The Book-Collector / A General Survey of the Pursuit and of those who have engaged in it at Home and Abroad from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

No educated eye can regard with indifference a more or less interesting volume clothed in a becoming livery by an accomplished artist either of other times or of these. If it is an ancient vesture, with the credentials in the form of a coat of arms, an ex libris, or a signature, or all of these, handed down with it to us, we appear to be able to disregard time, and feel ourselves brought within touch of the individual who owned it, of him who encased it in its lavishly gilt leathern coat, and of the circle to which it was long a familiar object, as it reposed unmolested in a corner of some petite bibliothèque or study during generations—if the subject of which it treated had to be handled, a vicarious copy in working raiment doing duty for it. For it is not a book in the ordinary acceptation of the word; it is a souvenir of the past, a message and a voice from remote times, ever growing remoter, or an objet de luxe, a piece of literary, or rather bibliographical, dandyism. In any case, its identity is to be preserved and held sacred.

CHAPTER XIII

The English School of Binding brings before us a roll of names borne by artists of successive periods and of varying merit, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century to the present time. That it is by no means exhaustive is due to the circumstance that in the case of many of the older, and some of the more recent, masters, there is no clue to the origin in the shape of an external inscription on the cover, as we find on foreign works, or in that of a ticket or a signature. As it so frequently happens with old pictures, the style of a binder was often, indeed generally, imitated by his pupils or successors, and we are apt to mistake the original productions for the copies, unless we engage in a very close study of minute details.

In the English, Scotish, and Irish series it is equally true that the preponderance of bindings are unidentified. The monastic liveries, in which so many venerable tomes have come down to us, were executed within the walls of the buildings which held the books, and had perhaps produced them; and analogously most of our early printers were binders of their own stocks, as well as of any other works brought to them. We may incidentally remind the reader that one practice on their part was to utilise waste as end-papers or pasteboard, and to that circumstance we are indebted for the recovery of numerous typographical fragments belonging to publications not otherwise known. That Pynson, Julian Notary, John Reynes, and others executed book-binding outside their own productions seems to be proved by the existence of much early literature of foreign origin with English end-papers and covers. In fact, till the Stationers' Company made the sale of books or printed matter a separate industry, the typographer was his own binder and vendor.

The bibliopegist, as an independent artificer whom we are able to identify, dates from the seventeenth century. We have already mentioned Francis Rea or Read of Worcester as flourishing in 1660. John Evelyn seems to have employed some one who executed good work in morocco, and in better taste than that done for royalty at the same period; yet we cannot be sure that he did not carry the books abroad for the purpose. Pepys had in his service a binder named Richardson, whom he mentions in the Diary, and who is otherwise known. A copy of Stow's Survey, 1633, passed through his hands; it is in the original calf; and he was merely engaged to repair it, as appears from a memorandum inside the cover.

Of authentic names of later English binders, considering the incalculable amount of work done, the number is extremely limited. If we tabulate, we find only:—

This represents not only the entire assemblage and succession, so far as England is concerned, but covers Scotland and Ireland; and several of the names are obviously those of foreigners. The Scotish artists, if, as there is no absolute reason to doubt, a large number of early books were clothed on the spot, possessed much taste and originality, and some of them have descended to us in a pristine state of preservation with the lavish gilding as fresh and brilliant as when they left the workshop. We may fairly consider, looking at the intimate relationship between Scotland and France in former times, that a certain proportion of volumes of Scotish origin were bound abroad, just as Americans at present send over their books to England. Coming down to more recent days, the two names chiefly associated with Scotland are C. Murton and J. Mackenzie, neither of whom attained special celebrity.

But it is to be more than suspected that all important work in this direction was long executed out of Scotland—either in London or in Paris. The time came, however, when the Scots acquired a school and style of their own, and all that can be pleaded for it is, that it is manneristic and peculiar. Of recent years heavy prices have been paid for first-class examples, which are of unusual rarity. Messrs. Kerr & Richardson, of Glasgow, bought over Mr. Quaritch at the Laing sale in London at a preposterous figure (£295) a copy of one of Sir George Mackenzie's legal works simply for the covers; it was offered by the purchasers afterward to the underbidder, who quietly informed them that he had come to his senses again.

There is no reason why the magnificent copy on vellum of Boece's Chronicles of Scotland (1536), which occurred at the Hamilton sale in 1884, should not have received its clothing of oaken boards covered with gilt calf at home.

