The neglect of our early literature continued, as we have said, down to the second half of the eighteenth century. Prior to that time, all the information at our command tends to show that collectors almost uniformly restricted themselves to the books current in or about their own time, as we find even Pepys asking Bagford to secure for him, not Caxtons or Elizabethan books, but items which we should now regard with comparative or absolute indifference. While some insignificant trifle, which had happened to go out of print, was sought with avidity, while editions of the classics and Continental writers, long since converted to waste paper, were objects of keen rivalry, the most precious examples of ancient English and Scotish typography and poetry were obtainable for pence.

A very interesting side to the subject before us is the share claimable in it by the fair sex. In our two Rolls of Book-Collectors we have included the names of several ladies, who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as in the earlier part of the present, established a title to rank among possessors of libraries in a larger or smaller measure. Two of the most prominent names are probably those of Miss Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Yorkshire, and Mrs. Rylands of Manchester, the latter not only the acquirer of the Althorp treasures, but of a most valuable body of books, ancient and modern, in augmentation of them. This feature in the annals of collecting is the more to be borne in mind, in that it has in recent days declined almost to disappearance, and may be said to be limited to a few gentlewomen, who pursue special studies, like the Hon. Alicia Amherst and Mrs. Earle, and bring together for use or reference the works illustrative of them.

A study of the writer's Rolls of Book-Collectors, which embrace over two thousand names, will satisfy any one that the hereditary or transmitted collections in this country are very few, if we limit ourselves to libraries of note, and do not compensate for the long catalogue of old libraries which have been dispersed even in our own time. Are there really more than the Miller and the Huth, unless we add the Spencer or Althorp, kept intact and amplified, yet in the hands of a stranger? Book-collecting by individuals is, then, mainly a personal affair, which begins and ends with a life. The continuance even of the two libraries above mentioned in private hands cannot be regarded as otherwise than precarious and terminable; the fourth succession of Miller has just expired in an unexpected manner, and the destiny of the Britwell treasures is problematical. Rumour has long since pointed to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh as the ultimate reversioner.

In a volume of moderate compass, professedly addressing itself in a special manner to English collectors, the consideration of foreign literature must of necessity be a secondary and incidental feature and element, although it may be quite true that our countrymen and countrywomen look so frequently aside, as it were, from the literary productions of their own soil to study those of other lands. In Great Britain we may be said to be much more cosmopolitan in our book-collecting tastes than many of our contemporaries on the Continent of Europe, Germany perhaps excepted. In France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and elsewhere, the demand is almost exclusively for native authors; but the Germans, Americans, and ourselves take a pride, and a just one, in being more catholic and broad: we see the advantage, no doubt, and no doubt we reap the fruit, of such a policy. At the same time, in a monograph of limited scope it is obviously impossible to embrace even a general view of the enormously wide range which is before any one who crosses over from his own country to add to his English possessions even a select collection of books in foreign languages; and we have confined our efforts in this direction to an indication of such typical or special works (principally French) as are usually sought by people in these islands, who resort more or less to the Continental market. Even prominent Anglo-French amateurs like Mr. R. S. Turner and Lord Ashburton are found keeping within certain classes of literature, and certain copies recommendable by their provenance, binding, or graphic peculiarities.

CHAPTER II

The spoliation of public libraries at home and abroad is an aspect of the question or subject neither very agreeable nor very flattering. In England and other parts of the Empire, within the last century, numerous examples have occurred where valuable or unique books have been stolen or mutilated. The national collection in Great Russell Street has perhaps suffered the least, and whatever may be said about the system on which it was formerly conducted and managed, sufficient care seems always to have been exercised to guard against depredators of various kinds. So far as is publicly known, petty thefts of articles more or less easily replaceable are all that we have to regret. It is notorious that the Bodleian has lost several important volumes, and no one will probably ever arrive at any definite information of the extent to which the libraries at Cambridge and the other minor collections at the sister Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Dublin have been pillaged and impoverished.

