The writer's publication, Fugitive Tracts, 1493-1700, 2 vols., 1875, very aptly and powerfully illustrates the present bearings of our subject. Of the sixty pieces there reproduced, two-thirds appear to be unique, and only four are traceable in the Heber Catalogue. Yet many of the items are of historical or biographical importance, and were, in fact, selected from a much larger number with that view; which seems to be tantamount to a recognition of the truth, that, enormous as is the total surviving body of early English and Scotish Literature, it represents in some sections or classes only a salvage of what was once in type, or, to speak more by the card, of what we have so far been able to recover.

There are rare books which, paradoxical as it may seem, are not rare. Take, for example, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621; the first folio Shakespeare, 1623; Milton's Lycidas, Poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, in the editiones principes; the works of the minor poets, Suckling, Carew, Shirley, Davenant; Walton's Angler, 1653; Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 1678; the Kilmarnock Burns, 1786; and many first editions of Wordsworth, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson. Every season swells the roll of existing copies. On the contrary, Spenser's Faery Queen, Books i.-iii., 1590, and Milton's Comus, 1634, are authentically scarce, the former especially so in fine state; and the same may be predicated of Lovelace's Lucasta (the two parts complete). But the real meaning of the rarity of the other books above specified—and the list might be readily enlarged—is that, although the copies are numerous enough, the taste for capital productions has increased within a few years out of proportion to the recovery of new or unknown examples.

We are finding frequent occasion to cite works of foreign origin, which are more or less habitually taken up into our own collections by miscellaneous or general buyers; and there is among these one which forms a signal illustration of the fallacy of uniqueness. It is the Gutenberg or Mazarin Bible. Scarcely a library of the first rank occurs here or elsewhere without offering a copy; and we are persuaded that at least forty must exist, either on paper or on vellum, throughout the world. The book occupies the same bibliographical position as the first folio Shakespeare, the first edition of Walton's Angler, and the first Burns; it tends to grow commoner, yet, so far, not cheaper.

There are other books which, as it may be more readily understood, are rare without being valuable, and of which such of the commercial world as has it not in its power to expend large amounts on individual purchases, naturally seeks to make the most. It was almost amusing, some time since, to note the entries in some of the booksellers' lists under "Black Letter," "Gothic Letter," "Rare Law," "Curious Early English," and so forth; and the names of Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, and other ancient printers were freely introduced to help off a rather lame foreigner, who was alleged to have been professionally associated with one or the other of them. If the bookseller knows the book-buyer, it is highly requisite that the latter should study what he is going to buy.

Illustrations are not wanting of the loss of untold treasure through a medium more fatal than any other—through exhaustive popular demand. Entire and large impressions of books, pamphlets, and broadsides have succumbed, not to the sacrilegious hand of the spoiler, but to the too affectionate, and not too cleanly, fingering of the multitude of men and women who read and then cast the sources of entertainment away. If we remember that certain of the Bibles ordered to be kept in churches for general use chiefly survive in crumbling fragments, or at best woefully dilapidated copies, we cease to be surprised at the easy prey which more fugitive compositions have formed to a succession of careless and indifferent owners. The illiterate inscriptions on many books, which have thus become valuable, point to the hands through which they have passed, and tell a story of prolonged neglect, too often culminating in appropriation to domestic requirements.

It is, anyhow, perfectly undeniable that of the miscellaneous early literature of all countries, the proportion which exists is in very numerous instances no more than a simple voucher for the work having passed the press. A single copy has formerly occurred or occurs fortuitously, and no duplicate can be cited. This is the position of thousands of volumes, and of many it is the chief merit.

Infinitely numerous are the strange tales, sometimes drawing up the moisture into the mouth, sometimes sufficient to make one's hair rigid, of books of price hung up for use at country railway stations, or employed by a tobacconist to wrap up his pennyworths of snuff, or converted by a lady of quality into curl-papers. What has become of the Caxtons sent over to the Netherlands in the last century by a confiding English gentleman their owner, for the inspection of a nameless Mynheer his friend, who, when he was invited to restore them, lamented their disappearance in a fire?

