEMAKER AND BOOK-DESTROYER - - 204 MR. TREGASKIS'S SHOP — 'THE CAXTON HEAD' — IN HOLBORN - 205 DAY'S CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN MOUNT STREET - - - 207 PATERNOSTER ROW ON A BANK HOLIDAY - - - - 209 JOHN EVELYN, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - - 212 NEWBERY's SHOP IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD - - - 213 CHARLES tilt's SHOP - - - - - - 221 BUTCHER ROW, 1 798 ------- 224 CHARLES HUTT'S HOUSE IN CLEMENT'S INN PASSAGE - - 226 MR. WILLIAM D. REEVES, BOOKSELLER - - - - 227 MESSRS. HILL AND SON'S SHOP IN HOLYWELL STREET - - 23 1 MESSRS. SOTHERAN'S SHOP IN PICCADILLY - - -233 HONEST TOM PAYNE - - - - - - - 239 HENRY G. BOHN, BOOKSELLER - . . . . 243 JOHN H. BOHN _--..-- 244 MR. F. S. ELLIS -...--. 245 A CORNER AT ELLIS AND ELVEY'S ----- 246 WESTMINSTER HALL WHEN OCCUPIED BY BOOKSELLERS AND OTHERS -------- 247 JOHN HATCHARD (1768-1849) - - - - - 252 JAMES TOOVEY, BOOKSELLER - - - - - 253 JAMES TOOVEY'S SHOP, PICCADILLY- .... 254 BERNARD QUARITCH, THE NAPOLEON OF BOOKSELLERS - - 256 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GOLDEN MANUAL OF PRAYERS (FRONT COVER) 262 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GOLDEN MANUAL OF PRAYERS (BACK COVER) 263 THE FRONTISPIECE TO 'THE LADIES' LIBRARY' OF STEELE - 266 ELIZABETH PINDAR'S BOOKPLATE ----- 267 THE ESHTON HALL LIBRARY . . - . _ 269 'EARNING HIS DINNER' - - - - - - 275 THE KING'S LIBRARY, BRITISH MUSEUM - - - - 276 * STEALS A BOOK, PLACES IT IN A NOVELETTE. AND WALKS AWAY ' 280 * HE HAD PLACED THE BOOK IN HIS POCKET. SOMEONE HAD RELIEVED HIM OF IT' - - - - - - 282 THE LATE HENRY HUTH, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - 300 MR. HENRY H. GIBBS, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - 302 MR. R. COPLEY CHRISTIE, BOOK-COLT-ECTOR - - 303 THE LATE FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON - - - - 312 PORTRAIT BOOKPLATE OF MR. JOSEPH KNIGHT - - - 3 13 'AN ORDER FROM MR. GLADSTONE' - - - " 315 PORTRAIT BOOKPLATE OF MR. H. S. ASHBEE - - - 316 MR. T. J. WISE, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - - 317 MR. CLEMENT SHORTER'S BOOKPLATE - - - - 318 MR. A. BIRRELL, BOOK-COLLECTOR - - - - "319 FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE, ' PILGRIM'S PROGRESS,' FIRST EDITION 32 1 Roman Book-box. PREFACE. HE Book-hunter in London ' is put forth as a con- tribution to the fascinating history of hook-collecting in the metropolis ; it does not pretend to be a com- plete record of a far-reaching subject, which a dozen volumes would not exhaust; the present work, however, is the first attempt to deal with it in anything like a comprehensive manner, but of how far or in what degree this attempt is successful the reader himself must decide. The task itself has been an exceedingly pleasant one to the author, and it only remains for him to thank, collectively, the large number of friends and acquaintances who have so cordially favoured him with advice and information on so many poi^its. In only a couple of quite unimportant instances has he experienced anything approaching churlishness. The geniality and courtesy of the hook-collector are proverbial, but specimens of a different type are evidently to be found here and there. As regards the chapter on Modern Collectors, the author's object has been to deal with a representative selection of the bibliophiles of to-day. To aim at anything like completeness in this section of the hook would be highly undesirable, having regard to a PREFA CE proportionate representation of the subject as a whole. Complete- nesSy moreover^ would he an impossibility , even in a volume devoted entirely to modern men. The greatest possible care has been taken to prevent inaccuracy of any kind, but whilst freedom from error is a consummation which every author desires, it is also one of which few can boast. The reader will he doing the author a favour by informing him of any mistake which may he detected in the following pages. An omission in the account of Stewart, the founder of Puttick's, may he here made good : he had the privilege of selling David Garrick's choice library in 1823. ^^^ author regrets to learn that Purcell {p. 164), a very intelligent bookseller, died some months ago. ' The Book-hunter in London^ is the outcome not only of material which has been accumulating for many years past, from published and unpublished sources, hut also of a long and pleasant inter- course with the leading hook-collectors and booksellers in London, not to mention a vigorous and constant prosecution of one of the most pleasant and instructive of hobbies. The author has freely availed himself of the information in the works ofDibdin, Nichols, and other writers on the subject, but their statements have been verified whenever possible, and acknowledgements have been made in the proper places to the authorities laid under contribution. W. R. 86, Grosvenor Road, S.W. INTRODUCTION. T 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 ex- ercise 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 com- panion 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 Bar- clay in his hand ; Kant, who never left his birthplace, Konigs- INTRODUCTION burg, 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 Caesar. Chesterfield, agree- ing with CalHmachus, that 'a great book is a great evil,' and with La Fontaine — * Les longs ouvrages me font peur Loin j'epuiser une matiere II faut n'en prendre que la fleur ' — hated ponderous, prosy, pedantic tomes. Garrick had an extensive collection on the history of the stage, but Shake- speare 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 ^lIso 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 INTRODUCTION 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 w^hich 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 book- seller, ' 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 characteristic- ally 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 pro- b xviii INTRODUCTION bably 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 lit 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 boss with the daggers and roosters might have been related to me some way.' ' I remember,' says the Marquis d'Argenson, in his * Memoires,' * once paying a visit to a well-known biblio- maniac, 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 ex- claimed 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 re- printing." " 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 — ' lo 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 delinea- tion 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 paint- ings, prints, bric-a-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, INTRODUCTION xix 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 w^hich 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 w^as 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 imperturb- able 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, INTRODUCTION 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 mediaeval 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, grow- ing 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. A 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 INTRODUCTION of other trades and callings. We have known grocers, green- grocers, 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 ;f 1,000 a year, spend ^i per month on books ? The library of the average middle-class person is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the crudest 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, CasseWs 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 ;f 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 xxii INTRODUCTION 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 incHned to indulge in speculation of this vain character. It will, however, be in- teresting 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 pubHshed in the seventeenth century, not more than perhaps fifty are now held in estimation ; and of the 80,000 pubHshed 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, revue s'ilenfut 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 hbraries for the gratifi- cation 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 INTRODUCTION 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. Doubt- less Dr. Ingleby would have included in his scope such books as Lord Lonsdale's ' Memoir of the Reign of James IL,' 1803, which fifty years ago sold for 5 J guineas, but which, within the past few months, has declined to two shillings I 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 los. 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 com- mercial, 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 ' ; Milhn- gen'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 ma}- be attributed to certain definite causes. For example, in the early years of this century one of the commonest books at IS. or IS. 6d. was Theobald's * Shakespeare Restored ' ; but fifty years later it was a very rare book. The interest xxiv INTRODUCTION 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 £^0. 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 un- folded. These were passed into the market, and the price at once fell to about ^^^5. The most curious things turn up some- times 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 £^ or £^ 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 book- seller, 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 £^ 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- INTRODUCTION xxv 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 pro- verbial 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 illustra- tion, 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 £^ better, and secured the prize at the then unheard-of price of ;f 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 ^^^ ^^55 Mr. Stevens bought books to the value of over 50,000 dollars for Mr. Lenox, and on review- ing 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 ;f 100 for it. After searching far and wide, the long-lost ' Benjamin ' was discovered in a lot INTRODUCTION 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. Thence- forward a " spirited competition " arose between Mr. Lilly and myself, until finally the lot was knocked down to Stevens for igs.' The volume had cost the late Mr. Pickering 3s. It became Mr. Lenox's property for ;f8o. 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 black- berries," 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 is. 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 con- siderable success, often buying duplicates, and even tripHcates, 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," i6og, 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 INTRODUCTION at Reading, and a " Venus and Adonis," 1594, at Manchester, in a volume of old tracts, for the ignoble sum of is. 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 desir- able 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 consider- able 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 architec- ture. ... 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 men- tioned 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 xxviii • INTRODUCTION 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 simphcity 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 exceed- ingly 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 in- dications 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 com- plete 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 facetiae. 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 ;if 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 par- INTRODUCTION ticularly 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.* 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 ' I'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 con- tested 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 com- mission, 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 contre- temps 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 * 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 IDS. ; 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. INTRODUCTION 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 hbrary 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, for- getting 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 some- times 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 book- seller 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 ;£'io 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 consider- able amount of haggling, a very fine Missal for £65, which was ^5 less than its catalogue price. A few weeks after the pur- INTRODUCTION chaser 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 £yo. Another honest book-col- lector, 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. THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON EARLY BOOK-HUNTING. HOSE who have studied the earher phases of EngHsh history will readily understand that the terms book-hunting in England and book-hunt- ing 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 I THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON 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 con- nection, 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 North- umbria, 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 in- creased. In a letter to Charle- magne, 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 every- thing, 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 ^■H ^Hf^%-.~:N? . .: JJHR BI^^^^^T^^T^' 1 \ v^^M mKKmt^^-ti^'(Jf4'''lK' .- * B^^^i^Tl^^^^pf^^^^ W— ffify^rffiaiilMigr f- .. H^^HjH^^HHHRp ' Hi^^^^^^^^^^l^^lHP - IH^^^M^ y ^E:^,'AS;i-klJ In a Scriptoriuvi. EARLY BOOK-HUNTING 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 rebuild- ing 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 im- ported, 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 L 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 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON 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 ;fii6 14s. 6d., representing, according to Milman's estimate, ^^f 1,760 of our present money. Twenty- one Bibles and parts of Bibles were valued at £ig 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 Avicennae. 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 Avicennae ' being valued at the very high figure of ^5, and the ' Liber Naturahs ' at 3s. A Bible in thirteen volumes is valued at ^f 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 EARLY BOOK-HUNTING Lambeth Palace Library. 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 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON 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 Abbe 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 regii le Roy Edw^ 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, EARLY BOOK-HUNTING in which was included pretty pearly 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,' un- fortunately, 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 hi^ passion with a warmth of eloquence of which even Cicero might have been proud. His most im- portant 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 execu- toribus predicti episcopi anno Domini millesimo ccc^ xlv^^ 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 remark- able 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 8 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON well furnished with works in science and history, and particu- larly so with the classics — Aristotle, Cicero, Lucan, Plato, Suetonius, Seneca, Terence, and Virgil. The extreme pro- bability 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, 142 1, amid much pomp, by the then Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Whit- tington, who gave ^^400 in books. It was covered in before the winter of 1422, and completed in three years, and fur- nished 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 a 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 im- ported 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 EARLY BOOK-HUNTING 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 exist- ence, is too well known to be dealt with here (see p. log). 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 Bod- leian, 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 lo THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON taxation, plague and famine at home, that hterary 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 Cam- bridge 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 progress- ing 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 re- membered. Neither Edward IV. nor Richard III. seems to have availed hirnself 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^. — vijs. xd. ob. ; for the making of xvj laces and xvj tassels made of the said vj unces and iij of silke, price in grete ijs. vii<^.' 