The most familiar names to English ears are perhaps those of Roger Payne, Charles Hering, C. Kalthoeber, Charles Lewis, Francis Bedford, Robert Riviere, and Zaehnsdorf. The genuine Roger Paynes in good state are very scarce and equally desirable. Hering excelled in russia and half-binding. Lewis bound with equal excellence in brown calf and Venetian morocco, and was largely employed by Heber. Bedford had two or three periods, of which the last was, on the whole, the best; he was famous for his brown calf, but made it too dark at first, instead of allowing it to deepen in colour with time. Riviere could do good work when he took pains; but he was unequal and uncertain.

Charles Lewis had been preceded by another person of his name, who is noticed in Nichols's Anecdotes (iii. 465) as dying in 1783, and as of Chelsea. This personage was held in high esteem by his clients, and was very intimate with Smollett the novelist, who is said to have had Lewis in his mind, when he drew the character of Strap in Roderick Random.

Fashions in binding, which occupy a distinct position, are the embroidered covers in gold, silver, and variegated threads, executed both abroad and in England, and of which many examples are ascribed to the Nuns of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire; and velvet, silk, and metal bindings, which exist in sufficient abundance, and usually occur with marks of original ownership, lending to them a special value. Much depends in all these instances on the character of the work and the preservation of the copy; and each book has to be judged on its own merits. A considerable proportion of indifferent specimens are constantly in the market.

The Little Gidding bindings are made additionally interesting by the apparent connection between them and John Farrer of Little Gidding, who had a principal hand in producing a volume on Virginia entitled Virgo Triumphans, of which there were three issues, 1650-51, the last of which has the map by Goddard in two states, one bearing the inscription: John Farrer, Esq., Collegit. And the other: Domina Virginia Farrer Collegit. It is highly probable that the material for the book-covers worked by the Nunnery were obtained by the Farrers direct from Virginia. But it may be well questioned whether the holy ladies did more than the decorative and finishing stages.

The early provincial school of English binding is chiefly remarkable for the productions of Edwards of Halifax, who, with his two sons, James and Thomas, held a prominent rank in the book-trade at Halifax and in London in the last and present century, and whose name is also recognised as that of an enthusiastic amateur. It was at the sale of the private library of James Edwards in 1815 that the celebrated Bedford Missal occurred. The bindings of Edwards present nothing very extraordinary; but many of them have painted edges or sides, sometimes executed with great care and skill. A copy of the History of Halifax, with a view of the place thus given on the leaves, is a favourable illustration of a practice which was formerly carried out on an extensive scale, and of course with very unequal results. A brisk demand arose a short time since for this branch of ingenuity; but it has probably ere now subsided, having been in response to a call for the artist by one or two collectors. Of course, the prices advanced instantaneously to high-water mark, from the certainty that the craze was ephemeral.

But the school of Edwards of Halifax probably borrowed the idea from earlier men, who had occasionally decorated the edges of books in this way, and we may instance Samuel Mearne, bookbinder to Charles II., by whom a copy of North's Plutarch, 1657, was clothed in a richly gilt morocco vesture, the leaves gilt and painted with flowers. Mearne also introduced what is known as the cottage-roof pattern.

There are two fashions in the costlier department of binding which have recommended themselves to adoption by some connoisseurs in this country, and to which we do not find it easy to reconcile our taste: the investiture of old English books in Parisian liveries and their treatment by our own binders in the French style. Both courses of proceeding strike us, we have to confess, as equally unsatisfactory. There is an absence of harmony and accord between the book and its cover, like dissonant notes in music. At the same time, Bedford was fairly successful in copying the French manner for foreign works, and his productions of this class are very numerous.

The practice of clothing English volumes in foreign liveries was occasionally followed in early times. Messrs. Pearson & Co. bought at Paris some years ago a lovely copy of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, 1590, in a richly gilt contemporary French, perhaps Lyonnese, calf binding. The work was executed for an Englishman resident abroad, more probably than for a local collector. But these instances are rare. One of a different character occurred to our notice in a copy of Whitney's Choice of Emblems, printed at Leyden in 1586, and still preserved in the old Dutch boards—old, but not coeval.