There was beyond a question an epoch, and a prolonged one, when the mill shared with household demands an immense quota of the cast-off literature of these islands. One of our early collectors of Caxtons, Ratcliff, whose books were sold in 1776, acquired his taste (one in a thousand) through his vocation as a chandler or storekeeper in the Borough. We may surmise how his Caxtons came to him, and at what rates!

These episodes appertain to the romantic and speculative aspect of book-collecting; but they really have another side. Here, at a time when the first-fruits of the English press were unregarded, we find a man of Ratcliff's status acquiring thirty Caxtons. He lived just to see a rise in their value, yet a very slight and fluctuating one; for at last he went into the open market and purchased a few lots at West's auction in 1773, and the Caxtons thus obtained re-sold after Ratcliff's death in one or two cases at a lower rate. He had inflated the market; the competitors were not more than two or three. But the time was soon to come when such persons could no longer afford to hold this kind of property—when it became fashionable for dukes and earls and men of large property to make our early typography an object of research; and so it continued down to the present time, till the agricultural depression arrived to create another organic change, and to direct these, as well as other costly luxuries, into new channels. Not the chandler, or the Government official, or the private gentleman of modest means, but the great manufacturer or the merchant-prince entered on the scene, and wrested from the landowner his long-cherished possessions. The West and Ratcliff sales (1773-76) were the two golden opportunities, however, of which the advisers of George III. wisely availed themselves to purchase volumes at what we have been taught to consider nominal prices; and there they are in the British Museum to-day, a recollection of one of the better traits in the character of that prince. When we say that the market for Caxtons in 1776 was beginning to expand, we mean that the day for getting such things for a few pence or a shilling or two had gone by. Here, for example, are some of the quotations from the Ratcliff auction:—

L s. d.

Chronicles of Englande, fine copy, 1480 5 5 0 Doctrinal of Sapyence, 1489 8 8 0 The Boke called Cathon, 1483 5 5 0 Tullius de Senectute, in Englyshe, 1481 14 0 0 The Game and Playe of Chesse 16 0 0 The Boke of Jason 5 10 0 Legenda Aurea; or, the Golden Legend, 1483 9 15 0

These figures make even some of those in the West auction, 1773, appear by comparison rather extravagant. For his Majesty's agent at the latter gave as much as L14 for the romance of Paris and Vienne, from the Caxton press, 1485. True, it seems to be unique, and might to-day require its purchaser, if it were for sale, to have L500 in his pocket or at his bank to secure it. Yet strange events still continue to happen from time to time. Not Caxtons nor Shakespeares, but excellent books which command prices in the open market, are yet occasionally given away.

A case occurred in Lincolnshire about a year ago, when a library of some 2500 volumes was sold by an intelligent provincial auctioneer al fresco in the dogdays, and put up in bundles, nearly all of which were knocked down at the first bid—threepence. Say, 150 lots at 3d. per lot = L1 17s. 6d. for the whole. There must have been an entente cordiale among those in attendance, the gentleman in the rostrum inclusive.

These instances of misdirection, which have been in times past more numerous than now, although two of the most recent and most signal have occurred in the same county (Lincolnshire), inevitably tend to the destruction of copies, and so far illustrate our remarks on the causes of the gradual disappearance of books during former periods.

There are, however, circumstances under which prices are depressed by collusion, as where a first folio Shakespeare was knocked done for L20 in an auction-room not five hundred miles from Fleet Street; or by an accident, as when the original Somers Tracts, in thirty folio volumes, comprising unique Americana, fetched bona fide under the hammer only L61. A single item was re-sold for sixty guineas, and would now bring thrice that amount. What a game of chance this book traffic is!

Imperfect Books, as distinguished from Fragments, constitute a rather complex and troublesome portion and aspect of collecting. They are susceptible of classification into books—(1) Of which no perfect copy is known; (2) Of which none is known outside one or two great libraries; (3) Of which even imperfect examples, as of a specimen of early typography or of engraving, are valuable and interesting; (4) Of which copies are more or less easily procurable. It is only the last division at which an amateur of any pretensions and resources draws the line. With the other contingencies our keenest and richest book-hunters and our most important public collections have been and are obliged to be satisfied. When it is a question of a unique, or almost unique, Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, or Pynson, or quite as much of a volume from the London, St. Albans, Tavistock, York, or Edinburgh presses, what is to be done? The object, no doubt, laisse a desirer; but where is another? This sentiment and spirit operated twice, as we have elsewhere noted, within three months in 1896 in the case of two incomplete copies of the first edition by Caxton of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. But for the defective copy of a common book some find an apology and a home: they cannot afford a better, or they require it for a special purpose. The upshot is, that for every old volume there is a customer, who is pleased with his acquisition according to his light; and we have met with such as seemed disposed to view the missing of damaged leaves as negative evidence of antiquity and genuineness.