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," xxs. ; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke of the Holy Trinitie, xvjs. ; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called " Frossard," xvjs. ; for bynding, gilding and dressing of EARLY BOOK-HUNTING a booke called the Bible, xvjs. ; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called " Le Gouvernement of Kinges and Princes," xvjs. ; for bynding and dressing of the three smalle bookes of Franche, price in grete vjs. viiij^. ; for the dressing of ij bookes whereof oon is called " La Forteresse de Foy " and the other called the '* Book of Josephus," iijs. iiijV. ; and for bynding, gilding and dressing a booke called the " Bible Historial," xxs.' The only incident which calls for special mention in the two next short reigns is a law, i 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. Romayi Books and Writmg Materials. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER THE OF PRINTING. INTRODUCTION I. HE introduction of printing into this country by Caxton during the latter half of the fif- teenth century had very little immediate effect on book-collecting. The operations of the press were slow, its patrons few, and its work controlled by one man. The reproduction of MSS. was essentially a slow process, but when these transcriptions were finished, they rarely failed to find a purchaser. Caxton, like Sweynheim and Pannartz at Subiaco, soon learned the serious- ness of over-printing an edition. Collectors were few, and the introduction of printing did not very materially add to their number. London, however, soon became a recognised centre of the trade in books, and Henry VII. patronized, in his curious fashion, the collecting of them. He read, according to Bacon, * most books that were of any worth in the French tongue,' and one of the most commendable actions of this King was the purchase of the noble series of BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 13 vellum copies of the works printed at Paris by Antoine Verard, now in the British Museum — an act by which he may be said to have laid the foundation of our great national library. The value of books at this period is not without interest ; but we must confine ourselves to one or two facts relating to Caxton's books. At his death in 1492, a copy of the ' Golden Legend ' was valued at 6s. 8d. in the books of the Westminster churchwarden. From a note by Dibdin, it would seem that the price of Caxtons towards the end of the reign of Henry VII. was as follows : ' Godfray of Boulogne ' (imperfect), iis. Virgil's ' JEneid ' (perfect), xij^. ' Fait of Arms and Chivalry ' (perfect), ijs. viij^. ' Chastising of God's Children,' vnjd. Henry VIII. was undoubtedly a book-lover as well as a book-collector. He established a library at St. James's. But perhaps it is rather as a book-disperser that Henry is entitled to notice in this place. The dissolution of the monasteries is the genesis of book-collecting in London. The first move in this respect is entitled ' An Act that all religious houses under the yearly revenue of ;£*200 shall be dissolved and given to the King and his heirs,' and is dated 1535 (27 Henry VIIL, cap. 28, ii. 134). The second is dated 1539- Whatever advantages in a general way the dissolution of the monasteries may have had, its consequences, so far as regards the libraries, which the monks considered as among their most cherished possessions, were disastrous beyond measure. Indeed, we have no conception of our losses. Addressing himself to Edward VI. in 1549, John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory, who had but little love for Popery of any description, writes in this strain : ' Avarice was the other dispatcher which hath made an end both of our libraries and books ... to the no small decay of the com- monwealth. A great number of them who purchased those superstitious mansions [monasteries], reserved of these Library-books, some ... to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots ; some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to the book- 14 ' THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON binders, not in small numbers, but at times whole shipsfull, to the wondering of the foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with so ungodly gains, and so deeply shameth his natural country. I know a merchantman, which shall at this time be nameless, that "bought the contents of two noble Libraries for forty shillings price : a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these ten years ; and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. . . . Our posterity may well curse this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities, unless they be stayed in time.' Fuller, in his ' Church History of Britain,' quotes Bale's lamentation, and adds his own testimony on the same subject : ' As brokers in Long Lane, when they buy an old suit buy the linings together with the outside, so it was considered meet that such as purchased the buildings of monasteries should in the same grant have the Libraries (the stuffing thereof) conveyed unto them. And now these ignorant owners, so long as they might keep a ledger-book or terrier by direction thereof to find such straggling acres as belonged unto them, they cared not to preserve any other monuments. The covers of books, with curious brass bosses and clasps, intended to protect, proved to betray them, being the baits of covetous- ness. And so many excellent authors, stripped out of their cases, were left naked, to be buried or thrown away. . . . What soul can be so frozen as not to melt into anger thereat ? What heart, having the least spark of ingenuity, is not hot at this indignity offered to literature ? I deny not but that in this heap of books there was much rubbish ; legions of lying legends, good for nothing but fuel . . . volumes full fraught with superstition, which, notwithstand- ing, might be useful to learned men ; except any will deny apothecaries the privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make antidotes of them. But, beside these, what beautiful Bibles, rare Fathers, subtile Schoolmen, useful Historians — ancient, middle, modern ; what painful Com- BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 15 ments were h'ere amongst them ! What monuments of mathematics all massacred together ; seeing every book with a cross was condemned for Popish ; with circles for conjuring.' The calamities bewailed in such picturesque language by Bale and Fuller would have been much more serious but for the labours of one of our earliest antiquaries and book-lovers, John Leland. ' The laboryouse Journey and serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiquities geven of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to kynge Henry the viii in the xxxvij yeare of his Reygne,' 1549, is a remarkable publication, of great interest to the book-hunter and the antiquary. But the fruits of Leland's researches cannot now be fully known, for he was too intent on accumulating material to draw up an adequate inventory. Much that he preserved from destruction is now in the British Museum, and some is in the Bodleian at Oxford. Some of the fragments which he had saved from the general destruction had been placed in the King's own library in Westminster. The dissolution of the monasteries had among its many effects the creation, so to speak, of a large number of col- lectors. One of the most famous of the early sixteenth- century collectors. Sir Thomas More, however, died (in 1535) before he could have availed himself of the many treasures scattered to all quarters of the earth. Dibdin records a bibliomaniacal anecdote which is well worth repeating here, as it shows how More's love of books had infected even those who came to seize upon him to carry him to the Tower, and to endeavour to inveigle him into treasonable expressions : ' While Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer weare bussie in trussinge upp his bookes, Mr. Riche, pretending,' etc., ' whereupon Mr. Palmer, on his deposition, said, that he was soe bussie ab^ the trussinge upp Sir Tho. Moore's bookes in a sacke, that he tooke no heed of there talke.' Henry, Earl of Arundel, was not slow to seize upon the advantages which the dissolution placed before everyone. At Nonsuch, in Surrey, he formed a library, which is described in a biography of him, written shortly after his i6 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON death, as ' righte worthye of remembrance.' Besides his numerous MSS. and printed books, he acquired a consider- able portion of the hbrary of Cran- mer, which was dispersed at the death of the Archbishop. His books passed A/^'^k^U'/W to his son-in-law. Lord Lumley, at //V^,- \_ /?^=\ whose decease they were purchased by Henry, Prince of Wales, and are now in the British Museum. The Earl of Arundel's books are handsomely bound, and are known by his badge of the Earl of ArundeVs Badge, white horse and oak branch which generally occurs on the covers. In Jeremy Collier's ' Ecclesiastical History ' (vol. ii. 307) we get a glimpse of book-matters in London in the middle of the sixteenth century. At the end of February, 1550, we learn that the Council book mentions the King's sending a letter for the purging of the library at Westminster. The persons are not named, but the business was to cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such-like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Archer. These books were many of them plated with gold and silver and curiously embossed. This, as far as we can collect, was the superstition that destroyed them. ' Here avarice had a very thin disguise, and the courtiers dis- covered of what spirit they were to a remarkable degree.' Here is another picture of an almost contemporaneous event, equally vivid in its suggestiveness : ' John Tyndale, the trans- lator's brother, and Thomas Patmore, merchants, were con- demned to do penance by riding with their faces to their horses' tails, with their books fastened thick about them, pinned, or tacked, to their gowns or clokes, to the Standard in Cheap ; and there with their own hands to fling them into the fire, kindled on purpose to burn them.' As a book-collecting period the sixteenth century, from the accession of Henry VHL — when books became the organs of the passions of mankind — to the death of Eliza- beth, is full of intense interest. The old order had changed ; BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 17 the world itself had made an entirely fresh start. Men and events of the previous two or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. The hobby became first a passion with the few, and then the fashion with the many. Henry VIII. was perhaps a passive rather than an active collector, with a distinct leaning in favour of beautiful books. His three children, who followed him on the throne of England, were collectors of books, and the majority of their purchases must have been made in London. Many of these books have, at some time or other, drifted from private hands into the sale- rooms, but perhaps the majority of those now existing are to be found within the walls of our public institutions. For example, at the sale of Dr. Askew's MSS., in 1775, a very interesting item was purchased by a Mr. Jackson, a Quaker, and a dealer in wine and spirits, with whom book- collecting was a passion. The MS. proved to be in the handwriting of Edward VI. ; it was in French, and dealt with his opinion of his right to the title of Supreme Head of the Church. At Jackson's sale the MS. became the property of the British Museum. As another illustration, we may refer to the copy of the ' Flores Historiarum per Matthaeum Westmonasteriensem,' etc., 1570, in the British Museum (Cracherode Collection) which is the identical one presented by Archbishop Parker (by whose authority it was published) to Queen Elizabeth. It afterwards fell into the hands of Francis, Earl of Bedford, who bequeathed it, with the furni- ture of a little study, to his secretary. It was subsequently in the possession of Ritson. And yet again, in the Eton College Library, there is a copy of the ' Missale Romanum,' printed at Paris by Hardouyn, 1530, which belonged to Mary, with a sentence in her handwriting; this volume afterwards came into the possession of Mary of Este, Queen of James II., and subsequently into the hands of a London bookseller, from whom it was purchased for fifty-three shillings by Bishop Fleetwood, and presented to the college library. THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Indeed, a large volume might be compiled on the Adventures of Some Famous Books. Interesting and important as is the phase of book-collect- ing which relates to royal personages, it falls into insignifi- cance beside that of men who have achieved greatness through their own abilities. The books collected by Thomas Cranmer, for example, quite overshadow in interest anything which the whole reign of the Tudors could produce. It has been well said that his knowledge of books was wide, and his opportunities for acquiring them unrivalled. Cranmer was a generous collector, for his library was quite open for the use of learned men. Latimer spent ' many an hour ' there, and has himself told us that he met with a copy of Dionysius ' in my Lord of Canterbury's library.' We have already seen that many of Cranmer's books passed into the possession of the Earl of Arundel, but many were ' conveyed and stolen awaie.' Cranmer's books have found an enthusi- astic historian in Prebendary Burbidge, who has almost rehabilitated the great ecclesiastic's library in the first part of Mr. Quaritch's ' Dictionary of EngHsh Book-collectors.' Another book-collector of a very different type was amassing an extensive library at a somewhat later period than Cranmer : Dr. Dee, the famous necromancer, had collected * 4,000 volumes, printed and unprinted, bound and unbound, valued at 2,000 lib.,' of which one Greek, two French and one High Dutch volumes of MSS. alone were ' worth 533 lib.' It occupied forty years to form this library. Most of his books passed into the possession of Elias Ashmole — who was another collector with an insatiable appetite — and now form a part of the Ashmolean Museum. Some of Dee's singular MSS. were found, long after his death, in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered. Reverting for a moment to Ashmole, he himself tells us that he gave ' five volumes of Mr. Dugdale's ' works to the Temple Library. And further : ' My first boatful of books, which were carried to Mrs. Tradescant's, were brought back to the Temple.' In May, 1667, he bought Mr. John Booker's study of books, and gave :f 140 for them. In 1681 he bought ' Mr. Lilly's library of books of his widow, for £50.' BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 19 A very distinguished book-collector of the Elizabethan period was Sir Francis Drake, the great Admiral. It did not seem to be at all known that the distinguished naval hero was also a bibliophile until 1883, when the collection of books was brought from the old residence of the Drakes, Nutwell Court, Lympstone, Devon, to Sotheby's. The sale comprised 1,660 lots, representing several thousand volumes, the total being £3,276 17s. 6d. It was especially rich in books and old tracts of the early seventeenth century relating to the English voyages to America, and some of these realized very high figures. Although the library was un- doubtedly founded by Drake, it was evidently continued by his descendants. Bacon, Baron of Verulam, was a dis- tinguished book-collector, as the shelves of his chambers in Gray's Inn would have testified. Archbishop Parker, than whom ' a more determined book-fancier never existed in Great Britain,' and Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and the object of Tom Nash's withering scorn, were among the most inveterate book-collectors of Elizabethan London. Had Harvey — whose books usually contain his autograph on the title-page, and not a few of which were given him by Spenser — studied his books less, and the proper study of mankind a little more, he might have shown his talents off to a better advantage than in his conflicts with Nash. In the Bodleian there is a set of old tales and romances which Spenser lent Harvey, taking as a hostage, apparently, Harvey's copy of Lucian in four volumes. Harvey had a very poor opinion of such ' foolish ' books, but he does not seem to have returned them to their rightful owner. The fire which de- stroyed Ben Jonson's MSS. undoubtedly consumed many of his printed books, but examples from his library, with * Sum Ben Jonson ' inscribed, are sometimes met with. Shakespeare may have had a library, but we have no evidence that he possessed even a copy of his own plays in quarto. The Elizabethan poets and dramatists were prodigious con- tributors to the press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. 