It has been the same all over the Continent. The Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and many of the leading provincial libraries of France, have been robbed wholesale in former times, and in some cases annihilated. One has only to read the observations and evidence of M. Achille Jubinal accompanying a (then) inedited letter of Montaigne (8vo, Paris, 1850), to form an idea of the ravages which have been made through neglect of officials and dishonesty of visitors; and what must the fact be in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere? The denunciations against robbers of books and libraries date, however, from the remotest period, and were at first highly necessary as a means of safeguarding the treasures of monasteries and churches. Isaac Taylor, in his History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times, 1875, p. 246, prints an anathema of this kind: "Whosoever removeth this volume from this same mentioned convent, may the anger of the Lord overtake him in this world, and in the next to all eternity. Amen." Let the energetic explorers who have transferred so many hundreds of such MSS. to the Vatican and the British Museum look to it; and what are His Holiness and the Trustees in Great Russell Street but palpable accessories after, if not before, the fact! A common peril hangs over them all.

A visit to a library such as the British Museum or the Bodleian, or even to those of some of the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, is apt to instil a feeling of reverential affection for the founders and benefactors of such institutions; the existing functionaries seem to withdraw into middle distance, and one enters into communion with the spirits of the departed.

From the private collector's point of view these great public libraries are mainly serviceable for purposes of reference and comparative study. These storehouses of bibliographical and literary wealth may be classified into—

(i) National or quasi-National Collections:—

• The British Museum
• Guildhall Library
• South Kensington Museum (Dyce and Forster and General Fine Art Collections)
• Society of Antiquaries
• Dr. William's Library, Gordon Square
• Chetham Library, Manchester
• Spencer-Rylands Library, Manchester
• Bodleian
• University Library, Cambridge
• University Library, Edinburgh
• Advocates' Library, Edinburgh
• Signet Library, Edinburgh
• Hunterian Library, Glasgow
• Trinity College, Dublin

The British Museum readily divides itself, of course very unequally, into the Printed Book and Manuscript Departments, and each of these has been periodically enriched by large donations or purchases en bloc, the former more especially by the gift of the Grenville books, and the latter by the Cottonian, Harleian, Lansdowne, Stowe, and Hardwicke MSS. The Bodleian would fall far short of what it is, had it not been for the bequests of Tanner, Selden, Burton, Crynes, Gough, Malone, and Douce, and so with the University Library at Cambridge, which owes so much to Bishop Moore's books, and Trinity, Dublin, to Archbishop Marsh's.

(ii) College Libraries:—

• Sion College
• Dulwich College
• Eton College
• Winchester College
• Stonyhurst College
• St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw
• Cambridge Colleges
• Oxford Colleges

Sion College preserves a few items of the rarest and most precious class—Shakespeare's Lucrece, 1594, Barnfield's Affectionate Shepherd, 1594, the Phœnix Nest, 1593, Drayton's Matilda, 1594, and others; but a few specified in the old catalogue have disappeared. Many of the most valuable volumes bequeathed by Edward Alleyn to Dulwich are now among Garrick's books in the British Museum, or among Malone's at Oxford, by conveyance; but a few yet remain. Eton College Library contains a small number of early printed books (including Caxton's Book of Good Manners) and the unique copy of Udall's Ralph Roister Doister. At Winchester they have a volume or two of very rare poetical tracts of Elizabeth's and James I.'s time. Stonyhurst is solely remarkable for MSS. and printed works of Robert Southwell and other Romish writers.

Of the subordinate libraries at Oxford and Cambridge the treasures are innumerable. Those which belong to the printed department are very fully registered in special catalogues and by Hazlitt, except, perhaps, the very recent legacy to Trinity College, Cambridge, of the library of the late Mr. Samuel Sandars, rich in early English typography, and the result of life-long researches.

Outside these fall the Royal Library at Windsor, which includes the unique perfect Æsop, and one of the two books on vellum (the Doctrinal of Sapience) printed by Caxton; the Archiepiscopal one at Lambeth, rich in rare early printed books and MSS., and the Chetham and Rylands foundations at Manchester, the latter comprehending the Althorp treasures en bloc. Humphrey Chetham also established the Church Libraries at Turton and Gorton, bibliographical notices of which have been printed by Mr. Gilbert French, 4to, 1856; and a few strays from the Chetham collection will be incidentally mentioned hereafter.