Of amateur binding all countries have had their examples to show, and here we do not intend the limitation of the artist to a particular pattern and material chosen by his employer, such as the Hollis plain red morocco, or the Duke of Roxburghe's half-morocco with marbled paper sides for his old plays, but the conduct of the whole process under the owner's roof, as in the case of Robert Southey, whose first wife attired many of her husband's books in cotton raiment, and led him to speak of them as his Cottonian library; or, nearer to us, in that of Sir Edward Sullivan, who devotes himself to the finishing stages of any volumes belonging to friends or otherwise, when the article has been "forwarded" in an ordinary workshop. Sir Edward tools, gilds, decorates, and letters, and subscribes or inscribes himself E. S. Aurifex. Specimens of his handicraft occur fairly often in the market; as to their merit, opinions differ. But after all, there is a soupçon of gratification in having a Baronet to your binder; and we understand that Sir Edward is complaisant enough to accept commissions outside his personal acquaintance.

A second essayist in the same way, who has become almost a member of the vocation, is Cobden Sanderson, who bound several books of ordinary character and moderate value for William Morris, and whose merit, if the prices realised for the lots in the auction be any sort of a criterion, must be extremely high. The present writer and many others carefully examined the volumes, and failed to see any justification for the enthusiasm awakened in at least two competitors.

Specimens occur also now and then in the market of the beautiful morocco bindings executed by another and (as some think) superior amateur, Mrs. Prideaux. A copy of Arnold's edition of Wordsworth's Select Poems, 1893, bound by this lady in Levant morocco, with elaborate gold tooling on back and sides—only one small octavo volume—is priced in a catalogue of 1898 at £12, 12s.

The Parisian differs from us islanders in these particulars toto cælo. There is an utter and hopeless incompatibility. His predilection is for morocco in genere; he estimates it not only above russia (calf is hardly in his dictionary), but above even the choicest vellum encasement to be procured or conceived; but on maroquin rouge dentellé or aux petits fers from some pre-revolutionary workshop he is hobbyhorsical to a pathetic extent.

The most celebrated French binders are carefully enumerated by the latest authorities in their chronological order, but there is a difficulty in respect to many of them analogous to that encountered by the inquirer on English ground, since the names of several even of the best period are unknown, and the productions are accordingly classable only under their styles or their early owners.

A good deal of the finest French work is attributed to the two Eves, whose chefs d'œuvre must, and can easily, be distinguished from the tolerably frequent imitations put into the market from time to time, some probably nearly coeval with the original examples. Prior to the Eves, however, France had more or less skilful artists in this line of industry. In the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896 occurred a copy of Philelphus De Liberorum Educatione, printed by Gilles Gourmont in 1508, in the original stamped leather covers, with the name of André Boule on the sides. Under Francis I. we find the names of Estienne Roffet, dit le Faulcheur, as "Relieur du Roy," and also with that of Pignolet. The initials G. G. occur on a volume of 1523 in Messrs. Pearson & Co.'s catalogue, 1897-98, No. 679; they are probably those of Gilles Gourmont above mentioned. In 1528, according to his edition of Meliadus de Leonnois, Galliot du Pré was sworn binder to the University of Paris. In the imprint of his edition of Lancelot du Lac, Paris, 1533, Philippe le Noir describes himself as one of the two sworn binders of the same University; and we gather elsewhere that François Regnault was then the other.

When we reach the seventeenth century, greater facilities naturally arise for identification of artists. One of the earliest directly associated with his own labours was Le Gascon (1620-60), followed by the Boyets (1650-1725), Louis de Bois (1725-28), Augustin du Seuil, (1728-46), and Andreau (binder to the queen of Louis XV.). From the commencing years of the eighteenth century, in addition to the binders just enumerated, there is a fairly consecutive series, who worked for the court and the public: Padeloup, the two Deromes, Douceur (who was much employed by Madame de Pompadour), the two Bozérians, Le Monnier, Tessier, Dubuisson (famous for his gilding), Simier, Thompson of Paris, Capé, Duru, Chambolle, Lesne (who printed in 1827 a didactic poem on his craft), Trautz, Bauzonnet, Marius-Michel, and Lortic.

Agreeably to the experience in every other department of skilled labour connected with book-production, the French obeyed here the early influence of Italian and German taste, and the germ was Teutonic, as in Spain it was Moorish. The stamped leather bindings, mainly common to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, &c., were largely copied in England for the royal and noble libraries of the Tudor era. In some of those executed abroad, the artificer, as we have seen, was accustomed to place his name or initials very conspicuously outside the cover. Ludovicus or Lodewijk Bloc, for instance, who flourished at Ghent or Bruges at the close of the fifteenth century, usually signs and claims his work in an elaborate inscription. Two specimens bear: Ludovicus Bloc ob Amorem Christi librum hunc recté ligavi. Jodocus de Lede adopted a similar method of commemoration.