20 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Tom Nash has Hmned for us a vivid Httle portrait in ' Pierce Penilesse ' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, ' I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his little finger points backward to his boy, who must be his interpreter ; and so all day, gaping like a dumb image, he sits without motion, except at such times as he goes to dinner or supper, for then he is as quick as other three, eating six times every day.' II. From start to finish the Stuart dynasty ruled England for close on three-quarters of a century. That book-collecting should have existed at all under it is a marvel. But the hobby no longer depended upon the patronage of courts and courtiers. From, the Wise Fool, James I., to the Foolish Fool, the second James, collectors pursued their hobby in London and out of it. James I. began to collect books at a very early age, and a list of his library was published for the first time in the Athenceum in 1893. It has, however, but little interest to us in this place, for doubtless most of the books were imported into Scotland from the great book centre, Paris. The library which he acquired after his ac- cession to the throne of England is of little consequence, for he was not the person to purchase books when he had the means, and doubtless many of his bookish possessions were gifts. In the library at Eton College there is his copy of Captain John Smith's * History of Virginia,' 1624, which was rescued by Storer from a dirty bookseller's shop in Derby, and the existence of many others might be traced. It is certain that ' he gave them shabby coverings, and scribbled idle notes on their margins.' Had his son Henry lived, he might have developed into a respectable book-collector. We know for certain that he 'paid a Frenchman that presented a book, ^4 los.' ; and that he BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 21 paid ' Mr. Holyoak for writing a catalogue of the library which the Prince had of Lord Lumley, £S 13s. 4d.' Charles II., like his forbears, was not a book-buyer, and so far as he is concerned we must content ourselves with repeating a little anecdote after Dibdin, who refers to an ' old and not incurious library at Workingham, in Suffolk,' where there was a very fine ruled copy of Hayes's Bible, published at Cambridge, 1674, in two volumes folio ; on the fly-leaf it contains the following memorandum : ' N.B. — This Bible belonged to K. Charles lid. and [was] given by him to Duke Lauderdale and sold by auction w^^ y^ rest of his Books.' In a comparatively modern hand, below, is written in pencil : ' Hark ye, my friends, that on this Bible look, Marvel not at the fairness of the Book ; No soil of fingers, nor such ugly things, Expect to find, Sirs, for it was the Kins^'s^ The most distinguished Metropolitan book -collector of the period was Sir Robert Cotton, who began as early as 1588, and who had assist- ance from such antiquaries as William Camden and Sir Henry Spelman. This library, after being closed on account of the treasonable character of the documents contained in it, passed into JM^^^^ ^SK ^''^^^^^' \ the possession of Cotton's son, Sir Thomas, whose house was almost adjoining Westminster Hall. An- thony a Wood gives a curious account of a visit he paid it, when he found •. i • • ,1 Sir Robert Cotton. its owner practismg on the lute. The key of the library was in the possession of one 22 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Pearson, who lodged with a bookseller in Little Britain. Wood was ' forced to walk thither, and much ado there was to find him.' This library was removed to Essex Street, and again back to Westminster to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard, where it suffered greatly from a fire in 1731, and what remains of it is now in the British Museum. Sir Thomas Bodley was another collector, but few of his accumulations appear to have come from London. Sir Julius C(2sar''s Travelling Library. The extraordinary collection of pamphlets got together by Tomlinson, and now stored in the British Museum, is too well known to need more than a passing reference. It is not so generally known that Narcissus Luttrell was a very voracious collector of broadsides, tracts, and so forth. To nearly every one of the items he affixed the price he paid for it. In 1820, at the Bindley sale, this extraordinary collection, ranging in date from 1640 to 1688, and comprising twelve volumes, realized the then large amount of £']^\. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 23 Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls under James I., was a book-collector of the right sort, and his box of charming little editions of the classics, with which he used to solace himself on a journey, is now in the safe keeping of the British Museum. Sir Juhus was born in 1557, and died in April, 1636 ; he possessed a fine collection of highly interesting manuscripts, which had the narrowest possible escape from being destroyed at the latter part of the last century. The collection was rescued in time by Samuel Paterson, the auctioneer, and it is now in the British Museum. Robert Burton (the author of the ' Anatomy of Melan- choly') was, like Luttrell, also a great collector of tracts, and his library, now in the Bodleian, is peculiarly rich in historical, political, and poetical pamphlets, and in miscel- laneous accounts of murders, monsters, and accidents. He seems to have purchased and preserved a copy of everything that came out. ' There is no nation,' says Johnson, ' in which it is so necessary as in our own to assemble the small tracts and fugitive pieces.' ' The writers of these ' frequently have opportunities ' of inquiring from living witnesses, and of copying their representations from the life, and preserve a multitude of particular incidents which are forgotten in a short time, or omitted in formal relations, and yet afford light in some of the darkest scenes of state.' ' From pamphlets,' says the same writer, ' are to be learned the progress of every debate, and of every opinion.' And he compares the impression produced on the mind of him who shall consult these tracts, and of another that refers merely to formal historians, to the difference of him who hears of a victory, and him who sees the battle. Archbishop Laud collected from far and wide. John Selden, like Laud, had a distinct weakness for learned books, and consequently could have found little to satisfy his cravings in London. Selden, when disturbed, put his spectacles into the book he was busy with by way of marking the place ; and after his death numbers of volumes were found with these curious book- markers. John Felton, who murdered Buckingham, was also a book-collector in a small way. In Lilly's catalogue for 24 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON 1863 there was a copy of Peacham's ' Compleat Gentleman/ 1622, with the following on the fly-leaf: 'John Felton, vicessimo secundo die Junii, 1622.' A few glances, at this point, at the more material phases of book-collecting may not be without interest. The follow- ing is one of the earliest bookseller's statements of accounts with which we are acquainted. It was rendered to ' the Right Honourable the Lord Conway,' on May 31, 1638, by Henry Seile, whose shop was at the sign of the Tiger's Head, Fleet Street : Nash's Ha' wee you to Saffron Walden Greene's Arcadia Farewell to Folly Tallies' Love Lady Fitz water's Nightingale Mamilia Never too Late Groatesworth of Wit Mourning Garment Peers pennylesse supplicatio These nine Bookes were delivered to your Lordship at Xs. 00 02 o5 00 In a letter addressed to Evelyn by Dr. Cosin (afterwards Bishop of Durham) during his exile, and dated July 18, 1651, we get a delightful glimpse of two book-lovers doing * a deal.' Mr. Evelyn was apparently a man who could drive a bargain with Hebraic shrewdness. ' Truly, sir,' expostulated mildly the excited ecclesiastic, ' I thought I had prevented any further motion of abatement by the large offer that I made to you. ... If you consider their number, I desire you would be pleased to consider likewise, that they are a choice number, and a company of the best selected books among them all. . . . There is in your note PHny's " Natural History" in English, priced at 36s., which is worth 3^3 ; Camden's " Errors," priced at 5s. 6d., for which I have seen £1 given ; Paulus Jovius at £1, which sells now in Paris at 4 pistoles ; and Pol. Virgil at los., which sells here for jTio ; William of Malmesbury at 15s., for which they demand here £^0, and Asser Menev, etc., at 14s., which they will not part with here nor elsewhere abroad for £20.' BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 25 It is highly probable that the book-market was never so bad in London as during this period ; for, in addition to the above illustration, and at about the same time, Isaac Vossius came over to this country with a quantity of literary property, some of which had belonged to his learned father, in the hopes of selling it ; but he * carried them back into Holland,' where ' a quicker mercate ' was expected. III. Sic transit gloria mundi might well be the motto of a History of Book-Collectors, for in by far the majority of cases great private libraries have been formed in one generation by genuine bookworms, only to be scattered in the next by needy legatees or in consequence of impoverished estates. There can be no doubt that several famous libraries have derived their origin from the mere vanity of emulating a fashionable pur- suit. Into this matter, however, it is not necessary for us to enter, except to hazard the suggestion that if the money had not been spent in that direction it would doubtless have been squandered in some less worthy and enduring manner. One of the most interesting and valuable contributions to the histor}' of private collections of the seventeenth century is embedded in the long and entertaining letter which John Evelyn addressed to Mr. Pepys in August, i68g. This letter is so accessible that it may seem superfluous to quote any part of it ; but a few of the leading points are necessary to the proper sequence of our story. ' The Bishop of Ely has a very well-stored library, but the very best is what Dr. Stilling- fleet has at Twickenham, ten miles out of town. . . . Our famous lawyer. Sir Edward Coke, purchased a very choice library of Greek and other MSS., which w^ere sold him by Dr. Meric Casaubon, son of the learned Isaac ; and these, together with his delicious villa, Durdens, came into the possession of the present Earl of Berkeley from his uncle, Sir Robert Cook. ... I have heard that Sir Henry Savill was master of many precious MSS., and he is frequently celebrated for it by the learned Valesius, almost in every page of that 26 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON learned man's Annotations on Eusebius, and the Ecclesi- astical Historians published by him. The late Mr. Hales, of Eton, had likewise a very good library; and so had Dr. Cosin, late Bishop of Duresme [and afterwards of Durham], a considerable part of which I had agreed with him for myself during his exile abroad, as I can show under his o\Vn hand ; but his late daughter, since my Lady Garret, thought I had not offered enough, and made difficulty in delivering them to me till near the time of his Majesty's restoration, and after that the Dean, her father, becoming Bishop of that opu- lent See, bestowed them on the library there. But the Lord Primate Usher was inferior to none I have named among the clergy for rare MSS., a great, part of which, being brought out of Ire- land, and left his son - in - law, " Sir Timothy Tyrill, was disposed of to give bread to that incomparable Pre- late during the late fanatic war. Such Archbishop Usher* as remamed yet at Dublin were preserved, and by a public purse restored and placed in the college library of that city. ... I forbear to name the late Earl of Bristol's and his kinsman's. Sir Kenelm Digby's, libraries, of more pompe than intrinsic value, as chiefly consisting of modern poets, romances, chymical, and astrological books. ... As for those of Sir Kenelm, the catalogue was printed and most of them sold in Paris, as many better have lately been in London. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 27 The Duke of Lauderdale's* is yet entire, choicely bound, and to be sold by a friend of mine, to whom they are pawned ; but it comes far short of his relation's, the Lord Maitland's, which was certainly the noblest, most substantial and accomplished library that ever passed under the speare, and heartily it grieved me to behold its limbs, like those of the chaste Hippolytus, separated and torn from that so well chosen and compacted a body. The Earl of Anglesey's, and several others since, by I know not what invidious fate, passed the same fortune, to whatever influence and constella- tion now reigning malevolent to books and libraries, which can portend no good to the future age.' It is interesting to note that of the several libraries enumerated by Evelyn three have become, partly or wholly, pubhc property. That of Dr. John Moore, Bishop of Ely, was purchased after his death by George L for ^^6,000, and presented to the University of Cambridge, where it now is.t Evelyn himself was, as will have been gathered, an ardent book-collector. He began forming a library very early in life, whilst that of his brother came to him by bequest. At the time of his death he had a very extensive collection of books at Wotton, which has been considerably augmented by his successors. In the early part of the present century William Upcott, of the London Institution, drew up a complete cata- logue. Upcott's appearance on the scene synchronized with the disappearance of a number of volumes from the Evelyn Library ; it has been suggested that Lady Evelyn presented them to him ' or something of that sort,' although the circum- stance has never been officially explained. Certain it is that * In Hearne's ' Diary,' published by the Oxford Historical Society, there is a very quaint note about the Duk^ of Lauderdale, who is described as ' a Curious Collector of Books, and when in London would very often go to y*" Booksellers shops and pick up w' curious Books he could meet with ; but y' in his Elder years he lost much of his Learning by minding too much Politicks.' t At the Cambridge University Library there are some very interesting diaries of this famous book-lover, styled ' Father of Black Letter Collectors,' chiefly relating to the purchases of books. All the more important facts have been published in the pages of the Bibliographer. 28 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON a large number of books formerly in the possession of the diarist have at times appeared in the auction-room. The most important which occurred during the last few years are two beautifully -written MS S., the work of Richard Hoare, one having the title ' Instructions CEconomiques,' 1648, with a dedication ' To the present mistress of my youth, the hopeful companion of my riper years, and the future nurse of my old age, Mrs. May Evelyn, my deare wife,' etc. The second was a book of Private Devotions, 1650. Evelyn fanf^> Wottott House in 1840. was also unfortunate in his lifetime, inasmuch as the Duke of Lauderdale ^ came to my house, under pretence of a visit,' but in reality to borrow ' for a few days ' certain valuable MSS., which this aristocratic thief never returned. So, too, he lent Burnet a quantity of MS. material for his ' History of the Reformation,' which, like other borrowed books, never came back. A large number of first editions of the works of J. Evelyn, together with some books from his library, illus- trated with his autograph notes, occurred in the sale of the library of the late Arthur Davis, of Deptford and East Far- BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 29 leigh, July, 1857, many of which were doubtless purloined at some time or other. Of all the seventeenth-century book-collectors, perhaps the most interesting is that other diarist, Samuel Pepys. Samuel was not a man of great learning, but his wit, his knowledge of the world, and his humanity were unbounded. He Alagdalen College^ Oxford. welcomed almost anything in the shape of a book, from a roguish French novel to a treatise on medals, from a loose Restoration play to a maritime pamphlet, and from lives of the saints to books on astrology or philosophy. Not a great man, perhaps, but one of the most delightful and entertaining that one could wish. The Secretary's ' Diary ' is full of allusions to men and events of bookish interest, and gives 30 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON frequent illustrations of his amiable passion for book-collect- ing. Fortunately, we have not to grope in the dark to get an accurate portrait of the genial Samuel as a book-collector, for his entire library is preserved, almost in the same state as he left it, at Magdalen College, Oxford, ' as curious a medley of the grave and gay ' as any person of catholic tastes could wish for. The library consists of almost 3,000 volumes, pre- served in eleven mahogany bookcases. The books are all arranged in double rows, the small ones in front being suf- ficiently low to permit of the titles of the back row of larger ones being easily read. The library is a remarkably accurate reflection of the tastes of the founder. In addition to what is termed ordinary use- ful books, there are many rarities, including no less than nine Cax- tons, and several from the press of Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson. The celebrated collec- tion of ballads, com- menced by Selden and continued by Pepys, is second only in import- ance to the famous Rox- burghe collection now in the British Museum. The manuscripts of various kinds form a very valuable part of this celebrated collec- tion. John Bagford, the biblioclast (1675-1716), also furnishes us, like Evelyn, with a list of book-collectors who were contemporaneous with him. Be- sides Bishop Moore, already mentioned, there were Sir Hans Sir Hans Sloane's Monument. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 31 Sloane, Lords Carbery (Duke of Kent), Pembroke, Somers, Sunderland, and Halifax. Among the commoners who emulated their ' betters ' were Messrs. Huckle, Chichely, Bridges, Walter Clavell, Rawlinson, Slaughter, Topham, Wanley, Captain Hatton, ' Right Hon. Secretary Harley,' and Dr. Salmon, whose collection is said to have consisted of 1,700 folios. Edwards, in his most valuable work on libraries, mentions yet a third list, which is anonymous, and is apparently almost contemporaneous with Bagford's. The list is introduced with the remark that ' the laudable emula- tion which is daily increasing amongst the nobility of England, vying with each other in the curiosities and other rich furniture of their respective libraries, gives cheerful hope of having the long-hidden monuments of ancient times raised out of their present dust and rubbish,' and then makes special mention of the libraries of the Duke of Kent, Lords Derby, Denbigh, Longueville, Willoughby de Broke, Sunder- land, Somers, and Halifax. When good Mr. Evelyn described Sir Kenelm Digby's library as ' of more pomp than intrinsic value,' and as ' chiefly consisting of modern poets, romances, chemical and astrological books,' he did not contemplate the future possibility of such despised trifles becoming fashionable and in greater request than the accumulations of the collectors to whom the classics were daily food. As Edwards has pointed out, the portion which Digby gave to the Bodleian was in reality the fruit of the researches of his tutor, Thomas Allen. The portion which was of his own collecting, and conse- quently the only portion which accurately mirrored his own tastes, he took with him to France when driven into exile. When he died there, it apparently passed into the possession of Digby, Earl of Bristol, on whose account it was sold in London in 1680, fifteen years after its owner's death. The catalogue enumerated 3,878 items, of which 6g were manu- scripts, the total of the sale being ;f 904 4s. Among the most famous of the seventeenth-century collectors were the two brothers Francis, Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper (1637-1685), and Dr. John North, master of 32 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Trinity College (1645-1683). Of these two there are some very entertaining facts in Roger North's 'Lives of the Norths' (1742-44). Dr. John North, we are told, 'very early in his career began to look after books and to lay the foundation of a competent library . . . buying at one lift a whole set of Greek classics in folio, in best editions. This sunk his stock [of money] for the time ; but afterwards for many years of his life all that he could (as they say) rap or run went the same way. But the progress was small, for such a library as he desired, compared with what the pittance of his stock would purchase, allowing many years to the gathering, was of desperate expectation. . . . He courted, as a fond lover, all best editions, fairest characters, best- bound and preserved. . . . He delighted in the small editions of the classics by Seb. Gryphius, and divers of his acquaintance, meeting with any of them, bought and brought them to him, which he accepted as choice presents, although, perhaps, he had one or two of them before. . . . His soul was never so staked down as in an old bookseller's shop. . . . He was for the most part his own factor, and seldom or never bought by commission, which made him lose time in turning over vast numbers of books, and he was very hardly pleased, at last. I have borne him company in shops for many hours together, and, minding him of the time, he hath made a dozen proffers before he would quit. By this care and industry, at length he made himself master of a very considerable library, wherein the choicest collection was Greek.' At his death the collection came to his brother, the Lord Keeper. As with Dr. John North, book-hunting was the consuming passion of the life of a very different man — Richard Smyth or Smith (of whom there is a very fine and rare engraving by W. Sherwin), one of the Secondaries or Under- Sheriffs from 1644 to 1655. Having sufficient wealth, he resigned his municipal appointment, which was worth £700 a year, in order to devote himself entirely to book-hunting. Anthony a Wood describes him as ' infinitely curious and inquisitive after books,' and states that ' he was constantly known every BOOK'HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 33 day to walk his rounds amongst the booksellers' shops (especially in Little Britain).' Richard Chiswell, the book- seller who drew up a catalogue of Smith's books, which subsequently came into his possession en bloc, tells us that his skill and experience enabled him ' to make choice of such books that were not obvious to every man's eye. . . . He lived in times which ministered peculiar opportunities of meeting with books that were not every day brought into public light, and few eminent libraries were bought where he had not the liberty to pick and choose. Hence arose, as that vast number of his books, so the choiceness and rarity of the greatest part of them, and that of all kinds, and in all sorts of learning.' This collection was sold by auction in May, LiU/e B^-itain in 1550. 1682, the catalogue of it occupying 404 closely-printed pages in large quarto. There were fourteen Caxtons, ' the aggre- gate produce ' of which was £3 14s. 7d. ; the Godfrey of Bulloigne ' selling for i8s., ' being K. Edwarde the IVth's owne booke,' and the ' Booke of Good Manners,' for 2s. ; the highest price in the entire sale being given for Holin- shed's ' Chronicle,' ' with the addition of many sheets that were castrated, being . . . not allowed to be printed,' £"]. Smith left an interesting and valuable obituary list of certain of his bibliopolic friends (which is reprinted in Willis' Current Notes, February, 1853), one of whom, according to him, was * buried at St. Bartholomew's, without wine or wafers, only gloves and rosemary,' 3 34 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Dr. Francis Bernard, chief physician to James II., was an indefatigable book-hunter ; being ' a person who collected his books, not for ostentation or ornament, he seemed no more solicitous about their dress than his own, and, therefore, you'll find that a gilt back or a large margin was very seldom an inducement for him to buy. 'Twas sufficient for him that he had the book.' His library was sold in i6g8, and realized the then enormous sum of £2,000. John Bridges, of Lincoln's Inn, the historian of Northamptonshire, was a collector who read as well as bought books ; his collection was sold at auction in 1726, when 4,313 lots realized £4,001. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, was a collector with comprehensive tastes and almost unlimited means. His collection is now in the British Museum, and is computed to have numbered about 26,000 volumes, on the binding of only a portion of which he is said to have expended £18,000, besides a mass of 350,000 pamphlets. Thomas Baker (1625-1690) be- queathed a portion of his library to St. John's College, Cam- bridge, notwithstanding the fact that he was ejected there- from. He was an unceasing collector, but his finances were scanty, and, worst of all, he had to contend with collectors of greater wealth, or ' purse-ability ' as Bodley calls it. Writing to Humfrey Wanley, he says : ' I begin to com- plain of the men of quality who lay out so much for books, and give such prices that there is nothing to be had for poor scholars, whereof I have found the effects. When I bid a fair price for an old book, I am answered, the '' quality " will give twice as much, and so I have done. I have had much ado to pick up a few old books at tolerable prices, and despair of any more.' About 2,000 of his books went to St. John's College, and the others were sold by auction, many bearing the inscription ' Thomas Baker, socius ejectus,' etc. The library of another collector who, like Baker, had more of the kicks than of the ha'pence of this life, Thomas Hearne (1678-1735), may be mentioned briefly in this paragraph, for both were men of great learning. Hearne's collection was sold in February, 1736, by Osborne the bookseller, ' the lowest price being marked in each book.' On the title-page BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 35 of the catalogue, and beneath a poor portrait of Hearne, is the well-known couplet : * Quoth Time to Thomas Hearne, " Whatever I forget, you learn." ' Humphrey Dyson is another book-collector of this period, and is described by Hearne as ' a very curious man in collect- ing books.' The Wesleys were book-lovers and readers, but have perhaps but little claim to rank as collectors pur sang. However, it is interesting to point out that Lilly's catalogue for 1863 included a copy of Purcell's ' Orpheus Britannicus,' 1706, with an inscription on the fly-leaf: ' C. Wesley, junior. The valuable gift of his much-honor'd Father.' The Restoration poets, like those of the Elizabethan period, had a sufficiently hard fight to keep themselves in food ; books were luxuries which they could only venture to enjoy at long and uncertain intervals. Dryden and Congreve, how- ever, appear to have been addicted to the pleasant pastime. An exceedingly interesting copy of Spenser's ' Works,' folio, 1679, was once in the possession of Mr. F. S. Ellis. On the fly-leaf occurred this note : ' The corrections made in this book are of Mr. Dryden's own handwriting. J. Tonson.' The volume occurred in an' auction, where its value was not detected. The ' corrections,' Mr. Ellis states, extend through the whole of the volume, and bear witness to the care and diligence with which Dryden had studied Spenser's poems. Several of the notes are in explanation of the text, but for the most part are careful and curious corrections of the text and press. The pedigree of this volume is well established by its having in the cover the bookplate of Thomas Barrett, of Lee, celebrated by Dibdin as a * bibliomaniacal and taste- ful gentleman.' Though Barrett died in 1757, his library was not dispersed till a few years since. Izaak Walton was a collector, and took the wise precaution of writing his autograph in each volume, as the very interesting score of examples now at Salisbury prove. His friend, Charles Cotton, of cheerful memory, was much more of a book- collector, although from the 'Angler ' it would seem that his 36 THE book-hunter IN LONDON whole library was contained in his hall window. Like Walton, Cotton wrote his autograph in most of his books, which occur in the auction-room at irregular intervals. The extent or variety of the Cotton correction may be gathered from the following * epigram ' which Sir Aston Cokaine wrote (1658) ' To my Cousin, Mr.' Charles Cotton the Younger ' : ' D'Avila, Bentivoglio, Guicciardine, And Machiavil, the subtle Florentine, In their originals I have read through, Thanks to your library,"and unto you, The prime historians of" later times ; at least In the Italian tongue allow'd the best. When you have more su'ch books, I pray vouchsafe Me their perusal, I'll return them safe. Yet for the courtesy, the recompense That I can make you will be only thanks. But you are noble-soul'd, and had much rather Bestow a benefit than receive a favour.' One of the most remarkable collections of books ever made by a private individual was that known as the Sunderland Library. It was formed, not only in the short space of twelve years, but at a time when many books, now of almost priceless value, and scarcely to be had at any price, were comparatively common, and certainly not costly. Neither money nor pains was spared, ' and the bibliographical ardour of the founder soon began to be talked of in the bookshops of the chief cities of Europe.' The founder, Charles, third Earl of Sunderland, lived at Althorp, his town house being in Piccadilly, on the site of which the Albany now stands. At the latter place this library was lodged for several years. In Macky's 'Journey through England,' 1724, Sunderland House is there described as being separated from the street of Piccadilly ' by a wall with large grown trees before the gate. . . . The greatest beauty of this palace is the library, running from the house into the garden ; and I must say is the finest in Europe,, both for the disposition of the apartments, and of the books. The rooms, divided into five apartments, are fully 150 feet long, with two BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 37 stories of windows, and a gallery runs round the whole in the second story for the taking down books. No nobleman in any nation hath taken greater care to make his collection complete, nor does he spare any cost for the most valuable and rare books. Besides, no bookseller in Europe hath so many editions of the same book as he, for he hath all, especially of the classicks.' The founder of this famous C/iar/es, Third Earl of Sunderland. library died on April ig, 1722. Evelyn has left a few very interesting facts concerning this collection. Under the date March 10, 1695, we read : ' I din'd at the Earl of Sunder- land's with Lord Spencer. My Lord shew'd me his library, now again improv'd by many books bought at the sale of Sir Charles Scarborough, an eminent physician, which was the very best collection, especially of mathematical books, that was I believe in Europe, once design'd for the King's 3S THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON library at St. James's, but the Queen dying, who was the greate patroness of the designe, it was let fall, and the books were miserably dissipated.' Four years later, April, 1699, we have another entry, to the effect that Lord Spencer purchased ' an incomparable library,' until now the property of * a very fine scholar, whom from a child I have known,' whose name does not transpire [? Hadrian Beverland], but in whose library were many ' rare books . . . that were printed at the first invention of that wonderful art.' In reference to Macky's incidental allusion to the Earl of Sunderland's indifference to cost in forming his library, Wanley confirms this. Writing in December, 172 1, the diarist observes that the books in Mr. Freebairn's library ' in general went low, or rather at vile rates, through a combina- tion of the booksellers against the sale. Yet some books went for unaccountably high prices, which were bought by Mr. Vaillant, the bookseller, who had an unlimited com- mission from the Earl of Sunderland.' Among the items was an edition of Virgil, printed by Zarothus circa 1475 : * It was noted that when Mr. Vaillant had bought the printed Virgil at £46, he huzza'd out aloud, and threw up his hat, for joy that he had bought it so cheap.' When this famous book-collector died, Wanley observes that * by reason of his decease some benefit may accrue to this library [Lord Oxford's], even in case his relations will part with none of his books. I mean, by his raising the price of books no higher now ; so that, in probability, this commodity may fall in the market ; and any gentleman be permitted to buy an un- common old book for less than forty or fifty pounds.' The third son of this famous book-collector, Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland, and second Duke of Marlborough, greatly enlarged the collection formed by his father ; and it was removed to Blenheim probably in 1734. This famous library remained practically intact until it came under the hammer at Puttick and Simpson's, occupying fifty-one days in the dispersal at intervals from December i, 1881, to March 22, 1883, the total being £55,581 6s. It is stated that the library originally cost about ^£30,000. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 39 Dr. David Williams, who from 1688 to the end of his life was minister of a Presbyterian congregation which met at Hand Alley, Bishopsgate Street, was a contemporary book- collector and book-hunter. His special line was theology, and his library, which absorbed that of Dr. Bates, once Rector of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, is still preserved intact, and is now, to a certain degree, a free library. Archbishop Tenison was another great book-hunter of this period, and his library was preserved more or less intact until 1861, when it was dispersed at Sotheby's, under an order of the Charity Commissioners. The brothers Thomas and Richard Rawlinson were, pro- bably, the most omnivorous collectors of the earlier part of the last century. Everything in the shape of a book was welcomed. The former (1681-1725), whose ' C. & P.' (collated and perfect) appears on the frontispiece, title-page, or fly- leaf of books, when he lived in Gray's Inn, had so filled his set of four rooms with books that he was obliged to sleep in the passage. He is said to be the original study for the 158th Tatler, in which ' Tom Folio ' and other soi-disant scholars are trounced. ' He has a greater esteem for Aldus and Elzevir than for Virgil and Horace.' It is very doubtful whether Addison (who wrote this particular Tatler) really had Thomas Rawlinson in mind, whom he describes as ' a learned idiot.' Swift has de- clared that some know books as they do lords ; learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance. But neither description is applicable to Rawlinson, who, for all that, may have known much more about Aldus or the Elzevirs than about Virgil or Horace. With a pretty taste for epithets, in which our forefathers sometimes indulged, Hearne has defended his friend from Addison's sarcasms by declaring that the mistake could only have been made by a 'shallow buffoon.' That Rawlinson was a bibliomaniac there can be no question, for if he had a score copies of one book, he would purchase another for the mere gratification of possessing it. When he removed to the large mansion in Aldersgate Street, which had been the palace of the Bishops 40 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON of London, and which he shared with his brother, ' the books still continued to be better lodged than their owner.' He died, at the comparatively early age of fourty-four, as he had lived, among dust and cobwebs, ' in his bundles, piles and bul- warks of paper.' The catalogue of his huge mass of books was divided into nine parts ; the sale of the MSS. alone occupied sixteen days. Richard Rawdinson (died 1755) survived his brother thirty years, and con- tinued to collect books with all his brother's enthusiasm, but with- out his sheer book- greed. His MSS. are at Oxford, and the extent and richness of his accumulations may be gathered from the fact that the collector laid nearly thirty libraries under contribution. His printed books were sold in 1756 by Samuel Baker (now Sotheby's), the sale occupying forty-nine days,, and the total amounting to ;f 1,155 ^s. ; a second sale included 20,000 pamphlets, and a third sale consisted of prints. Among the wisest and most distinguished book-collectors of the first half of the last century is Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754), a physician by profession, but a bibliophile by instinct, and whom Dr. Johnson described as having ' lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any other man.' As Dr. Mead's fine library was * picked up at Rome,' it scarcely comes within our purview ; but it may be men- tioned that so long as this fine collection remained intact in London, it was ipso facto a free library ; it was especially rich London House. Aldersgate Street. 1808. BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 41 in the classics, sciences and history. The first part was sold by Samuel Baker in 1754, and the second in the following year, the 6,592 lots occupying iifty-seven days, the total of the books being ^5,496 15s. Dr. Mead's mantle descended to his great friend and pupil, Dr. Anthony Askew (1722- 1774), who had an exceedingly fine library ; his career as a collector began in Paris in 1749, and nearly all his choicest treasures appear to have been gathered on the Continent, and chiefly it seems by Joseph Smith, the English Consul at Venice. Askew's first library was purchased by George III. in 1762, and now forms an integral part of the British Museum. His subsequent accumulations were dispersed in two sections, the books in 1775, and the MSS. ten years later. We shall have occasion to refer again to the Askew sale. Dr. Richard Farmer appears to have imbibed his taste for book-collecting from Askew, and became an indefati- gable haunter of the London and country bookstalls, his special line being Early English literature, then scarcely at all appreciated ; it is stated that the collection, which cost him less than £s^o, realized, when sold by auction by King in 1798, upw^ards of ^^2,000. Dr. Farmer is better remembered by posterity as a Shakespearian critic or com- mentator. He was a Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, and appears to have had what Dibdin describes as ' his foragers, his jackalls, and his av ant-couriers,' who picked up for him every item of interest in his particular lines. As becomes the true bibliophile, he was peculiarly indifferent to his dress, but he was a scholar of great abilities. A glance at a priced copy of his sale catalogue is enough to turn any book-lover green with envy. For example, his copy of Richard Barn- field's ' Encomion of Lady Pecunia, or the Praise of Money ' (1598), sold for 19s., Malone being the pur- chaser. That copy is now in the Bodleian. In 1882, the Ouvry copy of the same book realized 100 guineas ! A copy of Milton's ' Paradise Lost ' (1667), with the first title - page, sold for lis. ; a volume of twelve poems, chiefly printed by Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson, realized 25 guineas. Each item would probably realize 42 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON the amount paid for the whole, should they again occur for sale, which is most unlikely. Both his friends, George Steevens and Isaac Reed, were equally zealous collectors, and each had a strong weakness for the same groove of collecting. The library of Steevens was sold, also by King, in 1800, and the 1,943 items realized ;f 2,740 15s. ; whilst that of Reed, sold seven years later, contained 8,957 articles, and realized -f 4,387. Both Steevens and Isaac Reed call for a much more extended notice than it is possible to give them here. Many of Steevens' books realized twenty times the amount which he paid for them. Steevens, who was born in 1736, resided in a retired house *just on the rise of Hampstead Heath,' so Dibdin tells us, the house being formerly known as the Upper Flask Tavern, to which ' Richardson sends Clarissa in one of her escapes from Lovelace.' Here, as Dibdin further tells us, Steevens lived, embosomed in books, shrubs, and trees. * His habits were indeed peculiar ; not much to be envied or imitated, as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of the cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle, both in choice and duration.' Several of his letters are printed in Dibdin's *Bibhomania' (edit. 1842), in which will also be found a long series of extracts from the sale catalogue of his library. There were nearly fifty copies of the first or early quartos of the Shakespearian plays, which were knocked down at prices varying from 5s. to, in a few instances, over ^f 20. The first, second, third and fourth fohos reahzed ^£'22, gf 18 i8s., £S 8s., and £2 12s. 6d., respectively ! Isaac Reed was in many ways a remarkable man. He was the son of a baker in the parish of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. Born in 1742, he commenced professional life as a sohcitor, which he soon abandoned for the more congenial pursuit of literature. His knowledge of English literature was unbounded, and the dispersal of his remarkable library was one of the wonders of the year 1807. He was for over forty years a diligent collector, and few days passed in that period which did not witness an addition to his library. He died at his chambers in Staple BOOK-HUNTING AFTER INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 43 Inn. * I have been almost daily at a book-auction,' writes Malone — ' the library of the late Mr. Reed, the last Shake- spearian, except myself, where my purse has been drained as usual. But what I have purchased are chiefly books of my own trade. There is hardly a library of this kind now left, except my own and Mr. Bindley's, neither of us having the least desire to succeed the other in his peculiar species of literary wealth.' Si. Bernard's Seal. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. I. N few phases of human action are the foibles and preferences of individuals more completely imbricated than in that of book - collecting. AVidely different as were the book-hunters' fancies at the beginning and at the end of the eighteenth century, yet it would not be possible to draw a hard and fast line. For the greater part of that time the classics of every description and of every degree of unimport- ance held their own. Reluctant, therefore, to abandon the chief stimulant of their earher book-hunting careers, many collectors still took a keen interest in their primi pensieri. But their real passion found a vent in other and less beaten directions. In addition to this, during the eighteenth century a large number of small working libraries were formed by men who used books. Henry Fielding, Goldsmith, Dr. John- son, David Hume, Smollett, Gibbon, Pope, and many others, are essentially figures in the history of book-hunting in London, but they had neither the means nor, so far as we are aware, the incHnation to indulge in book-collecting as a FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 45 mere fashionable hobby. Mr. Austin Dobson has lately published an interesting account of Fielding's library, in which he proves not only that Fielding had been a fervent student of the classics in his youth and that he remained a voracious reader through life, but that he made good use of a large collection of Greek and Latin authors, which was sold at his death. The eighteenth cen- tury may be regarded as the Augustan age so far as book-hunting in London is concerned. A large percentage of the most famous col- lections were either formed, or the collec- tors themselves were either born or died, in that period. The Beckford and Hamilton, the Heber, the Sunderland, the Althorp, and the King's Library, all had their origins prior to 1800. Richard Heber (1773-1833), with all his vast knowledge, learning, and accomplishments, was a bibliomaniac in the more unpleasant sense of the word. No confirmed drunkard, no incurable opium-eater, ever had less self-control than Heber had. To him, to see a book was to possess it. Cicero has said that the heart into which the love of gold has entered is shut to every other feeling. Heber was very wealthy, so that with him the love of books blinded him to almost everything else. He began to collect when at Oxford, chiefly classics for the purpose of study. He is said to have caught the disease from Bindley, the veteran collector, who began book-hunting early in the last century. Having one day accidentally met with a copy of Henry Peacham's Mr. Aicstin Dobson. From a photograph by E. C. Porter, Ealing. 46 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON ' Valley of Varietie,' 1638, which . professed to give ' rare passages out of antiquity,' etc., he showed it to Bindley, who described it as ' rather a curious book.' Why such an incident should have set Heber on his terrible career history telleth not. Under the name of ' Atticus,' Dibdin, who knew Heber well, has described him in this fashion : * Atticus unites all the activity of De Witt and Lomenie, with the retentiveness of Magliabechi, and the learning of Le Long. . . . Yet Atticus doth sometimes sadly err. He has now and then an ungovernable passion to possess more copies of a book than there were ever parties to a deed or stamina to a plant ; and therefore, I cannot call him a " duplicate " or a triplicate collector. . . . But he atones for this by being liberal in the loan of his volumes. The learned and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his library.' Heber's own explanation of this plurality of purchase was cast somewhat in this fashion : ' Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for his show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country house. Another he will require for his own use and reference ; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a third at the service of his friends.' The late Mr. Edward Solly was also a pluralist in the matter of books, and had even six or seven copies of a large number of works. He justified himself on the plea that he liked to have one to read, one to make notes in, another with notes by a previous owner, one in a choice binding, a ' tall ' copy, a short ditto, and so forth. So far, however, as Heber is concerned, no one could be more generous than he in lending books. This might be proved from a dozen different sources, including the lengthy introduction ' To Richard Heber, Esq.,' to the sixth canto of Scott's * Marmion ' : ' But why such instances to you, Who, in an instant, can renew Your treasured hoards of various lore, And furnish twenty thousand more ? FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 47 Hoards, not like theirs whose volumes rest Like treasures in the Franch'mont chest, While gripple owners still refuse To others what they cannot use : Give them the priest's whole century, They shall not spell you letters three ; Their pleasure in the books the same The magpie takes in pilfei-'d gem. Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight, amusement, science, art. To every ear and eye impart ; Yet who of all who thus employ them, Can, like their owners self, enjoy them ?' In addition to this reference, Scott, in one of his letters, speaks of ' Heber the magnificent, whose Hbrary and cellar are so superior to all others in the world.' Frequent mention is made of Heber in the notes to the Waverley novels. At one period of his life Heber was a Member of Parliament, and throughout his career it seems that he found recreation from the sport of collecting in the sport of the fields. He has been known to take a journey of four or five hundred miles to obtain a rare volume, ' fearful to trust to a mere commis- sion.' He bought by all methods, in all places, and at all times, a single purchase on one occasion being an entire library of 30,000 volumes. Curiously enough, he disliked large-paper copies, on account of the space they filled. When he died, he had eight houses full of books — two in London, one in Oxford, and others at Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent, besides smaller collections in Germany. When sold, the number of lots was 52,000, and of volumes about 147,000, and the total amount realized ^^57,000, or about two-thirds of the original expenditure. The sale, which commenced in 1834, lasted over several years, and the catalogue alone comprises six thick octavo volumes. He is described as a tall, strong, well-made man. Writing to Sir Egerton Brydges, the Rev. A. Dyce observes concerning Heber's death : ' Poor man ! He ex- pired at Pimlico,* in the midst of his rare property, without * ' In a small gloomy house within the gates of Elliot's Brewery, between Brewer Street, Pimlico, and York Street, Westminster.' — Wheatley's edition of Cunnins^ham's ' London.' 48 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON a friend to close his eyes, and from all I have heard I am led to believe that he died broken-hearted. He had been ailing some time, but took no care of himself, and seemed, indeed, to court death. Yet his ruhng passion was strong to the last. The morning he died he wrote out some memoranda for Thorpe about books which he wished to be purchased for him ' (Fitzgerald, *The Book-Fancier,' p. 230). In noticing Scott's edition of Dryden, and in alluding to the help which Scott obtained from Heber and Bindley, the Willia??i Beckford, Book-collector. Edinburgh Review speaks of the two as ' gentlemen in whom the love of collecting, which is an amusement to others, assumes the dignity of a virtue, because it gives ampler scope to the exercise of friendship, and of a generous sympathy with the common cause of literature.' Wilham Beckford (1761-1844) and the tenth Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852), for several reasons, may be bracketed together as book-collectors. Each was a remarkable man in several respects. William Beckford, the author of < Vathek ' and the owner of Fonthill, was a universal collector. No less , FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW: 49 enthusiastic in amassing pictures and objects of art than books,, he never scrupled to sell anything and everything except his books, which he dearly loved. A man who could draw eulogy from Byron could not have been an ordinary person. Fonthill and its treasures were announced for sale in September, 1822, the auctioneer being James Christie, the catalogue being in quarto size, and comprising ninety-five pages. The auction, however, did not take place, but the collection was sold en masse to a Mr. John Farquhar for ^330,000, Beckford reserving, however, some of his choicest books, pictures, and curiosities. In the following year the whole collection was dispersed by Phillips, the auctioneer, the sale occupying thirty-seven days. With the money he received from Farquhar, Beckford purchased annuities and land near Bath. He united two houses in the Royal Crescent by a flying gallery extending over the road, and his dwelling became one vast library. He added to his collection up to his last days, and obtained many books at Charles Nodier's sale. Beckford was one of the greatest book- enthusiasts that ever lived. His passion was more particu- larly for Aldines, and other early books bearing the insignia of celebrities, such as Frances I., Henri et Diane, and De Thou, and especially of choice old morocco bindings by Pesseuil, Padeloup, and Derome. He was especially strong in old French and Italian books, generically classified as faceticE. Beckford would read for days and weeks at a stretch, with no more recreation than an occasional ride. That he read his books there is ample testimony, for at his sale one lot comprised seven folio volumes of transcripts from the autograph notes written by him on the fly-leaves of the various works in his library. For example, to the copy of Peter Beckford's ' Familiar Letters from Italy,' 1805, he concludes five pages of notes with, ' This book has at least some merit. The language is simple ; an ill-natured person might add, and the thoughts not less so.' In Brasbridge's ' Fruits of Experience,' 1824, he writes : ' They who like hog-wash — and there are amateurs for