A reference to the writer's Collections, where such facts are not matters of familiar knowledge, will show that the majority of this section is more remarkable for the possession of a few rarities, or even unique items, than for a systematic representation of classes and periods. Yet some are very strong in specialities: Christ Church, Oxford, in music; Magdalen, Cambridge, in early English books (Pepys's); Corpus, Cambridge, in MSS. (Archbishop Parker's); the Bodleian, in Shakespeariana, early popular books, Elizabethan poetry, &c. (Malone's, Douce's, Selden's, Burton's), and so forth.

(iii) Cathedral Libraries:—

• St. Paul's, London
• Canterbury (Christ Church)
• York Minster and Chapter
• Peterborough
• Lichfield
• Lincoln
• Hereford

At Lincoln there was formerly the precious Honeywood bequest, improperly sold to Dibdin for 500 guineas; but the library still contains about 5000 volumes, to which the Dean and Chapter make additions from time to time; and there is a paid custodian, who is one of the minor canons. York Minster and Chapter are rich in early typography and Yorkshire books. The Cathedral library is under the charge of a canon as librarian and a vicar-choral as sub-librarian, who receive no salary. It is open to the public on three days in summer and on two days in winter in each week. There is no fund for the support or improvement of the library, except the interest of £400 and a few voluntary subscriptions. Hereford possesses a remarkable assemblage of chained volumes. To the present group most properly appertains the library at Westminster Abbey, founded by Lord-Keeper Williams, while he was Dean of Westminster.

(iv) Public Libraries on the Continent or in America:—

• Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
• French Institute (the gift of the late Duc d'Aumale), Chantilly
• Vatican Library, Rome
• Royal Library, Naples
• Medicean Library, Florence
• St. Mark's Library, Venice
• Royal Library, Turin
• Imperial Library, Vienna
• Imperial Library, St. Petersburg
• Royal Library, Berlin
• Library of Electors and Kings of Bavaria, Münich
• Library of the Dukes and Kings of Saxony, Wölfenbüttel
• Landerbibliothek, Cassel
• Public Library, Hamburg
• Public Library, Göttingen
• Public Library, Zürich
• Archiepiscopal Library, Eichstadt
• Archiepiscopal Library, Salzburg
• Archiepiscopal Library, Worms, &c.
• Plantin Museum, Antwerp
• University Library, Upsala
• Royal Library, Copenhagen
• Lenox and Carter Brown Libraries, New York

The two last named, as it may be at once concluded, are principally English and Anglo-American in their character. Our collectors do not, as we are aware, by any means restrict themselves to the literature of the mother country so exclusively as their Transatlantic contemporaries; and for them therefore it becomes of importance and interest to acquire through catalogues a familiarity with the contents of the leading assemblages of foreign and classical literature in Continental hands. But there are very few of the great public libraries abroad which have not casually or otherwise acquired English books, and those of the rarest description. At Göttingen they have, from an auction at Lüneburg in 1767, the C. Merry Tales of 1526; at Cassel, Marlowe's Edward II., 1594; and at Hamburg the Elizabethan edition of Blanchardine and Eglantine, 1597, all unique or most rare; and this is only by way of instance or sample. The Huth copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609, was obtained from Zürich.

The private amateur does well if he keeps before him the salient features connected with his pursuit from this point of view. It is to be deeply regretted that the Government of the Netherlands did not take steps to preserve intact the Enscheden collection at Haarlem, in the same manner that that of Belgium did the Plantin heirlooms.

The late Mr. Quaritch narrated an amusing and characteristic anecdote, commemorative of his participation in the Enscheden sale, where the agent of the British Museum waited till the morning to bid at the table for the Troy-Book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1502, and he bought it privately over-night of the auctioneer.