The bystander who has had the benefit of as long an innings as the present writer, witnesses perpetual changes and vicissitudes of sentiment; and from one point of view, at all events, the minute details, into which the too generally despised bibliographer enters, are valuable, because they present to us, in lists of editions of authors and books published from age to age, the astonishing evidence of mutable popularity or acceptability. There is a feature, which is almost amusing, in the ideas and estimates expressed of many works by our earlier antiquaries, when we look to-day at their position and rank. If we turn over the pages of Hearne's Diary, for instance, we constantly meet with accounts of literary curiosities and rarities, which we regard with different eyes by virtue of our enlarged information, while thousands of really valuable items—valuable on some score or other—go there unnoted, although copies of them must have passed through the sales, even more frequently than at present. The close of the nineteenth century has brought these matters to a truer level. We are better able to gauge the survival of books and editions.

Even in the sometimes tedious enumeration of editions of early books bibliography confers a sort of benefit, for it demonstrates the longevity in public estimation and demand of a host of books now neglected, yet objects of interest and utility to many successive ages.

We have seen so many cranks and fancies successively take possession of the public. Early typography; early poetry and romances; books of hours; books of emblems; Roman Catholic literature; liturgies; Bewick; Bartolozzi; the first edition (which was sometimes equally the last); books on vellum, on India-paper, or on yellow or some other bizarre colour or material, debarring perusal of the publication; copies with remarkable blunders or with some of the text inadvertently omitted—all these and a legion of others have had their day; and to some of them it happens that they drop out of view for a season, and then reappear for a second or third brief term of life and favour; and therefore, it being so, who can have the heart to blame the parties that in the exercise of their vocation make hay while the sun shines? There is one personage, and one alone, who makes it whether or no, summer and winter, to wit, the auctioneer; his commission is assured; on what or from whom he gets it he cares not. He cheerfully leaves the adjustment of accounts to gentlemen outside.

The circumstances under which a new departure takes place, often without much previous warning, in the book-market, and disturbs the calculations of holders of certain classes of stock, are infinitely varied. The bibliographical barometer is surprisingly sensitive, and the slightest change of fashion in the older literature, and even in those sections of the more recent which embrace acknowledged rarities, is instantaneously felt. In some branches of collecting, and where the prices of commodities are such as to exclude all but a knot of wealthy amateurs, the entrance of a new-comer on the ground makes a vital difference, especially if the market is in need of support from existing wants having been supplied; and if one goes about a little, one hears men whispering in corners and questioning who the stranger is, and for what he is likely to prove good. Should he be a strong man, that is, in purse, you will soon perceive, if you keep your eye on the auction-room, another strong man buying at all costs against all comers just the articles which commend themselves to the first dramatis persona. He buys nearly everything; they are for him alone, unless there are two in the field concurrently, and then one may be conveniently played off against the other. A small field it is!

And this interesting commercial strategy is always going on, while the objects of pursuit continually vary. The dealer looks after, not his own desiderata—for he has none—but those of his immediate clients. In a large business a man is likely to have many; but the class which repays study, which turns sovereigns into bank-notes for him, is not a numerous one. Half-a-dozen first-rate customers keep a shop open even in the most fashionable and expensive thoroughfare. The late Joseph Lilly leant during his last years mainly on one. A collector of the stamp of Mr. Hartley was almost sufficient to support such an establishment as Newman's in Holborn or Toovey's in Piccadilly. You might pass the latter, or both, day after day and week after week, and not see a soul enter or leave the premises; all was done by correspondence and flukes and a few real good buyers in the background. Mr. Quaritch in London or M. Fontaine in Paris will clear more in an afternoon by the change of hands of two or three heavy items than a small dealer, even if he is unusually lucky, will do in a twelvemonth out of thousands of petty and troublesome transactions. It is not particularly unusual for a big firm to sell at one sitting four or five thousand pounds worth of property. There are others which have not sold as much during the entire term of their career, and never will.