In the case of foreign books, especially those of French origin, the presence of a pure and unblemished morocco binding by a recognised artist, coupled with the armorial cognisance or ex libris of some famous amateur and the binder's ticket, which is equally de rigueur, enhances the commercial importance of a volume or set of volumes beyond calculation, and has its only analogue in the stupendous figures paid for the Sèvres soft paste porcelain of the true epoch, when all the necessary conditions are happily united and fulfilled. Nothing is more striking than the immense disparity between a book in the right sort of garniture and in the wrong one, or, again, in the true covers with some ulterior sophistication in the shape of added arms, restored joints, renovated gilding, and a hundred other subtleties difficult to detect. The case is on all fours with a specimen of unimpeachable Sèvres contrasted with another of which the porcelain dates back beyond the painting and the gold. A French book in old morocco by Derome, Le Gascon, or some other esteemed artist, with its credentials and pedigree above suspicion, may fetch £50 or double; the identical production in old calf or in modern morocco or russia will not bring the price of the binding; all the magic is in the leather and the ticket. It is not a literary object, but an article of vertu. There is probably no description of Continental books which has so greatly risen in value during the last thirty years as the illustrated publications of the last century, provided always that they conform to the very exacting requirements of a Parisian exquisite. Above all, they must be of the statutory tallness and breadth, and in the livery by bibliographical injunction and usage prescribed.

No more impressive exemplification of the difference between a book or set of books in the French series, in the right and in the wrong state, could be afforded or desired than the edition of Molière, 1773, which in contemporary morocco may be worth £100, and in calf or any other ordinary dress a five-pound note. But after all, a still more signal case is that of Laborde's Chansons mises en Musique, published in the same year, which, even in thoroughly preserved contemporary calf, brings under the hammer in proof state nearly £200, while in modern morocco it is rather dear at a quarter of that amount.

The extreme rarity of pure and genuine specimens of the work of the earliest foreign binders—nay, of our own—has naturally produced a large inheritance of imitations of varied character and degree. There is nothing to save the amateur from deception but the same kind of training which qualifies collectors in other departments to distinguish what is true from what is false. A man who proposes to himself to make Bindings a speciality, cannot do better than graduate by studying the most trustworthy and contemporary guides on the subject in different literatures, and then we should send him on a tour round the great public and private libraries of Great Britain and the Continent. This, of course, applies only where the undertaker is in thorough earnest, and wishes to spare himself a good deal of expense and a good deal of mortification. Illustrated catalogues are of very indifferent value, especially those of auctioneers, which too often offer the result of sophistication so cleverly disguised that to an inexperienced eye the repair is not palpable. If one goes in search of desiderata to the trade, let it be to the dealer who knows his business and charges his price, but who supplies the article, and not to the empiric, who charges a price and does not supply it, for the excellent reason (among others) that this party does not know a fine binding when he sees it—or a spurious one.

In curiosities generally it is the safest plan for a private collector to place himself more or less in the hands of the highest firms in the particular line which he selects, provided that he is not one of a hundred thousand, and is a mile or two ahead even of professional experts. Then, wherever he goes and whatever he buys, he is always armed cap-à-pie. To him, to him solely, are the lots almost as precious as the purse of Fortunatus; he alone it is who may fall in with Caxtons, Clovis Eves, Rembrandts, Syracusan medallions, for a song, and carry them home without a qualm.

A curious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but the salient feature was—in fact, the ruling one, with one exception—that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.

The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr. Quaritch's Catalogue of Bindings, 1888, which includes particulars of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and one of Zaehnsdorf's Short History of Bookbinding, 1895, with illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced monographs upon it.

In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in the direction of independence, and its Transactions form an interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of bindings.

The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type, the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is no present approach to what may be termed the ensemble of a volume placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owners, like the old eighteenth-century work. But as they emerge from the workshop, and stand upon the shelves or in the case, their aspect is decidedly agreeable, while half a roomful of them are to be had for the price of a Clovis Eve or even a first-rate Padeloup. Very much, on the contrary, we are apt to conceive a dislike for that unwieldy imperial format which some of the Parisian libraires editeurs affect, and which perhaps occupy the same place in French literature of the day as our detestable English editions de luxe.