anything — will not turn away disappointed or disgusted with this book, but 4 50 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON relish the stale, trashy anecdotes it contains, and gobble them up with avidity.' After Beckford's death, Henry G. Bohn offered ^30,000 for the whole library ; but Beckford's second daughter, who married the Duke of Hamilton, refused to sanction the sale. It, however, came under the hammer at Sotheby's, 1881-1884, in four parts of twelve days each, the net result being £73,551 i8s. The tenth Duke of Hamilton was one of the most dis- tinguished bibliophiles of his time, and commenced purchas- ing whilst yet Marquis of Douglas. A large portion of his library was collected in Italy and various parts of the Continent, whilst the collection of Greek and Latin manu- scripts which he obtained when on a diplomatic mission to Russia formed an unrivalled series of monuments of early art. In 1810 he married Susanna Beckford, and at her father's death the whole of his splendid library came into his possession. The two collections, however, were kept quite distinct. The Hamilton collection of printed books was sold at Sotheby's in May, 1884, the eight days realizing £12,892 I2S. 6d. The most important feature of the library, however, was the magnificent collection of MSS. which the Prussian Government secured by private treaty — through the intermediary, it is understood, of the Empress Frederick — for £70,000. In May, 1889, those which the authorities decided not to retain for the Royal Museum at Berlin were transferred to Messrs. Sotheby's, and ninety-one lots realized the total of £15,189 15s. 6d. The gems of the collection were a magnificent volume of the Golden Gospels in Latin of the eighth century, formerly a gift to Henry VIII., which sold for £1,500 — a London bookseller once offered £5,000 for this book — and a magnificent MS. of Boccaccio, ' Les Illustres Malheureux,' on vellum, 321 leaves, decorated with eighty-four exquisite miniatures, which sold for £1,700. It may be mentioned that a large number of the Beckford and Hamilton books were purchased through the late H. G. Bohn. The Althorp Library, now in the possession of Mrs. Rylands, of Manchester, was formed by George John, Earl Spencer FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 51 (1758-1834), between 1790 and 1820. Until its recent removal from Althorp it was the finest private library in existence. In 1790 Lord Spencer acquired the very fine and select library of Count Rewiczki, the Emperor Joseph's Ambassador in London, for about ^^2,500, and for the next thirty years the Earl was continually hunting after books in the sale-rooms and booksellers' shops. The story of the Althorp Library George John, Earl Spencer. has been so repeatedly told, from the time of its first librarian, the devil-hunting Thomas Frognall Dibdin — whose flatulent and sycophantic records are not to be taken as mirroring the infinitely superior intellect and taste of his employer — down to the present day, that any further description is almost superfluous. Besides this, the library is one which will soon be open to all. We may, however, mention a point which is 52 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON of great interest in the study of books as an investment. It may reasonably be doubted whether the Althorp Library cost its founder much over -;f 100,000 ; it is generally understood that the price paid for it in 1892 was not far short of £250,000. Contemporaneously with the formation of the Althorp Collection, the Duke of Roxburghe built a library, which was one of the finest and most perfect ever got together. The Duke John^ Duke of Roxburghe^ Book-collector. turned book-hunter through a love affair, it is said. He was to have been married to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz ; but when this lady's sister was selected as a wife for George III., the proposed marriage was deemed impolitic, and consequently the Duke remained single. The Duke himself is said to have traced his passion for books to the famous dinner given by his father, the second Duke, at which Lords Oxford and Sunderland were present, and at which the celebrated copy of the Valdarfer Boccaccio was FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 53 produced. The history of this incident is told in our chapter on Book-sales, and need not be here more specifically referred to. The Duke was a mighty hunter, not only of books, but of deer and wild swans. So far as books are concerned, his great specialities were Old English literature, Italian poetry, and romances of the Round Table ; and as the first and last of these have increased in value as years have gone by, it will be seen that the Duke was wise in his generation. Indeed, we have it on the best authority that the aggregate outlay on the Roxburghe Li- brary did not exceed £4,000, whilst in the course of little more than twenty years it produced over ;f23,397, the sale taking place in June, 1812. The Duke of Roxburghe and Lord Spencer were not averse to a little understanding of the nature of a ' knock- out,' for in one of the Althorp Caxtons Lord Spencer has written : * The Duke and I had agreed not to oppose one another at the [George Mason] sale, but after the book [a Caxton] was bought, to toss up who should win it, when I lost it. I bought it at the Roxburghe sale on the 17 of June, 1812, for £215 5s.' Yet another distinguished book-collector of the same period calls for notice. George III. formed a splendid library out of his own private purse and at a cost of A corner in the Althorp Library. 54 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON ;fi30,ooo. This library is now a part of the British Museum. A hbrary such as that of George III. gives very Httle idea of a man's real tastes for books. The King availed himself of the accumulated wisdom, not only of Bar- nard (who was his librarian for nearly half a century), but of three or four other experts, among whom was Dr. Johnson. The King's everyday tastes, however, may be gathered from the subjoined list of books, which he wished to have on his visit to Weymouth in 1795. He desired what he called ' a closet library ' for a watering-place ; he wrote to his book- seller for the following works : the Bible ; the ' Whole Duty of Man'; the * Annual Register,' 25 volumes; Rapin's 'History of England,' 21 volumes, 1757 ; Millot's ' Elemens de I'Histoire de France,' 1770 ; Voltaire's ' Siecles ' of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. ; Blackstone's ' Commentaries,' 4 volumes ; R. Burn's ' Justice of Peace and Parish Officer,' 4 volumes ; an abridgment of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary ; Boyer's ' Dictionnaire Fran9ois et Anglais ' ; Johnson's 'Poets,' 68 volumes; Dodsley's 'Poems,' 11 volumes; Nichols' ' Poems,' 8 volumes ; Steevens' ' Shakespeare ' ; ' (Euvres ' of Destouches, 5 volumes ; and the ' Works ' of Sir William Temple, 4 volumes ; of Addison, 4 volumes, and Swift, 24 volumes. These books can scarcely be regarded as hght literature, and, if anything, calculated to add to the deadly dulness of a seaside retreat at the end of the last century. However, the selection is George III.'s, and must be respected as such. The number of men who were prowling about London during the middle and latter part of the last century after books is only less great than the variety of tastes which they evinced. We have, for example, two such turbulent spirits as John Home Tooke and John Wilkes, M.P. Parson Home's (he subsequently assumed the name of his patron, William Tooke) collection did not, as Dibdin has observed, contain a single edition of the Bible ; but it included seven examples of Wynkyn de Worde's press and many other rare books. Eight hundred and thirteen lots realized the then high amount of ;f 1,250 when sold at King and Lochee's in FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 55 1813. John Wilkes' books were sold at Sotheby's in 1802. If less notorious, many equally enthusiastic book-collectors were hunting the highways and byways of London. Here, for example, is a little anecdote relative to one of these : When the splendid folio edition of Caesar's ' Commen- taries,' by Clarke, published for the express purpose of being presented to the great Duke of Marlborough, came under the hammer at the sale (in 1781) of Topham Beauclerk's library for £4^, it was accompanied by an anecdote relating to the method in which it had been acquired. Upon the death of an officer to whom the book belonged, his mother, being informed that it was of some value, wished to dispose of it, and, being told that Mr. Topham Beauclerk (who is said to have but once departed from his inflexible rule of never lending a book) was a proper person to offer it to, she waited on him for that purpose. He asked what she required for it, and, being answered £^ 4s., took it without hesitation, though unacquainted with the real value of the book. Being desirous, however, of information with respect to the nature of the purchase he had made, he went to an eminent bookseller's, and inquired what he would give for such a book. The bookseller replied -£iy 17s. Mr. Beauclerk went immedi- ately to the person who sold him the book, and, telling her that she had been mistaken in its value, not only gave her the additional 13 guineas, but also generously bestowed a further gratuity on her. Few bargain-hunters would have felt called upon to act as Beauclerk* did. Here is another anecdote of a contemporary book-hunter : Nichols states that Mr. David Papillon (who died in 1762), a gentleman of fortune and literary taste, as well as a good antiquary, contracted with Osborne to furnish him with ^100 worth of books, at 3d. apiece. The only con- ditions were, that they should be perfect, and that there * The library of Beauclerk (who is better remembered as an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson than as'a book-collector) comprised 30,000 volumes, was sold by Paterson in 1781, and occupied fifty days. It was a good collection of classics, poetry, the drama, books of prints, voyages, travels, and history. 56 THE BOOK.HVNTER IN LONDON should be no duplicate. Osborne was highly pleased with his bargain, and the first great purchase he made, he sent Mr. Papillon a large quantity ; but in the next purchase he found he could send but few, and the next still fewer. Not willing, however, to give up, he sent books worth 5s. apiece, and at last was forced to go and beg to be let off the contract. Eight thousand books would have been wanted ! An interesting collector, at once the type of a country gentleman and of a true bibliophile, was Sir John Englis Dolben (1750-1837), of Finedon Hall, Northamptonshire. He was educated at Westminster School, proceeding thence to Christ Church in 1768. Previously to his final retirement into the country, he lingered with much affection about the haunts of his youthful studies. He carried so many volumes about with him in his numerous and capacious pockets that he appeared like a walking library, and his memory, particu- larly in classical quotations, was equally richly stored. This is one side of the picture. This is the other side, in which we get a view of the man-about-town collector in the person of Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), the hydrographer to the Admiralty and to the East India Company: 'His yellow antiquarian chariot seemed to be immovably fixed in the street, just opposite the entrance-door of the long passage leading to the sale-room of Messrs. King and Lochee, in King Street, Covent Garden ; and towards the bottom of the table, in the sale-room, Mr. Dalrymple used to sit, a cane in his hand, his hat always upon his head, a thin, slightly-twisted queue, and silver hairs that hardly shaded his temple. . . . His biddings were usually silent, accom- panied by the elevation and fall of his cane, or by an abrupt nod of the head.' The Osterley Park Library, sold by order of the seventh Earl of Jersey at Sotheby's in 1885, was commenced in the last century, the original founder being Bryan Fairfax, who died in 1747. His books came into the hands of Alderman Child, who was not only a book-collector, but inherited Lord Mayor Child's books. The fifth Earl of Jersey married. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 57. Mf. Child's grand-daughter in 1804. Two mighty hunters of the old school may be here briefly mentioned — John Towneley and Michael Wodhull, the poet, both of whose collections were dispersed in several portions, partly at the beginning of the present century, and partly within quite recent times. The founder of the * Bibliotheca Towneleiana ' was for a long period of years an ardent collector, his favourite studies being English history, topography, and portraits. The great gem of his collection was the splendid ' Vita Christi,' gorgeously ornamented with full-page paintings, and with miniatures superbly executed in colours, heightened with gold, by Giulio Clovio, in the finest style of Italian art. This MS. was executed for Alexander, Cardinal Farnese, and presented to Pope Paul III. It was purchased abroad by a Mr. Champernoun for an inconsiderable sum, and cost Mr. Towneley 400 guineas. At its sale in 1883 it realized ;f 2,050. Two portions of the Towneley Library were dis- persed by Evans in 1814-15 (seventeen days), and realized over ;^8,5g7, and other portions were sold in 1816 and 1817. Towneley himself died in May, 1813, aged eighty-two. The remainder of his ex- tensive collection was sold at Sotheby's "^^^^^^ in 1883 (ten days). Wodhull, who died November 10, 1816, aged seventy-six, had two sales during his lifetime, first in 1801 (chiefly duplicates), and secondly in 1803 (chiefly Greek and Roman classics). He, however, reserved for himself a library of about 4,000, which, passing into the possession of Mr. F. E. Severne, M.P., was sold at Sotheby's in January, 1886, and realized a total of ^Ti 1,973 4s. 6d. He is the Orlando of Dibdin's ' Biblio- mania.' The Greek and Roman classics formed the chief Michael Wodhull, Book-collector. 58 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON attraction of this post-mortem sale, which is generally re- garded as one of the most important of its kind held during recent years. Most of the prizes were picked up in France after 1803, and it was during one of his book-hunting ex- peditions in Paris that Wodhull was detained by Napoleon. Two other * fashionable ' or titled collectors may be here grouped together. The fine library formed by William, Marquis of Lansdowne was dispersed by Leigh and Sotheby in thirty-one days, beginning with January 6, 1806, the 6,530 lots realizing ^£"6,701 2s. 6d. The highest amount paid for a single lot was for a very rare collection of tracts, documents, and pamphlets, in over 280 volumes, illustrating the history of the French Revolution, together with forty-nine volumes relative to the transactions in the Low Countries between the years 1787 and 1792, and their separation from the House of Austria. Wynkyn de Worde's * Rycharde Cure de Lyon,' 1528, sold for £4^ 5s. ; and a curious collection of ' Masks ' and ' Triumphs,' of the early seventeenth century, mostly by Ben Jonson, realized £40. As a book-collector Sir Mark Masterman Sykes is a much better remembered figure in the annals of book-hunting than that of the Marquis of Lansdowne. The Sykes library con- tained a number of the editiones principes of the classics, some on vellum, and also a number of Aldines in the most perfect condition. There were also many highly curious and very rare pieces of early English poetry. The collection was sold at Evans's in 1824, and the gems of the collection were a copy of the Mazarin Bible, and the Latin Psalter, 1459, to which full reference is made in a subsequent chapter. II. The history of literature, it is said, teaches us to consider its decline only as the development of a great principle of succession by which the treasures of the mind are circulated and equalized ; as shoots by which the stream of improve- ment is forcibly directed into new channels, to fertilize new soils and awaken new capabilities. The history of book- FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 59 collecting teaches us a similar lesson. The love which so often amounted to a positive passion for the exquisite pro- ductions of the Age of Illuminated Manuscripts, all but died with the introduction of the printing-press, which in reality was but a continuation of the old art in a new form. And so on, down through the successive decades and generations of the past four centuries, the decline — but not the death, for such a term cannot be applied to any phase of book- collecting — of one particular aspect of the hobby has synchronized with the birth of several others, sometimes more worthy, and at others less. An exhaustive inquiry into the various and manifold changes through which the human mind passed alone might account for these various develop- ments, which it is not the intention of the present writer on this occasion to analyze. The rise and progress of what Sir Egerton Brydges calls ' the black-letter mania' gave the death-blow to the long- cherished school of poetry of which Pope may be taken as the most distinguished exponent. ' Men of loftier taste and bolder fancy early remonstrated against this chilling con- finement of the noblest, the