The works which enjoy their turn of public favour are generally recognisable in the catalogues by the type in which they are set forth; and any one who has stood by and witnessed all the changes of the last thirty or forty years observes periodical phenomena in the transfer of typographical honours from one school of authors, or one group of subjects, to another. The most recent auctioneers' catalogues reflect the sentiment of the day in lavishing capitals on trifles from the pens of more or less ephemeral modern writers, and registering with corresponding brevity much of the old English literature, which a few years since was in the ascendant. A rare volume of Elizabethan verse or prose halts after an insignificant brochure by Lamb, Dickens, or Thackeray, which the respective authors would have judged scarcely worth preserving, to which their indifference, in point of fact, constitutes the cause of scarcity and consequent appreciation.

So it was once upon a time, to be sure, with the Caxton, the quarto Shakespeare, the ballad, the penny black-letter garland, and many another article which we now hold so precious. The man who could secure Caxtons and Shakespeares for pence, was he happier? Why, no; for he simply followed the market and nobody was envious. He lifted his acquisition off the counter or stall for the best of all reasons—because he fancied it—nay, because he intended to read it when he reached home.

A plea from the absolute collector's point of view—I fear, a weak and false one—is occasionally advanced for books which were formerly in fashion and favour; for example, Sylvester's Du Bartas, the Platonic romances, Townley's French Hudibras, and a hundred—a thousand—ten thousand more. It is thought to be worth while to have a few of these deposed idols to show to your friends when they visit you, that they may join in a homily on changes of taste. Perhaps it would suffice to compare notes through the medium of some Censura Literaria, or Beloe, or Collier. With most people space is a consideration, with a few, money; and an incidental and passing reflection need not be so costly in either way. For that reason such works as I have indicated, and a few others similar to them, are apt to prove serviceable and economical.

The periodical reinforcement of the ranks of the book-collecting world, in the higher latitudes at least, is obviously imperative, as individuals do not usually commence investments of such a kind till they are well on in life and have put by a fortune, or at all events retired from business. Some purely accidental matter directs attention to a line of bibliography which appears attractive and important; the money is there, and the expert will undertake the rest. It is not the interest of those engaged in the business to be critical; they are merely executive agents. But the demand for the costlier rarities and curiosities is so narrow, that the fresh aspirant is soon the central object of attention to the few who can provide him with what he imagines he wants. As a rule, where a man has no personal knowledge, and finds that he is gradually becoming a milch-cow for the trade, the hobby is not of long duration; it is only where the buyer can control and check the vendor that satisfactory relations are likely to continue, perhaps for years, perhaps for a lifetime. There is ever a tendency, on the part of the bookish commissariat, to strike the iron too hard.

It does happen here and there that collectors are enabled to make their own prices for their acquisitions either by extraordinary reputation for judgment and by virtue of a well-known name, or by the fact of being carried by our common lot beyond earshot of their good fortune, or, once more, by the force of peculiar circumstances. As an almost inexorable rule, the stocks of dealers are coldly regarded, and even those of William Pickering and Joseph Lilly were allowed to drop, so that, in the latter instance more particularly, some real bargains were obtained. Yet, on the contrary, the books thrown on the market after the retirement of F. S. Ellis and the death of James Toovey went capitally, partly because they were supported by Mr. Quaritch (rather glad perhaps to get rid of his two confreres). Then, more recently, the collection formed by Mr. Warton brought quite unexpected figures, and we feel justified in adding, figures sometimes scarcely warranted by the property. These instances, and this other aspect of the subject, strengthen our contention that the whole affair from beginning to end is a sort of lottery, a type of gambling. If those who enter into the fray do so with their eyes open, and do not object, who should?

But assuredly the most egregious case in modern times of the absolute despotism of name and ownership over all other considerations was that of the portion of William Morris's library submitted to public sale in December 1898. The books themselves were, as a rule, below mediocrity in state, and could not have well possessed for the new acquirers even that special interest and value which Morris recognised in them as aids to his artistic and literary labours. Yet the prices realised were beyond anything on record, and were simply absurd. There seemed to be a violent struggle on the part of three or four competitors to secure these treasures at any cost, and they did so. Let the very same copies recur, and in the hands of a person of inferior celebrity, and the shrinkage will probably be serious. The direct association was dissolved when the lots were adjudged to the highest bidders, and here the highest bidders were high indeed.