CHAPTER XIV

The two principal aids to the formation of a library, great or small, general or special, are Personal Observation and Works of Reference. The first is obviously an uncertain quantity, and may be restricted to an ordinary mechanical experience, or may comprise the finest commercial and literary instinct. We have had among us ere now amateurs who possessed the highest qualifications for assembling round them gratifying and valuable monuments of their taste and judgment, with the harmless satisfaction of feeling tolerably sure that the investment, if not a source of profit, would not form one of serious loss. This is a fair and legitimate demand and expectation; but such characters are far rarer than the books which they collect; and if it were otherwise, the large industry which lies in the purchase and re-sale of literary property could not exist. The buyer whose knowledge is in advance of that of the salesman is a party whom Mr. —— and Mr. —— and the remainder of the alphabet pharisaically admire, while they privily harbour toward him sadly unchristian feelings and views.

The second and remaining auxiliary, the Book of Reference, has become a wide term, since it has so enormously developed itself, and formed branches, so as to constitute a library within a library, and to call for its own bibliographer. So far as the current value and general character of literary works are concerned, all the older authorities are more or less untrustworthy, and the same is to be predicated of a heavy proportion of auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues, where the first and sole object is to realise the maximum price for an article. The system pursued by the former class of vendors of late years renders it far more hazardous to bid on the faith of the printed descriptions, and there is, in fact, greater danger for the novice in the elaborate rehearsal of the title and the accompanying fillip in the shape of a note (usually erroneous) than the good old-fashioned plan of setting out the particulars briefly—even illiterately; for in the latter case the burden of discovering the exact truth is thrown on the customer or acquirer. We must say that few things are less satisfactory than trade-catalogues with certain honourable exceptions, which it might be invidious to particularise; and the book-buyer has to depend almost exclusively on his own discernment and the bibliographers. Of what he reads in the catalogues he may believe as much or as little as he likes.

Nothing could be more ungracious than to speak disrespectfully of the publications of those laborious and earnest workers who have preceded us, and who for that very sufficient reason did not know quite so much as we do. We admire their industry, on the contrary, their taste and their devotion; we buy their volumes because it is pleasant to have them at our side; and ever and anon we dip into this one or that, and meet with something which had escaped us. Seriously, however, they are, on the whole, not merely of slight use, but of a misleading tendency. For the gods of our forefathers, Ware, Tanner, Ames, Herbert, Oldys, Dibdin, Brydges, Watt, Park, Haslewood, the compilers of the Bibliotheca Grenvillana, Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, and Biographia Dramatica, and scores besides, before and even since, we have substituted others, assuredly more complete, perhaps constructed on truer and more lasting principles. We have on our shelves (i.) for the Bibliography, the Heber, Collier, Corser, and Huth catalogues (1834-80), and the writer's own Collections (1867-1903), Bibliographica and the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society: (ii.) for the Prices, Book Prices Current and Book Sales. Unfortunately the two latter undertakings are little better than mechanical transcripts from the auctioneers' extremely treacherous catalogues by outsiders. The peculiar class of information purporting to be supplied by such catalogues is often in need of some qualifying criticism or admonition, which it is not easy, if possible, for any one not on the spot and behind the scenes to offer. No mere reference to the catalogue after the event is capable of initiating one into these arcana; and the same has to be said of the quotations in the ordinary periodicals. This is a species of employment for which there must be either a long training or a unique instinct.

Book Prices Current and Book Sales cannot be trusted as an authority or a guide by any person who does not approach them with a certain measure of experience. Where an editor cites a common and comparatively worthless volume as selling for a high sum, and omits to mention that on the title there is a valuable autograph, the mischief is obvious; and this and allied forms of error are habitual. Such empirical attempts do more harm than good.

The Account printed by the Trustees of the Early English books in the British Museum is not without its value, although it is almost everything that it ought not to have been; and there are several monographs of importance dealing with special items in public or private collections. It is to be hoped that in course of time we may see a creditable catalogue of the Britwell Library, and that the Spencer books at Manchester will be done over again by a competent hand. If money is expended on these objects, it is distressing to find that the task has been confided to a gentleman whose best credentials are his personal acquaintance with the owner.