There is, it must be noted, a fundamental difference in the constitution of public libraries in Great Britain and America as compared with those on the Continent. The latter, if they do not restrict themselves, in principal measure, to the literature of their own country, or at least tongue, very seldom go far outside those limits otherwise than by accident or for works of reference. On the contrary, the English and American collections are cosmopolitan, like those who have formed them. At the British Museum a volume in Icelandic, Chinese, Hawaian, or any other character is welcomed nearly as much as one in the vernacular. In Germany, at all events at Berlin and Vienna, English books of importance are recognised. But at the Bibliothèque in Paris it is not so. The French collect only the classics and their own literature, just as they ignore in coins all but the Greek and Roman and national series.

Within their own lines, however, it is wonderful, looking at all the political convulsions which the country and capital have undergone, what vast treasures remain in France—treasures of all epochs and in every class, from the rise to the fall of the monarchy, from volumes written for the Carolingian, if not Merovingian kings, to volumes bound for Marie Antoinette.

Some interesting and instructive notices of our own public libraries, and of a few private collections of former times, may be found in the later volumes of the Retrospective Review.

The two Rolls of Collectors before mentioned are capable of making a not inconsiderable volume; but they are classifiable in groups and periods, and certain individuals may be taken as the central figures in the successive onward movements. Our immediate concern is with printed monuments, and consequently we do not hearken back beyond the men who witnessed the introduction of typography. Nor does there appear, while the purchasing power of money for literary possessions or the book-closet was high, to have been any esprit de corps or emulation tending to constitute schools or côteries, and to raise certain books or series to an artificial standard. Men at first acquired at random what happened to fall in their way; booksellers there were few or (except at London or in the Universities) next to none; and auctions were long unknown. Except for topography and the classics, there was, down to the middle of the eighteenth century, no active competition. The bulk of the Harleian Library was probably obtained without extravagant outlay, though not without labour and time; not those divisions which we should now prize would be the most expensive, unless we include the manuscripts for which Lord Oxford had even then to pay a price.

We have drawn the line where it appears that the principle of forming libraries, in the modern sense of the word, commenced in this country. Down to the Harleian epoch, when the Continental system began to influence us, the shelf of books which we observe in many old prints was the limit of nearly all collectors: not necessarily of their resources, but of their views and of the feeling of the time. Men acquired a handful or so of volumes, which came into their hands by gift or otherwise; from the absence or paucity of public institutions there were few individuals of any culture whatever without a few books besides the family Bible and Pilgrim's Progress; but such a colossal accumulation as was formed under the auspices of the second Lord Oxford, and still more that of Richard Heber, was as undreamt of as the vast and multifarious contents of the building in Great Russell Street as it now exists. A study of early correspondence and other sources of original information on the present point will be found to corroborate such a view of the average private collection in these islands anterior to the last century.

It was not till many years after the dispersion of that noble Harleian memorial of generous ardour among the public and private collections of England and the Continent (Dr. Johnson in his letter to Sir F. Barnard, 1768, says that many books passed direct into the Bibliothèque du Roi at Paris), that the Shakespeare revival led to an inquiry, on the one hand, into the literature connected with the Elizabethan period, and on the other to a partial discovery of how much of it had perished. That epoch may be regarded as the true Hegira from which we have to date the modern annals of collecting; the antecedent time was in a sense pre-historic, for the most precious remains of our national literature were unheeded and uncalendared; the means of forming a comprehensive estimate of the printed stores in actual existence were yet latent or unknown, and the almost undivided attention of students and purchasers was directed to the ancient classics and foreign typography. It must be conceded, we think, that whatever the importance of those branches of inquiry may be, the cause of British letters is more closely and permanently bound up with our own classics and the products of our own soil; and we repeat that the movement which first gave a stimulus to a sort of revolt from the Continental school and to the formation of a native one was the persuasion, on the part of a few scholars, that something more was to be done towards popularising the plays of Shakespeare and his more eminent contemporaries, and elucidating their writings by the help of those who lived amid the same scenes and habits of thought and under the same institutions.