To the speculative investor in literary property what can we have to say? He works with his eyes opened to their widest possibility of expansion, and carries his fortune or success in his hands. No doubt there are occasional flukes for him; but, generally speaking, the greatest have been for collections formed and dispersed without any view to profit, where the state of the market has accidentally favoured the owner, or there was some nimbus round the name.

Before you set about forming a library, you should consider in what sort of atmosphere, of your own or your friends' creation, it is likely to be sold hereafter. You ought almost to be able to calculate how celebrated you will die.



CHAPTER VIII

Early English literature—Absorption of the rarer items by public libraries or by America—Future of collecting—Poetical writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Fruits of a long neglect—Want of discrimination among private buyers—Necessity for a better training or sounder advice—Remarks on our early literature—Small proportion of high-class authors—Safe and unsafe investments—Condition of copies—Writers whose works are of mysterious rarity—Nicholas Breton—"Three-halfpenny ware"—Paucity of great names in the post-Restoration period down to our own—Foreign works belonging to the English series: their chief places of origin—English presses—Typographical vicissitudes of London—The Scotish Series—Scotish presses—The Irish Series—Irish presses—The Irish Stock—The List of Claims, 1701—Anglo-American literature and early American editions of English Classics—The American Colonial group of books—The Bay Psalm-Book, 1640—The volumes of Statutes printed at Boston, Philadelphia, and New York—Sources of information on Anglo-American bibliography—Caution against impatience and enthusiasm.

THE entire range of the earlier English and Scotish romantic, poetical, and even historical literature embraces so many items, which are either unattainable from their rarity or their cost, if they happen once in a lifetime to occur, that it may be said to be ground almost closed against the ordinary private buyer. Articles which are to be seen by the hundred in the priced catalogues of libraries dispersed twenty or thirty years since with fairly moderate figures attached to them, have, owing to severer competition from America as well as at home, either for public or private purchasers, trebled or quadrupled in value. With the more modern literature, of which the positive scarcity does not warrant this great inflation, we may reasonably look for a fall; but in the case of volumes which are really rare, it is hard to see how the chances of collectors can be improved in the future. The upshot will be, that they must be satisfied with smaller fish or modify their lines; for of old and elderly books of intrinsic value and interest there is a plentiful choice. With regard to a considerable body of Early English volumes, which formerly appeared in the catalogues of Thorpe, Rodd, the elder Pickering, and others, it is to be said that the fewness of survivors was not appreciated, and half-a-dozen public or closed libraries have absorbed them all.

It exemplifies the remarkable revolution in feeling and taste when we turn over the pages of one of William Pickering's catalogues—that for 1827—and observe a perfect set of the four folio Shakespeares, 1623-85, marked L105, while a large-paper series of Hearne's books, or of some standard edition of the classics in morocco, cost more; whereas at present the Hearnes and the classics are barely saleable at any price, and the dramatic volumes might be worth twenty times more than they brought seventy years since.

The poetical writers of the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Stuart eras have had, in a commercial sense, two or three reverses of fortune. From the period of publication down to the last quarter of the eighteenth century they were to be bought at prices little beyond waste paper, so soon as the original interest in them had subsided. The editors of Shakespeare—Pope, Hanmer, Theobald, Warburton, Capell, Steevens, Malone, Farmer, and Reed—awakened a sort of new interest in the subject, just in time to save the slender salvage of a century and a half's neglect or indifference from the mill and the kitchen-fire; and their example led to others coming upon the ground, such as West, Major Pearson, the Duke of Roxburghe, Lord Blandford, Lord Spencer, Bindley, and Heber, whose motives were primarily acquisitive. In or about 1833 a strong reaction set in, and prices fell till 1842-45, when the Bright and Chalmers sales, and the more sensible competition of the British Museum, again restored confidence and strength to the market. Since that time, our old poets have not, on the whole, suffered any marked decline, and the most recent revival is in their favour.