most aspiring, and most expan- sive of all the Arts. ... It was not till the commotion of Europe broke the chain of indolence and insipid effeminacy that the stronger passions of readers required again to be stimulated and exercised and soothed, and that the minor charms of correctness were sacrificed to the ardent efforts of uncontrolled and unfearing genius. The authors of this class began to look back for their materials to an age of hazardous freedom, and copious and untutored eloquence : an age in which the world of words and free and native ideas was not contracted and blighted by technical critics and cold and fastidious scholars.' To abandon the abstract for the more matter-of-fact details of sober history, the mania to which Brydges alludes may be said to date itself from the spring of 1773. The occasion was the sale in London of the library of James West, President of the Royal Society. George Nicol, the bookseller, was an extensive purchaser at this sale for the King, for whom, indeed, he acted in a similar 6q the BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON capacity up to the last* Nicol told Dibdin 'with his usual pleasantry and point, that he got abused in the public papers, by Altnon and others, for having purchased nearly the whole of the Caxtonian volumes in this collection for his Majesty's library. It was said abroad that a Scotchman had lavished away the King's money in buying old black-letter books.' The absurdity of this report was soon proved at subsequent sales. Dibdin adds, as a circumstance highly honourable to George Nicol, the King's Bookseller. the King, that ' his Majesty, in his directions to Mr. Nicol, forbade any competition with those purchasers who wanted books of science and hcllcs lettres for their own progressive or literary pursuits ; thus using the power of his purse in a manner at once merciful and wise.' The impetus which book-collecting, and more particularly the section to which we have just referred, received by the dispersal of the West Library gathered in force as time went on, reaching its climax with the Roxburghe sale thirty-nine i FROM THE OLD TO THE NE W 6i years afterwards. The enthusiasm culminated in a club — the Roxburghe, which still flourishes. The warfare (at Roxburghe House, St. James's Square), as Mr. Silvanus Urban has recorded, was equalled only by the courage and gallantry displayed on the plains of Salamanca about the same period. * As a pillar, or other similar memorial, could not be conveniently erected to mark the spot where so many bibliographical champions fought and conquered, another method was adopted to record their fame, and perpetuate this brilliant epoch in literary annals. Accordingly, a phalanx of the most hardy veterans has been enrolled under the banner of the far-famed Valdarfer's Boccaccio of 1471. . . . The first anniversary meeting of this noble band was celebrated at the St. Alban's Tavern [St. Alban's Street, now Waterloo Place] on Thursday, June 17, 1813, being the memorable day on which the before - mentioned Boccaccio was sold for £2,260. The chair was taken by Earl Spencer (perpetual president of the club), supported by Lords Mor- peth and Gower, and the following gentlemen,* viz.. Sir E. Brydges, Messrs. W. Bentham, W. Bolland, J. Dent, T. F. Dibdin (vice-president), Francis Freeling, Henry Freeling, Joseph Hazlewood, Richard Heber, Thomas C. Heber, G. Isted, R. Lang, J. H. Markland, J. D. Phelps, T. Ponton, junior, J. Towneley, E. V. Utterson, and R. Wilbraham. Upon the cloth being removed, the following appropriate toasts were delivered from the chair : 1. The cause of Bibliomania all over the world. 2. The immortal memory of Christopher Valdarfer, the printer of the Boccaccio of 1471. 3. The immortal memory of William Caxton, first English printer. 4. The immortal memory of Wynkyn de Worde. 5. „ ,, Richard Pynson. 6. „ „ Julian Notary. * Among the absentees were his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, who was prevented attending the anniversary by indisposition, the Marquis of Blandford, and Sir M. M. Sykes, Bart. 62 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON 7. The immortal memory of William Faques. 8. ,, ,, the Aldine family, g. ,, ,, the Stephenses. 10. ,, ,, John, Duke of Roxburghe. ' After these the health of the noble president was proposed, and received by the company standing, with three times three. Then followed the health of the worthy vice-presi- dent (proposed by Mr. Heber), which, it is scarcely necessary to observe, was drunk with similar honours. . . . The presi- dent was succeeded in the chair by Lord Gower, who, at midnight, yielded to Mr. Dent ; and that gentleman gave way to the Prince of Bibliomaniacs, Mr. Heber. Though the night, or rather the morning, wore apace, it was not likely that a seat so occupied would be speedily deserted ; accordingly, the '' regal purple stream " ceased not to flow till " Morning oped her golden gates," or, in plain terms, till past four o'clock.' Such is a brief account of the Roxburghe Club, which is limited to thirty-one members, one black ball being fatal to the candidate who offers himself for a vacancy, and each member in his annual turn has to print a book or pamphlet, and to present to his fellow-members a copy. Before making any further reference to the personnel of the Roxburghe Club, we quote, from a literary journal of 1823, the following trenchant paragraph, a propos of a similar club in Scotland : * Bibliomania. — This most ridiculous of all the affecta- tions of the day has lately exhibited another instance of its diffusion, in the establishment of a Roxburghe* Club in Edinburgh. Its object, we are told, " is the republication of scarce and valuable tracts, especially poetry." — '' Republica- tion !" In what manner? Commonsense forbid that the system of the London Roxburghe Club be adopted. Of this there are some four-and-twenty members or so, who dine together a certain number of times in the year, and each member in his turn republishes some old tract at his own expense. There are just so many copies printed as there are * The name really employed was Bannatyne. FROM THE OLD JO THE NEW 63 members of the club, and one copy is presented to each. It is evident that no sort of good can be effected by this system, and, indeed, there has not yet resulted any benefit to the literature of the country from the Roxburghe Club. They have not published a single book of any conceivable merit. The truth is that the members, for the most part, are a set of persons of no true taste, of no proper notion of learning and its uses — very considerable persons in point of wealth, but very so-so in point of intellect.' Thomas Frognall Dihdin, Bibliographer. The primary aim and object of the Roxburghe Club were clearly enough indicated in the first list of members, for the association of men with kindred tastes is at all times a highly commendable one. The Roxburghe Club might have sustained its raison d'etre, if it had drawn the line at such men as Thomas Frognall Dibdin and Joseph Hazlewood. The foregoing extract from the Mtisetim of 1823 exactly indicates the position which the club at that time held in 64 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON public estimation. It had degenerated into a mere drink- ing and gormandizing association, alike a disgrace to its more respectable members and an insult to the nobleman whose name it was dragging through the mire. Those who have an opportunity of consulting the Athenceum for 1834 will find, in the first four issues of January, one of the most scathing exposures to which any institution has ever been subjected. Hazlewood had died, and his books came into the sale-room. Never had the adage of ' Dead men tell no tales ' been more completely falsified. Hazlewood, who does not seem to have been unpleasantly particular in telling the truth when living, told it with a vengeance after his death ; for among his papers there was a bundle entitled ' Roxburghe Revels,' which Thorpe purchased for ^40, the editor of the A thenceum being the under-bidder. A few days afterwards, and for the weighty consideration of a £10 note profit, the lot passed into the hands of Mr. Dilke, and the articles to which we have referred followed.* If anything could have made the deceased Joseph turn in his grave, it would have been the attention which he received at the unsparing hands of Mr. Dilke. The excellent Mr. Dibdin survived the exposure several years. The castigation proved beneficial to the club ; and if its revelries were no less boisterous than here- tofore, it at all events circulated among its members books worthy of the name of Roxburghe, and edited in a scholarly manner. The club still flourishes, with the Marquis of Salisbury as its president, and the list of its members will be found in our chapter on * Modern Collectors.' One of the mighty book-hunters of the last century was the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode (whose father went out as a commanded of marines in Anson's ship, and whose share in the prize-money made him a wealthy man), who * Thorpe suspected this, and secured the volume, thinking to do his friends of the Roxburghe Club a good turn. Writing to Dibdin, Thorpe said : ' I bought it for £^0 against the editor of the Athe?zcsum, who, if he got it, would have shown the club up finely larded.' But Dibdin did not jump at paying so heavy a price for silence, and Thorpe wisely consoled himself with Mr. Dilke's ;^5o. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW- 65 died on. April 6, 1799, in his seventieth year. His splendid library now forms a part of the British Museum. It con- tains the most choice copies in classical and Biblical litera- ture, and many of these are on vellum. His collection of editions of the fifteenth century Mr. Cracherode used modestly to call a ' specimen ' one ; ' they form perhaps the most J^ev. C. Mordaunt Cracherode. M.A., Book-collector. perfect collana or necklace ever strung by one man.' Several of the books formerly belonged to Grolier. His library was valued at £10,000 at or about the time of his death ; it w^ould probably now realize considerably over ten times that amount if submitted to auction. The value of his prints was placed at £5,000. Cracherode was an excellent scholar, 5 66 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON and an amiable ; his passion for collecting was strong even in death, for whilst he was at the last extremity his agent was making purchases for him. He was one of the most constant habitues of Tom Payne's, and at his final visit he put an Edinburgh Terence in one pocket and a large-paper Cebes in the other. His house was in Queen Square, West- minster, overlooking St. James's Park. Reverting once more to the change which had been effected in the fancies of book-collectors, James Bindley, whose library was sold after his decease in 1819, and James Perry, who died in 1821, may be regarded as typical collec- tors of the transition period. Both are essentially London book-hunters — the former was an official in the Stamp Office, and the latter was, ijtter alia, the editor of the Morning Chronicle. Bindley, to whom John Nichols dedicated his ' Literary Anecdotes,' was a book-hunter who made very practical use of his scholarly tastes and ample means. He haunted the bookstalls and shops with the pertinacity of a tax-gatherer, and if his original expenditure were placed by the side of the total which his collection of books brought after his death, no more convincing arguments in favour of book-hunting could possibly be needed. Bindley is the * Leontes ' of Dibdin's ' Bibliographical Decameron,' and his collection of poetical rarities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was one of the most remarkable which had ever been got together. Not many of the items had cost him more than a few shillings each, and they realized almost as many pounds as he had paid shillings. Perry was a journalist first and a book-collector afterwards, but in many respects there was a great similarity in the tastes of the two rival bibliophiles. Perry's was the more extensive collection — it was sold in four parts, 1822-23 — and perhaps on the whole much more generally interesting. Evans, the auctioneer, described it as ' an extraordinary assemblage of curious books. Early English poetry, old tracts and miscel- laneous literature.' The cheval de bataille of the fourth part consisted of ' a most Curious, Interesting and Extraordinarily Extensive Assemblage of Political and Historical Pamphlets FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 67 of the Last and Present Century.' This collection was comprised in thirty-five bundles. Perry made a speciality of facetiae, pamphlets on the French Revolution, and Defoe's works, but the two cornerstones of his library were a copy of the Mazarin Bible and a First Folio Shakespeare. Among the many book-collectors whose careers link the past century with the present, few are more worthy of notice than Francis Douce, who died in the spring of 1834, aged seventy-seven. He was for a short time Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. His fortune was much increased by being left one of the residuary legatees of Nollekens, the sculptor — to the extent, in fact, of ;f5o,ooo. Dibdin, who was for many years a near neighbour and intimate friend at Kensington, describes Douce's library as ' eminently rich and curious . . . not a book but what had its fly-leaf written upon. In short, no man ever lived so much with, and so entirely for, his books as did he.' Douce is the Prospero of the ' Bibliomania.' His books he bequeathed to the Bodleian, and his MSS. to the British Museum, the stipulation in the latter case being that they are not to be opened until 1900 ! In manners and appearance Douce was singular and strange, rough to strangers, but gentle and kind to those who knew him intimately. He was of the old school as regards dress, wearing as he did a little flaxen wig, an old-fashioned square- cut coat, with what M. Jacob calls ' quarto pockets.' Several of his letters are printed in Dibdin's ' Literary Recol- lections.' Two other distinguished book-collectors, contemporary with Douce, and, like him, benefactors to the Bodleian, may be mentioned here — Richard Gough (1739-1809), the anti- quary ; and Edmond Malone (1741-1812), the Shakespearian scholar. Gough's gift consisted of the topographical portion of his library ; the remainder, comprising 4,373 lots, realizing the total of ^^3,552, came under the hammer at Leigh and Sotheby's in 1810, realizing what were then considered very fancy prices (a selection of which are given in the Gentleman's Magazine, Ixxx., part ii.). The Malone collection, which became the property of the Bodleian through the influence 68 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON of Lord Sunderlin in 1815, comprised what the collector himself describes as * the most curious, valuable, and exten- sive collection ever assembled of ancient English plays and poetry.' It would probably be impossible now to form another such collection. Malone told Caldwell, who repeats the remarkable fact, that he had procured every dramatic piece mentioned by Langbaine, excepting four or five — the advantage, observes that gentleman, of living in London. The number of volumes amounts to about 3,200. As his biographer. Sir James Prior, has pointed out, his collection in the Bodleian remains distinct, and is creditable ' alike to the industry, taste, and patience by which it was brought together.' And further : ' None of his predecessors have attempted what he accomplished. Few of his successors have, on most points, added materially to our knowledge.' Yet a third benefactor to the Bodleian may be conveniently mentioned here. Thomas Caldecott, who was born in 1744, and died in 1833, was a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and afterwards a Bencher of the Middle Temple. He resided chiefly at Dartford, and formed a choice library of black-letter books, and the productions of the Elizabethan period. He attacked with considerable asperity and ability Shakespearian commentators, such as Steevens and Malone ; and his rivals did not spare his edition of two of Shakespeare's plays when they came out. He presented the gems of his library, the Shakespeare quartos, to the Bodleian ; but the remainder of his books, including many excessively rare and several unique pieces, came up for sale at Sotheby's in 1833, and realized a total of ;f 1,210 6s. 6d. The splendid hbrary of John Dent, of Hertford Street, sold by Evans in 1827, producing the sum of £15,040, had a curious history. The nucleus of it was formed towards the close of the last century by Haughton James, who, in a moment of conviviality, and without a due consideration of its true value, transferred it to Robert Heathcote,* who * Heathcote dispersed two portions of his books at Sotheby's, first in April, 1802, and secondly in May, 1808. Some of the books which Dent obtained for him, with additions, were sold at the same place in April, 1808. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 69 made several additions, and from whose possession it passed about 1807 into that of John Dent. The sale of the Dent library is described by Dibdin as exhibiting the ' first grand melancholy symptoms of the decay of the Bibliomania.' The chief attraction was the Sweynheym and Pannartz Livy, 1469, on vellum, which fell (in more senses than one) under the hammer for ;£'262, Dent having paid ;f903 for it at Sir Mark Sykes' sale. Both the purchasers, Payne and Foss, and Dibdin, made strenuous efforts to persuade the Earl of Spencer to purchase it, but unsuccessfully ; it subsequently became the property of Grenville, and passed with his col- lection into the British Museum. Dent is the Pontevallo of the ' Bibliomania,' and Baroccio of the ' Bibliographical Decameron,' and does not seem to have been an altogether amiable specimen of the fraternity. Canning used to say that he once found Dent deep in the study of an open book which was upside down ! A much more genial bibliomaniac, Sir William Bolland, calls for notice ; he was one of the original members of the Roxburghe Club, which, in fact, was first suggested at a dinner-party at his house, June 4, 1812. He died May 14, 1840, aged sixty-eight, and his library, which comprised 2,940 lots, and realized -^3,019, was sold by Evans, and included many choice books. One of the greatest bargains which this dis- tinguished collector secured during his career became his property through the medium of Benjamin Wheatley, who purchased a bundle of poetical tracts from the Chapter Library at Lincoln for 80 guineas. When the inevitable sale came, one of these trifles, 'The Rape of Lucrece,' alone realized 100 guineas. - George Chalmers (1742-1825), who is described as ' the most learned and the most celebrated of all the antiquaries and historians of Scotland,' was also one of the giant book- collectors of the present century, and differed from the majority of collectors in being a prolific and versatile author. At his death his nephew became the possessor of his extensive library, but on the death of the nephew the books were placed in the hands of Evans, who sold them in two parts, fo THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON September, 1841, and February, 1842, and realized over jf4,ioo. The second part was very rich in Shakespeariana, and included the ' Sonnets,' 1609, ^f 105 ; ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' 1600 (second edition), ^£^105 ; and many other important items. In the first part of the sale, Marlowe's ' Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York,' 1595 (believed to be unique), sold for ;f 131 ; and the only per- fect copy then known of Patrick Hannay's ' Nightingale,' 1622, from the libraries of Bindley, Perry, Sykes and Rice, £1^ 5s. The third part of Chalmers' library, which consisted for the most part of works relative to Scotland, particularly in illustration of the History of Printing in that Country, was also sold by Evans in 1842. Among other book-col- lectors of this period we may mention particularly the Rev. Henry Joseph Thomas Drury, whose library was rich in classics, all for the most part finely bound ; it came under the hammer at Evans's in 1827 (4^729 lots) ; Dr. Isaac Gosset, who died in 1812, in his sixty-eighth year, and whose library, comprising 5,740 lots, realized ;f3,i4i 7s. 6d. at Leigh and Sotheby's in 1813 ; the Rev. Jonathan Boucher (1738-1804), Vicar of Epsom, who, like George Chalmers, for many years resided in America, was, also like him, an inveterate book- collector to whom everything in the shape of a book was welcome : his sale occupied Leigh and Sotheby thirty-nine days, in 1806, the total being over ^f 4,5 10. III. The history of the second and third quarters of the present century makes mention of very few collectors of the first rank. Among the more important of those whose libraries came under the hammer within that period, we may specially refer to the following : William Upcott, who started early in life as an assistant to R. H. Evans, but who in 1806 became sub-librarian of the London Institution. He was one of the first to take up autograph-collecting, of which, indeed, he has been termed the pioneer. He certainly collected with great advantage and knowledge, and his vast accumulations were FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 71 sold at Sotheby's in four batches during 1846, he having died in September, 1845 ; John Hugh Smyth Piggott, whose hbrary, in three portions, was sold at the same place, 1847-54 » W. Y. Ottley, the prolific writer of books on art, 1849 ; W. Holgate, of the Post Office, whose library included a number of Shakespeariana, June, 1846 ; Hanrott, 1857 5 Sir Thomas Bernard, 1855 ; Isaac D'Israeli, the author of ' Curiosities of Literature,' in 1849, and his unsparing critic, Bolton Corney, in 1871 ; S. W. Singer, in four parts, i860 ; J. Orchard Halliwell (afterwards H alii well- Phillipps), in 1856, 1857, 3.nd 1859 > ^^^ the Rev. Dr. Hawtrey, part of whose books were sold, far below their worth, in 1853, and the rest nine years later. Many of the foregoing were literary men, who aimed rather at getting together a use- ful library than one of rarities. The sale of all such libraries makes a very sorry show beside that of the more osten- tatious collections. For instance, the books which Macaulay used with such brilliant effect, and in- cluding among them an extraordinary number of tracts, many excessively rare, only realized ^^426 15s. 6d., when sold in 1863 in 1,011 lots. Douglas Jerrold's little library, sold in August, 1859, in 307 lots, only fetched £'^73 3s. In very strong contrast to these is the remarkable little library, formed between 1820 and 1830 by Henry Per- kins, of Hanworth Park, Feltham, a member of the brewing firm. This collection comprised only 865 lots, but when sold at Sotheby's in June, 1873, the total was found to be /. 0. Halliwell- Phillipps 72 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON close on ^26,000 ! There was a copy each of the 42-Hne and 40-hne Gutenberg Bible — the former is now in the Huth Library, and the latter in the Ashburnham Library ; several other very early printed Bibles, including Cover- dale's, Matthews', and Cranmer's, two works printed by Caxton, with many other important books were sold. The late George Daniel (who was born about 1790) may be regarded as the connecting link between the collectors of the early part of the present century and those of to-day. When, for example. Perry and Bindley left off, Daniel com- menced. There was no great rush after Shakespeare quartos in the earlier part of the present century, and book- collecting for a time ceased to be the pet hobby of wealthy members of the peerage. When George Daniel, a critic and bibliographer of exceptional abilities, began to collect, he soon made Shakespeare, as well as the earlier English poets, objects of solicitude. He resided for many years in the historic old red-brick tower at Canonbury.* The sale of Daniel's extraordinary collection was held at Sotheby's in July, 1864, when a First Foho, one of the finest in the world — now in the possession of Baroness Burdett-Coutts — sold for £716 2s., and when twenty of the Shakespeare quartos realized a total of about ;f 3,000. George Daniel is now remembered by but few book- collectors. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt knew him very well, and describes him as a ' retired accountant, whose idiosyncrasy consisted of raves morgeaux, bonnes touches, uniques — copies of books with a provenance, or in jackets made for them by Roger Payne — nay, in the original parchment or paper wrapper, or in a bit of real mutton which certain men call • * This famous old place possesses a literary history which would fill a fairly long chapter. Among those who have lived here we may mention Ephraim Chambers, whose * Cyclopaedia ' is the parent of a numerous offspring ; John Newbery lived here for some time, and it was during his tenancy that Goldsmith found a refuge here from his creditors, and wrote • The Deserted Village ' and ' The Vicar of Wakefield'; WiUiam Woodfall had lodgings in this historic tower ; and Washington Irving, early in the present century, threw around it a halo of romance and interest which it had not previously possessed. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 73 sheep. He was a person of literary tastes, and had written books in his day. But his chief celebrity was as an acquirer of those of others, provided always that they were old enough Caiionbury Toiuer, George DanieVs Residence. or rare enough. An item never passed into his possession with- out at once ip^o facto gaining new attributes, almost invariably worded in a holograph memorandum on the fly-leaf. Daniel was in the market at a fortunate and peculiar juncture, just 74 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON when prices were depressed, about the time of the great Heber sale. His marvellous gleanings came to the hammer precisely when the quarto Shakespeare, the black-letter romance, the unique book of Elizabethan verse, had grown worth ten times their weight in sovereigns. Sir William Tite, J. O. Halliwell, and Henry Huth were to the front. It was in 1864. What a wonderful sight it was ! No living man had ever witnessed the like. Copies of Shakespeare, printed from the prompters' MSS. and published at four- pence, fetched ;f 300 or ;;f400. I remember old Joseph Lilly, when he had secured the famous Ballads, which came from the Tollemaches of Helmingham Hall, holding up the folio volume in which they were contained in triumph as someone whom he knew entered the room. Poor Daniel ! he had no mean estimate of his treasures — what he had was always better than what you had. Books, prints, autographs — it was all the same. I met him one morning in Long Acre. I had bought a very fine copy of Taylor, the Water Poet. " Oh, yes, sir," he said, " I saw it ; but not quite so fine as mine." He went up to Highgate to look through the engrav- ings of Charles Matthews the elder. They were all duplicates — of course inferior ones. "Damn him, sir!" cried Mat- thews afterwards to a friend ; " I should like him to have had a duplicate of my wooden leg." ' John Payne Collier, who was born a year before Daniel, but who lived until 1883, was a collector with very similar tastes. He had been a reporter on the Morning Chronicle, and in all probability imbibed some of his book-collecting zeal from Perry. His book-buying and literary career commenced, according to his own account, in 1804 or 1805, when his father took him into the shop of Thomas Rodd, senior, on which occasion he purchased his ^ first Old Enghsh book of any value,' namely, Wilson's 'Art of Logic,' printed by Grafton, 155 1 ; from this he ascertained that ' Ralf Roister Doister ' was an older play than * Gammer Gurton's Needle,' and also that it was by Nicholas Udal, Master of Eton School. When in Holland, in the winter of 1813-14, Collier purchased among other books an imperfect copy of Tyndale's FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 7$ * Gospel of St. Matthew,' to which, as he says in his ' Diary,' ' the date of 1526 [1525] has been assigned, and w^hich seems to be the very earhest translation into English of any portion of the New Testament. Many years afterwards — I think in the spring of 1832 — I happened to show it to Rodd, the learned bookseller. I was at that time ignorant on the subject, and Rodd offered me books to the value of two or three pounds for it. I gladly accepted them.' This frag- ment, for which Collier paid a florin, was sold to Mr. Gren- ville by Rodd for ^50, and is now in the British Museum. Writing in the Athenceuni, January 31, 1852, he gives an account of the origin of events which led to one of the fiercest literary quarrels of modern times : ' A short time before the death of the late Mr. Rodd, of Newport Street [i.e. early in 1849], ^ happened to be in his shop when a considerable parcel of books arrived from the country. He told me that they had been bought for him at an auction — I think in Bedfordshire. . . . He unpacked them in my presence . . . and there were two which attracted my attention, one being a fine copy of Florio's " Italian Dictionary," of the edition of 161 1, and the other a much-thumbed, abused, and imperfect copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare, 1632. The first I did not possess, and the last I was willing to buy, inasmuch as I apprehended it would add some missing leaves to a copy of the same impression w^hich I had had for some time on my shelves. As was his usual course, Mr. Rodd required a very reasonable price for both ; for the first I remember I gave I2S. and for the last only ^i los. . . . On the outside of one of the covers was inscribed, " Tho. Perkins, his booke." ' Collier was vexed at finding that the volume contained no leaves which would help him in completing the volume he already had. He had employed another person to do the collating, and it was not until some considerable time after, and on examining thoroughly the volume himself, that he discovered it to contain a large series of emendations, which Collier included in his * Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays,' 1853, which set the whole town by the ears. Collier's library was 76 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON dispersed at Sotheby's in 1884; it was an unusually interesting sale, and included many very rare and curious books. Southey, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Wordsworth, and WiUiam Hazlitt were book-collectors of a type which deserves a niche to itself. Writing to Coleridge in 1797, Lamb says : ' I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am, rather, just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's " No Cross, no Crown." I hke it im- mensely.' Lamb'sideas of book-marking are to be found in his corre- spondence with Cole- ridge, in which he states that a book reads the better when the topo- graphy of its plots and notes is thoroughly mastered, and when we ' can trace the dirt in it, to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe.' Lamb's library con- sisted for the most part of tattered volumes in a dreadful state of repair. Lamb, like Young, the poet, dog-eared his books to such an extent that many of them would hardly close at all. From the correspondence of Bernard Barton we get a glimpse at Lamb's cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington — a white house with six good rooms. ' You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with old books.' Barton also writes : ' What chiefly attracted me was a large old book-case full of books. I could but think how many long walks must have been taken Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From the Portrait by G. Dawe, R.A., FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 77 to bring them home, for there were but few that did not bear the mark of having been bought at many a bookstall — brown, dark-looking books, distinguished by those white tickets which told how much their owner had given for each.' In an edition Lamb, Coleridge of Donne scrawled : 1669] shall which die soon. belonged my to dear Lamd^s Cottage at Colebrook Row^ Islington. Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have be-scribbled your book. S. T. C, 2nd May, 181 1.' Lamb was too good-natured to be a book-collector. On one occasion William Hazlitt* sent Martin Burney to Lamb to borrow * Hazlitt was a good deal of a book-borrower. In his ' Conversations with Northcote ' he speaks of having been obliged to pay five shillings for the loan of ' Woodstock ' at a regular bookseller's shop, as he could not procure it at the circulating libraries. 78 THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' and Lamb being out, Burney took it, a high-handed proceeding which involved the borrower in a blowing-up. Coleridge at another time helped himself to Luther's ' Table-Talk,' and this also called forth a great out- cry. A copy of Chapman's Homer, which passed through the hands of Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge, eventually turned up in one of Lilly's catalogues. This identical copy is noticed in an account of Rydal Mount which appeared in the first volume of Once a Week. Coleridge, of course, has made a number of notes in it, and in one of these he describes the translation as ' an exquisite poem, spite of its frequent and perverse quaintness and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language.' The difference between a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac has been described as between one who adorns his mind, and the other his book-cases. Of the bibliomaniac as here characterized, we can suggest no better type than Thomas Hill, the original of Poole's ' Paul Pry,' and of Hull in Hook's novel, ' Gilbert Gurney.' Devoid as Hill was of intellectual endowments, he managed to obtain and secure the friendship of many eminent men — of Thomas Campbell, the poet, Matthews and Liston, the comedians, Hook, Dubois, John and Leigh Hunt, James and Horace Smith, John Taylor, editor of the Sun, Horace Twiss, Baron Field, Sir George Rose, Barnes, subsequently editor of the Times, Cyrus Redding, and many others. That he was kind-hearted and hospitable nearly everyone has testified, and his literary William Hazlitt. PROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 79 parties at his Sydenham Tusculum were quite important events, in spite of the ponderosity of his well-worn stories. During the more acute stages of bibliomania in this country at the latter part of the last century and the beginning of ^^H