Leigh Hunt used to speak to me of having attended the great Roxburghe sale in 1812 just for the sake of gaining an idea of what such an affair was. It was, no doubt, a fine collection which the noble owner and his predecessors (particularly John, Earl of Roxburghe in the time of Queen Anne) had acquired, mainly in the preceding century, at very moderate prices; and the result must have been highly satisfactory to the estate. But many things have happened since then; the Heber Library, the most extensive, most valuable, and most ill-fated in its realisation: the grandest and proudest bibliographical monument of the nineteenth or any other century, has been completed and scattered; and yet to-day, if the general reader were asked, he would probably be of the belief that the first rank was due to the earlier personage and collection. There is somehow a prestige about the Roxburghe sale which time seems incapable of weakening; yet in comparison with its successor it was a mere handful; and in fact the accumulations even of Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, vast and precious as they may have been, were not equal in magnitude or in value to those of Heber, of whom the most surprising and most interesting trait is his conversance with the interiors of so many of his treasures; nor should we ever forget his generosity in lending them to literary workers. The Rev. Alexander Dyce, who so ably edited our elder dramatists and poets, could never have accomplished his projects, if Heber had not come to his assistance with the rare, or even unique, original editions.

We have taken elsewhere an opportunity of recording the probable obligation under which we all lie to Heber for his offices in prevailing on the Government under the Regency to arrange the so-called gift to the country of the library of George III. What an inestimable boon and advantage it would have been, had he left us his own magnificent gatherings, with the liberty of exchanging duplicates! To how many a subsequent collection would such a step have been the deathblow or rather an insuperable bar! The Britwell and Huth libraries would have been robbed of half their gems, and the Daniel sale could not have proved the singular coup and sensation which it was, had the Heber element been absent.

The flyleaves of an enormous proportion of Heber's books are found enriched by his scholarly and often very interesting memoranda; they usually bear a stamp with BIBLIOTHECA HEBERIANA, but never an ex libris. That distinction the accomplished owner resigned to minor luminaries. The notes are always pertinent and occasionally numerous; and the pages of the sale catalogue, of which we have no fewer than thirteen parts, are lifted above mechanical common-place by the curious and varied matter interspersed from this source, as well as to a certain extent from the pen of John Payne Collier, who edited the early poetical and dramatic portions, and attended the auction to secure some of the rarest old plays for his friend the Duke of Devonshire.

Heber had, in the course of a not very prolonged life (he died at sixty), absorbed by degrees mainly all that fell within his reach, both at home and abroad; and he acquired much which never came to England, but was warehoused at Antwerp or elsewhere on the Continent, pending future arrangements, which he did not live to make. The library is said to have cost £150,000, and to have fetched about a third of that sum. As the owner had built it up from the ruins of others, so some more recent collectors found there their opportunity.

A good deal of interesting information about this once conspicuous figure in book-collecting circles may be found in Dibdin's Reminiscences. Heber seems to have inherited some shares in Elliott's brewery at Pimlico, and a residence within the precincts. How far this fortune contributed to enable him to devote so large an amount to the purchase of books and MSS., we hardly know; it was said that he derived advantage from the slave trade, but perhaps this was a calumny. At any rate, there was trouble which saddened his later years.

Mr. William Henry Miller of Craigentinny bought nearly the whole of the early English poetry, and made the Britwell Library what it was and is; and George Daniel of Canonbury carried off, at what might have then seemed exorbitant prices, the Shakespeare quartos, to have the enjoyment of them for thirty years, and then leave them as a valuable inheritance to his family; for his death just occurred, when Henry Huth had begun to compete more courageously for this class of books, and when the National Library was in a better position to offer tall figures for really vital acquisitions. It was in 1864, and the struggle for the quartos and a few other prizes was principally between the British Museum, Mr. Huth, and Sir William Tite.

At the present moment the Britwell collection is probably, on the whole, the finest private library in the kingdom; the founder of it was a solicitor in Edinburgh, whose name already meets the eye as a purchaser in 1819, when the Marquis of Blandford's books were sold at White-Knight's, and it passed by bequest to the Christy family, in whose hands it now remains.