The Americans, it seems, call for first editions, and they have not to call twice, though they may be required to pay smartly. This new ticket owes its origin to the usual agency. One or two Transatlantic book-lovers gain the information from some source that this is the real article, that if you want fine poetry you must go to these fellows—not exactly Shakespeare and Spenser, for they had heard of them before—but to Gascoigne, Sydney, Herrick, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, and the rest of the company; and above all, if you desire to enjoy their beauties and appreciate their genius fully and absolutely, you are referred to the editio princeps—not that which the author corrected and preferred, but the one in morocco extra, which your bookseller recommends to you.

It is by no means that we seek to ridicule or discourage the pursuit, but we want and wish to see a more healthy and discriminating spirit among buyers. Let intending collectors devote a reasonable time to a preparatory study of the subject and survey of the field and then they will perhaps accomplish better results at a lower cost. Let them, once more, not be in too violent a hurry. The abundance of transmitted writings in a metrical shape only proves more conclusively the familiar fact that it is as easy to compose verses as it is difficult to compose poetry. The long succession of authors who fall within the category of poets has received an extent of editorial care and illustration in the course of the century, however, which argues the prevalence of a more favourable opinion of their merits. The names which are at present commanding chief notice are those which have always been esteemed: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Beaumont, Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, Wither, Sir John Davis, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; and among the Scotish bards Drummond takes the lead. The most singular feature about the matter is that, in the presence of all kinds of critical editions, the demand is not for them, but for the originals. The mission of the modern recensor comes to an end when, by a stupendous amount of research and erudition, he has emphasised the characteristics and gifts of a writer. Then the amateur steps forward, and expresses his readiness to give any price for the good old book, undisfigured by notes and emendations!

It is perhaps fruitless to attempt to turn the tide of common sentiment, and gentlemen must be permitted to choose their own money's worth. They may think and say that they want the volume as it left the author's hands, not diluted and overlaid by commentators. Granted, it is a product of the time, even though the author did not see the proofs, and the printer could not always decipher the MS. But then comes the larger and more general question: How much of the better class of early verse-writers are worth reading? The present deponent, without being conscious that he is very hyper-critical, states the deliberate result of actual examination and perusal when he affirms that of the minor poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, save perhaps Randolph, the productions of enduring value and interest could be brought within the compass of a moderate volume.

It would be eminently unwise for any one who treats his library as an investment to yield to the existing tendency to exorbitant prices for the later poets and playwrights, as the rise is due to ephemeral causes, and the demand, for the most part, is not likely to exhaust the supply.

If the truth may be told, the literature of past ages in all countries, and nowhere more so than in England, is, in proportion to its immense extent, excessively barren of high-class writers or written matter. Each generation of collectors discovers this fact at last; but it discovers it for itself. We disdain to profit by the experience of our precursors, just as the little girl insisted on learning at her own cost how foolish it was to do a certain thing. Because there are a few highly interesting catholic publications, your amateur must be absolutely complete in the series. If it seems expedient to possess an example or two of ancient typography, he ends by doing his best to accumulate every example in the market. There is more than a probability that the service-books of the Romish Church have their archaeological and literary value: ergo, he orders every one which he sees advertised, albeit the differences are substantially far from momentous. He understands that some very curious volumes illustrative of ritualism and the various holy orders were printed here or abroad, and he proceeds to drain the booksellers' shelves throughout the universe of every bit of sorry stuff answering to this description. There are a dozen or so of Collections of Emblems, English or foreign, which are supposed to throw light on passages in Shakespeare and other authors; this is sufficient leverage for the concentration under the unfortunate gentleman's roof of a closely packed cartload.

Seriously and bibliographically speaking, there is a fairly wide difference and disparity among the old editions of the poets and romancists; and there are, and always will be, a distinguished minority, of which the selling prices may be expected to remain firm. Such men as Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chapman, Massinger, and among the lyric group Barnfield, Watson, Constable, Wither (earlier works and Hallelujah), Carew, Herrick, Suckling, and Lovelace, are to be viewed as standard and stable.