We do not add to existing authorities: (i.) for the printers, Ames, Herbert, and Dibdin, or (ii.) for general information Lowndes's Manual by Bohn and his coadjutors, because we are afraid that there is almost greater danger of being misled by them than being helped or enlightened. Both Ames and Herbert, however, we emphatically pronounce conscientious, and accurate in the highest degree in their respective days; but these days were long ago, and the present state of knowledge has rendered a considerable proportion of their texts obsolete and unreliable. Dibdin has certainly added to Herbert, but he has not, on the contrary, in all cases faithfully reprinted him; if his book had been as great an advance on his predecessor as Herbert's was on Ames, it would have been a treasure indeed. A new Lowndes is said to be in the hands of a syndicate. I know nothing about it; but I shall rejoice if it should prove worthy of the subject, and as unlike Lowndes or Lowndes by Bohn as possible. I labour, however, under the gravest apprehension that it will prove one of those undertakings which will just be advanced enough to block the right book without being relatively anything approaching even to an English Brunet. At least five-and-twenty annotated copies of Lowndes must exist. Will the promoters deem it necessary to acquire or to borrow them? Probably not. There must be thousands of additions and corrections in the writer's alone. It is estimated that the enlarged Lowndes contains about 10 per cent. of the literature which ought to find a place, not reckoning the earlier English books, tracts, or broadsides, and that of that proportion about 7½ per cent. are misdescribed. The anecdote of Pope and the wag who retorted to his habitual exclamation, "God mend me!" "It would take less to make a new one," appears to apply in the present case.

The original Lowndes in 1834 was a poor affair; but Bohn's recension twenty years or so later was by comparison a still poorer one, for there was the opportunity, in the presence of innumerable discoveries and a large body of new bibliographical material in various shapes, of rendering the new edition a really creditable performance. The name of the publisher, however, was a sufficient guarantee for this not being the case, and where the second impression is superior to the first, is where Bohn happened to have an interest in mentioning certain works, or information was communicated to him by others.

The sole comfort for us is, that Brunet has passed through five editions, and yet remains deplorably imperfect and inaccurate.

There are three prominent publications, each in its way of signal value and merit: the British Museum and Bodleian Catalogues of Printed Books, and Mr. Quaritch's New General Catalogue. The two former, of course confine themselves to the contents of the respective libraries; they are consequently far from exhaustive. They have been compiled by human beings; they are consequently far indeed from faultless. They express, as a rule, no opinions, and of commercial estimation very properly take no cognisance. But the Oxford collection has always been differently situated from the National Library in not having any adequate means of purchasing deficiencies, while it is rich in its own very interesting way by reason of bequests of unique value, making it the possessor of numerous priceless volumes not to be found in Great Russell Street or anywhere else. The Quaritch Catalogue (including the Typographical Supplement, 1897), a noble monument to the energy and courage of the grand marchand whose name it bears, is a good deal more than even a bookseller's advertising medium on a large or the largest scale. It is, in fact, a literary performance; and it is an open secret to whom we owe it. The collector, apart from the question of purchase, will find it replete with useful, instructive, and trustworthy information, so far as bibliography is concerned.

The highly honourable and equally laborious publications of Sir Egerton Brydges, Joseph Haslewood, Thomas Park, E. V. Utterson, and others, if they are of minor substantial value to us at present, demonstrate the keen appetite for bibliographical information and anecdote in the first quarter of this century. The Censura Literaria, extending to ten octavo volumes, passed through two editions, and, in common with other similar works, till recently commanded a heavy price. That they have fallen into neglect is due to the necessity, on the part of buyers and sellers of early literature, of studying only the latest authorities.

At the same time, from a literary point of view, the Restituta and Censura Literaria (2nd edit. 1815) of Brydges, and many members of the same group and period, will always be worth consulting, and will be found to yield a vast store of interesting and instructive matter.

Such works may at present be sterile enough, but yet we are bound to recollect on their behalf that on their first appearance they were revelations and pioneers. It is where a book at the outset is behind the knowledge of the day, or indeed rather not in advance of it, that it seems to be disentitled to respect.

Not only have more modern labours superseded the Brydges, Park, Haslewood, and other series, which till of late years held the market firmly enough, but the Rev. Dr. Dibdin, whose sumptuously printed and illustrated productions long remained such prime favourites at heavy prices, both at home and in the United States, has been overtaken by a general neglect, and the Americans, who were once so enthusiastic and generous as bidders for these books, will at present scarcely agree to acquire them at a fifth of their appreciation in the height of the Dibdinomania.