Had it not been for Heber and for the bibliophobia which prevailed, when his possessions came to the hammer in 1834, it is doubtful whether Miller of Craigentinny could have achieved the extraordinary coup, which he did by transferring to his own shelves at one swoop the harvest of a lifetime—a lifetime almost dedicated to a single object.

CHAPTER III

During a long series of years it was my special good fortune to see nearly every week the late Mr. Henry Huth, and to learn from him many particulars of the sources from which he had derived some of his fine and rare books. We made Mr. Huth's acquaintance not long after the enrichment of his library by the sale of George Daniel's collection in 1864; and that, with his very important acquisitions when Mr. Corser died, and his early English poetry came into the market soon after, constituted the backbone or stamina of the new-comer. Mr. Huth did not collect on a large scale during a great length of time; he made his library, or had it made for him, chiefly between 1854, when he bought his first folio Shakespeare at Dunn-Gardner's auction, and 1870. Once or twice his health and spirits failed, and he was always more or less desultory and capricious. We saw him one afternoon, when he shyly mentioned that he had at last taken courage to order home the Mazarin Bible, which Mr. Quaritch had kept two years after giving £2625 for it at the Perkins sale, and then sold to Mr. Huth for £25 profit. He did not show the book to us, for he had not opened the parcel, and confessed that he was rather ashamed of himself. A very curious circumstance was that one of the Rothschilds, who had been nibbling at the copy, called at Quaritch's a day or so later, and was of course vexed to find that he had been anticipated. Huth necessarily bought in every case, like Addington and Locker, at the top of the market, for he waited till the books were shown or sent to him; he never searched for them. Condition governed his choice a good deal; he was fond of Spanish books, his mother having been a Spaniard, and of early German ones, being a German on his father's side. He took the classics and Americana rather hesitatingly, and there is no doubt that the old English literature interested him most powerfully, as it was most fully represented on his shelves. The folio volume of black-letter ballads, knocked down to his agent at the Daniel sale for £750, was regarded by him with special tenderness; but we think that its real history was unknown to him. He was not aware that it was only a selection by Daniel from a much larger number obtained by Thorpe the bookseller from a private source, suspected to have been a person in the employment of the Tollemaches of Helmingham Hall, near Ipswich. Thorpe parted with the bulk to Mr. Heber for £200, and the latter, in sending the vendor the money, declared how conscious he was of his extravagance, and asked whether he had been so fortunate as to secure "the inheritance of the Stationers' Company!"

A far more extensive collection, though of later date, came some years afterward into Mr. Huth's possession; it consisted of three hundred and thirty-four sheet ballads of the Stuart period, which had formed part of a larger lot bought at a house-sale in the West of England for fifty shillings. Some went to the British Museum, some elsewhere; Mr. Huth's share cost him £500!

The Huth catalogue is a disappointing production, owing to the circumstance that a good deal of useful information was suppressed, and the opportunity was not taken, where expense was the least object, to furnish an exhaustive account of the books. It is singular that the Grenville and Chatsworth catalogues were spoiled much in the same way, and that Lord Ashburnham's own privately printed account of his books is a thousandfold inferior to the auctioneer's one.

The Duke of Roxburghe, Mr. Heber, Mr. Grenville, Mr. Daniel, Lord Spencer, Mr. Miller and Mr. Huth were seven personages who exercised on the printed book-market in their time (to say nothing of MSS.) a very notable influence, particularly Heber. One might add the names of Mr. Jolley, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Corser, who severally between 1810 and 1870 made their competition sensible and raised the standard of prices for many classes of old English books. It was said in 1845, when the Bright Library was dispersed, that the advance in realised values led some collectors to relinquish the pursuit. The formation, not only of such a library as that of Heber or Harley, but that of Corser or Daniel or Bright, will be in the future a sheer impossibility from the absence of the means of acquiring in many branches so large a proportion of the rarer desiderata. To gather together a collection of books on an extensive scale may always remain feasible; but the probability seems to be that assemblages of literary property outside mere works of reference will show a tendency to distribute themselves over a more numerous body of owners, including the public repository, which year by year removes a certain body of rare books of all kinds beyond the reach of competition. The Bright episode was to a considerable extent a duel between Mr. Corser and the British Museum. But Mr. Miller and Lord Ashburnham, and (it may be added) Mr. Henry Cunliffe of the Albany, were also in the field; and two years prior, Maitland in his Account of the Early Printed Books at Lambeth, 1843, already takes occasion to animadvert on what he terms the puerile competition for rarities, which had then set in.