Then in the Scotish series there is permanence in Lyndsay, Drummond, and Burns. But, on the contrary, the minor, more obscure, or commoner productions must be carefully distinguished and circumspectly handled by those who do not desire or cannot afford to throw away their money. The names above cited are themselves very unequal; some, like Breton, Churchyard, Whetstone, Barnfield, Watson, and Constable, are sought, and will ever be sought, by reason of their peculiar rarity; and, save in a sentimental way, no one would probably dream of placing Beaumont, Chapman, Wither, and some of the rest on a par with Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger. There has been, however, a tendency to force on the notice of book-buyers, faute de mieux, many writers whose productions are neither rare nor of the first class—Heywood, Dekker, Webster, Ford, and Shirley—and to bracket them commercially with authentic desiderata either on the score of merit or of scarcity. Of the three former, the most difficult pieces to procure are the Civic Pageants. Nearly all Ford's and Shirley's works, except the Echo of the latter, 1618, are classable among common books even in the first editions.

Again, condition is a postulate which begins to assert itself in the book-market. Poor and bad copies are eschewed by many or most of those who are willing to pay handsomely for fine specimens; and the worst type of indifferent exemplars is the sophisticated volume, which can be manipulated by experts to such an extent that even a person of considerable experience will now and then be at fault. The American collector grows more fastidious every day, and discovers blemishes which we on this side of the water try to tolerate, if the article is rare or we badly want it. Our Transatlantic friends, however, are more inexorable, and go so far as to return purchases not answering the description in the auctioneer's catalogue to their English commission-agents.

We have instanced above two or three writers whose works command excessive prices mainly by virtue of the paucity of surviving copies, seconded by a faint and indirect literary interest; but we see that the list is open to extension. During the last half-century and upward the publications of Nicholas Breton have fetched sums, when they have occurred, totally incompatible with any intrinsic value; with some few exceptions they belong to the category of "three-halfpenny ware," as Chamberlain the letter-writer styles such things in his correspondence with Sir Dudley Carleton; half-a-dozen or so out of forty and more are undoubtedly curious and illustrative; but Mr. Corser and one or two other collectors made a speciality of the author. It is only the other day that Sir John Fenn's copy of Breton's Works of a Young Wit, 1577, recorded by Herbert in his Typographical Antiquities, and the only perfect one known, occurred at an auction and fetched L81! A fine book it was, too, with the blank leaf at end. Doubtless, the reason for the evanescence of Breton's literary labours is to be sought in their estimation by many, besides the letter-writer above quoted, as barely more than waste paper. Verily, their substantial worth is barely tangible.

Speaking from a connoisseur's rather than from a reader's point of view, when we leave behind us the pre-Restoration writers of Great Britain and Ireland, we do not encounter much difficulty in a commercial sense, if we consider the length of time and the almost innumerable names, excepting Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Swift's Gulliver, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, and a few early Byrons and Shelleys, unless the buyer schedules among his desiderata the earlier Anglo-American literature. For as we draw nearer to our own day, items which were thought to be superlatively uncommon, including sundry pieces by Tennyson and Browning, have failed to maintain their reputation for scarcity, as any one might have foreseen that they would do. The preposterous prices paid for some copies have brought out others, and the ultimate supply will probably exceed the demand.

Even where an English collection may not enter the Continental lines, but preserves its national character, there are numerous classes of books of foreign origin and from foreign presses, which are fairly entitled to consideration and admittance. These publications embrace not merely religious and controversial literature, but a large and important body of material for English and Scotish biography and history, and for the elucidation of Irish affairs. Every season brings to light some new features in this immense series, which is, of course, susceptible of a classifying process, and may be ranged under such sections as we have above indicated, besides a considerable residue which falls under the head of poetry and typography, the latter constituting a branch of the History of English Printing, and the former being worthy of notice as embracing some of the rarest metrical productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which owed their issue from presses in Germany and the Low Countries to various agencies, but chiefly to the exigencies of foreign military service by English and Scotish officers during the English operations in the Netherlands under Elizabeth and during the Thirty Years' War.

The foreign sources of English books, or books written by or about English, Scotish, and Irish folk, have been—

Aire Amsterdam Antwerp Arras Augsburg Basle Bologna Boulogne Breda Bruges Brussels Constantinople Dort Florence Flushing Geneva Ghent Gouda Haarlem Leipsic Leyden Lyons Malines Middelburg Milan Munich Munster Paris Parma Pisa Rome Rotterdam Strasburg-in-Elsass The Hague Tournai Utrecht Venice Vevey Wesel Zuerich

It is always to be borne in mind that these adjuncts at the foot of title-pages in troubled periods are not unfrequently fictitious; and we have elsewhere equally shown that Greenwich and Waterford are names appended to early controversial works of which the writers desired to conceal the real parentage.