Many of the gems which have passed through the hands of successive owners are known to have once formed part of the Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, a famous—almost historical catalogue of old literature on sale in 1815 by Longmans, when that firm dealt in such commodities, and imported largely from the Continent in response to the keen and hungry demand on the part of the school created by the Roxburghe sale and the Roxburghe Club, Heber its greatest disciple and ornament, Heber a colossus in himself. Many are the traditional anecdotes of the wonderful bargains which Longmans' agent secured for his principals in all sorts of places, whither he resorted in quest of prey—of the romances in folio in the virgin stamped Spanish bindings, which they might have worn since they lay on the shelves of Don Quixote or the Licentiate, brought for sale, as it were haphazard, to some market-place in Seville or Valladolid in wine-skins. But the contents of the above-mentioned Bibliotheca were purely English. It was a small but choice assemblage of old poetry formed by Mr. Thomas Hill, otherwise Tommy Hill, otherwise Paul Pry, which he offered to Longmans on the plea of failing health, and for which the purchasers elected, looking prophetically at his moribund aspect, to grant him an annuity in preference to a round sum. Mr. Hill's apprehensions, however, were premature, as the transaction had the effect of restoring his spirits; and the booksellers scored rather indifferently. How pleased they must have been to see him coming for his pension year after year!

Even the outrageous prices asked for the articles, of which the condition was ordinarily poor, could not have brought Longmans anywhere near home; and the catalogue was expensively printed. Yet one would like, very much indeed like, to put down thirty golden sovereigns for Shakespeare's Sonnets never before imprinted, 1609, and fifty for Anthony Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits, 1588. The Rev. J. M. Rice obtained the latter in 1815; it was sold at his auction in 1834 for eighteen guineas, and when it next occurred among George Daniel's books in 1864, was bought by Mr. Huth against Sir William Tite for £225. The Sonnets of 1609 would at present be worth £250. As regards the bulk of the lots, however, one might almost read shillings for pounds. Sir Francis Freeling had an interleaved copy, in which he entered acquisitions. Through his official connection with the Post-Office he procured many prizes from the country districts. Dick of Bury St. Edmunds stood him in good stead. What Dibdin euphemistically christened the Lincoln Nosegay was a second pair of bellows applied about the same date to the reddening flame of bibliographical ardour. It was a descriptive list of certain books which the Doctor had prevailed on the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral to sell to him for five hundred guineas, and which he divided between Mr. Heber and Lord Spencer. The collection was part of the benefaction of Dean Honeywood, and it was a shameful betrayal of trust. Our cathedral libraries still retain a host of treasures, notwithstanding all this sort of pillage; and the dim religious light which is shed around lends an air of sanctity to the spot sufficient, one might have thought, to arrest the hand of the marauder.

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

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

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

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

Of the Grenville Catalogue, as an independent work, it is less usual to think and speak, because the library which it describes has long formed part of the British Museum, and very few are now living who can remember it under the roof of its excellent founder in Hamilton Place. The books have now during some years constituted an integral part of the New General Museum Catalogue; there is scarcely any department of literature in which they did not contribute importantly to enrich and complete the national stores. But Mr. Grenville was particularly strong in early typography and Irish and English history.

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

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

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

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

Several monographs, dealing in a brief or cursory way with an entire library, or more fully with a section of it, may be noticed. The Ashburnham hand-list, 1864, now (1897-98) supplemented by the sale catalogue; the Chatsworth Catalogue, which does not include the books at Devonshire House, and Lord Crawford's catalogue of his Ballads and Broadsides. There are special accounts of several of the College Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Hartshorne's Book Rarities, 1829, a disappointing yet suggestive volume. We ought to remind the reader that the catalogue of Trinity, Cambridge, embraces Capell's Shakesperiana, and that there are separate hand-lists of Malone's and Douce's books at the Bodleian, of the Dyce and Forster bequests at South Kensington, of the Society of Antiquaries' Broadsides, and of the Shakespearian treasures formerly at Hollingbury Copse. We have two editions of Blades's book on Caxton's press, Maitland's two Lambeth Catalogues, Botfield's Cathedral Libraries, and Edmond's Lists of the Aberdeen printers, 1886.

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

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

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

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