Miss Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Craven, Yorkshire, whose extensive and valuable library came to the hammer in 1864, was one of the most distinguished lady-collectors of the century. There is a privately printed catalogue of the books, of which two editions appeared in 1820 and 1833. Miss Currer was a competitor side by side with those already named for a certain proportion of the literary treasures which were in the market in her time. The late Lady Charlotte Schreiber confined herself to a few subjects, of which playing-cards were one; but both these personages have been eclipsed in our immediate day by Mrs. Rylands, who conceived, as a tribute to the memory of a deceased husband, the princely design of founding on the theatre of his commercial success a grand literary monument, of which the Spencer books should be the nucleus and central feature.

One of the greatest surprises of our time in a bookish way was not the sale of the library at Althorp, which had been rumoured as a contingency many years before it occurred, but its transfer by the purchaser to Manchester. We were all rather sorry to learn that the climax had at length been reached; the sacrifice was doubtless a painful one on more than one account; but it was presumably unavoidable, and the noble owner was encouraged by numerous precedents: the fashion for selling had quite set in then. I visited Althorp in 1868 for the purpose of examining some of its treasures. I remember the room, and the corner of it where the largest private collection of Caxtons in the world was kept, and the glass case which enshrined quite a number of Elizabethan rarities. His Lordship mounted a ladder to get me one or two of his Aldines printed on vellum. He showed me a delightful old volume of tracts, bound in a vellum wrapper, some absolutely unique, which his grandfather had bought, and a copy of the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, 1509, which came out of a poor cottage in Lincolnshire. That former Lord Spencer once did a gentlemanly act in handing Payne the bookseller a bonus of £50, on finding that a volume he had had from him was a Caxton. Alas! the spell is broken. Althorp was its library, and that has left it for ever! Sic transit gloria.

In the wake of the Spencer books have followed those of the late Earl of Ashburnham, whose representative had previously disposed of his father's coins and of some of the MSS. The remainder of the latter still await dispersion or a purchaser en bloc.

The Ashburnham printed books included a considerable number of Caxtons and Wynkyn de Wordes, the St. Albans Chronicle and Book of Hunting, &c., printed at the same place, and many distinguished rarities in the foreign series of ancient typography; but first and foremost the Perkins copy of the Gutenberg or Mazarin Bible on vellum, which realised £4000, being £600 in excess of the figure given by the buyer. There was also the Bible of 1462 on vellum, which fetched £1500.

But the prevalent characteristic of the collection was an ostensible indifference on the part of the nobleman who formed it to condition. There were several fine books and interesting examples of binding; but the absence of any definite plan and of judgment was conspicuous throughout. Circumstances aided the immediate proprietor in his project for converting the property into cash, and the prices reached were, in the cases of the early printed volumes by Caxton and others, simply unprecedented, looking at the sorry state of the copies offered. The catalogue (sooth to speak) was not very carefully or scientifically prepared, and when the important lots were put on the table, the company had, as a rule, some serious deduction to make from the account printed by the auctioneers. The noble vendor did not see anything unbecoming in attendance to note the prices of lots during the earlier stages, and did not disguise his gratification when a book brought a heavy profit. Yet twenty years ago it was almost accounted a disgrace for an ancient family even to part with its heirlooms. In those cases, when want of the money cannot and is not pleaded, the proceeding seems all the stranger and the more discreditable. The late Lord bought at the right time, and his son sold at the right time. The prices realised were not merely high, but outrageous. Yet, after all, prices are a figure of speech and a relative term. To a wealthy Manchester manufacturer a thousand pounds are nothing more than four figures on a piece of paper instead of one or two, and the sole difference between £1000 and £2000 is the substitution of one numeral for another.

It was known, in a few cases, what the noble owner had given for the articles. His Jason, printed by Caxton, cost £87 plus commission, and produced £2100. The Merlin of 1498 was bought for 30 guineas, and realised £760. A little French volume by Jean Maugin, Les Amours de Cupidon et de Psiche, 1546, was carried to £60, having been acquired for half-a-crown. Certain other antecedent quotations were left far behind, as in the Canterbury Tales of 1498, which at Dunn-Gardner's sale in 1854 brought £245, and now went up to £1000, and in the Antonius Andreas of 1486, which was thought worth £231, as probably the earliest volume issued in the City of London.

There was a notable drop in the biddings for the imperfect copies of Chaucer from Caxton's press, and a host of items went for next to nothing, which in an inferior sale would have realised far more. It is ever so; and of course there was half a century's interest on the outlay. Still what an intense pleasure beyond money it had afforded the nobleman who formed it! And let us think, again, to how long a succession of holders the same beautiful or rare book has been a friend and a companion, a source of delight and pride!

It was remarked in the room that the present Earl had enlarged his father's possessions only to the extent of one volume (No. 2748), for which he gave £4, and which yielded him £7. He had no right to complain so far.

Concurrently with the Ashburnham episode in 1897, there came upon us all, like a shell, the extraordinary report, which proved too true, not only that the representative of Johnson of Spalding had determined to part with the valuable library preserved in the house since at least the time of the Stuarts, if not of the Tudors, but that Mrs. Johnson had actually called in a local clergyman to select what books he deemed worthy of being sent up to London for sale, and had committed the residue to a local auctioneer. The catalogues were partly distributed before the books were added, and very few booksellers were even aware of the matter, till the sale was over. Not more than three or so, and a few private persons, were present; the volumes were made up in parcels and only one mentioned, and the bidding did not exceed two or three shillings a lot. Supposing 2000 items, comprised in 100 bundles at 3s. each; the grand total would be £15! Blades quotes the library as containing seven Caxtons, and the late Mr. Henry Bradshaw thought it worth while to pay a visit to Spalding to make notes, which he very kindly communicated to us. One of the purchasers at the sale offered me two of his minor acquisitions for £30. Although the library included a proportion of desirable articles, many of the books were esteemed so worthless that the acquirers removed the ex libris, and left the rest behind them!

Some of the Caxtons in the public library at Cambridge have belonged to the Johnson family, and are supposed to have been formerly presented to it by those of Spalding. They were acquired in the earlier half of the reign of Henry VIII. by Martin Johnson at the then current prices—from sixpence to a shilling or so; and a stray or two from the same collection, long prior to the dispersion of 1897, has occurred in the auction-rooms. I have to mention in particular the Spalding Chartulary, sold in 1871. But a few still remained on the old ground, and fortunately five were bound up together in one volume, which was not comprised in the wretched fiasco and anti-climax. This precious collection was offered to Mr. Jacobus Weale, while he was still curator at South Kensington, for £20, and declined, because, as an officer of a public institution, he could not accept it at that price, and was unable to pay the real value. Two, Curia Sapientiæ, by Lydgate, and Parvus et Magnus Cato, have since been acquired by the British Museum, with five excessively rare specimens of the press of Wynkyn de Worde. The National Library did not require the Reynard the Fox or the Game of the Chess.

The Spalding case was as unique as some of the books themselves. The owner seems to have been grossly ignorant of their value, as well as wholly indifferent to the property as heirlooms.

Except as a matter of record and history, the collector need not so greatly concern himself with all those libraries which have been scattered, and yet he finds it desirable to refer to the catalogues, if they were publicly sold, in order to trace books from one hand to another, till they return into the market and find a new owner—perhaps himself. One might fill a volume with a list of all the sales which the last forty years have witnessed; but, taking the principal names, let us enumerate:—