Of English presses it might seem almost superfluous to speak; but in fact the typographical fortunes of London have experienced their flux and reflux. At first we find the City itself in sole possession of the industry and privilege; then Westminster came; thirdly, Southwark. Of the provincial places of origin, Oxford appears to have been the foremost, and was followed at intervals by York, Cambridge, Canterbury, Ipswich, Worcester, and other centres, of which some preserved their reputation down to comparatively recent times, while Oxford and Cambridge of course remain important and busy seats of printing. Beverley, Nottingham, Derby, Northampton, Bristol, Birmingham, Gateshead, and Newcastle-on-Tyne have never been more than occasional sources of literary production, and certain towns, such as Lincoln and Gainsborough, are only known from local or small popular efforts; there is an edition of Robin Hood's Garland with the Gainsborough imprint. One or two publications purporting to have been executed at Sherborne in Dorsetshire belong to the firm of William Bowyer of London.

There was a distinct centralising tendency at a later period, by which the English metropolis absorbed the principal share of work, and it was followed, owing to economical causes, by a reaction which we know to be at present in full force, and which has restored to the provinces, but to new localities, Bungay, Guildford, Bristol, no less than Edinburgh and Aberdeen, an appreciable proportion of the custom of the London publishing houses; nor is it unusual to send MSS. abroad for the sake of the advantage accruing from cheaper labour. We not long since secured this boon in Scotland; but Scotland has grown as dear as London.

The SCOTISH SERIES is a difficult and costly one to handle. The early vernacular literature of that country has suffered from two classes of destructive agency, neglect and fanaticism, to a greater extent than England, and the disappearance of the more popular books and tracts has been wholesale. The attempt on the part of a collector, however rich and persevering he might be, to form a complete series of original editions of the poetical and romantic writers of North Britain, could only be made in ignorance of the utter impossibility of success. The late David Laing abundantly illustrated this fact in his numerous publications, and further evidence of it may be found throughout the bibliographical works of the present writer.

The old Scotish presses were Edinburgh, Leith, St. Andrew's, Glasgow, Stirling, and Aberdeen; but a large proportion of the literary productions of Scotish authors, including much of the historical group relative to Mary Queen of Scots, proceeded from foreign places of origin, where the writers had settled or were temporarily resident.

The principal channels through which we have in modern times augmented our information of their products are the catalogues of Fraser of Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, the Duke of Roxburghe, Pitcairn, Constable, Chalmers, Maidment, Gibson-Craig, David Laing, and the Rev. William Makellar, the last a cousin of Sir William Stirling Maxwell of Keir, and a collector from 1838 to 1898.

A purely IRISH LIBRARY would inherently differ both from one limited to English or to Scotish books. There is no early typography or poetry, no works printed on vellum, no masterpieces of binding. The collectors in that part of the empire have always been few in number, and in fact Irish books have been chiefly collected by persons who were not Irishmen, nor even residents in that country. It used to be the case that, where a book was remarkably successful in England, the Dublin booksellers reprinted it, and, as these reproductions are generally scarcer than the originals, doubtless in limited numbers.

The series consists of a handful of books and tracts of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1570-1625); of publications relative to the Civil War (1644-48); of others relative to the Commonwealth and Jacobite troubles (1650-90); of literary illustrations of the state of Ireland under the Houses of Orange, Stuart, and Brunswick or Hanover, and of modern days. The bibliographical writings of Sir James Ware are usually quoted and consulted for the literature within his time, but they have become almost obsolete. The two other works of reference for amateurs and students are those by Charles Vallancey (Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, 1786-1807, 7 vols.) and Charles O'Conor (Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, 1814-26, 4 vols.).

But we have to go to more recent authorities to discover that the typographical productions of Ireland in the first decade of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comprise a few books of the greatest rarity and one or two of which no copies are at present known. On the other hand, certain Elizabethan volumes, purporting to have proceeded from Irish presses, are generally believed to have an English origin, while others with German imprints of a later date (second half of the seventeenth century) are absolutely proved to have been clandestinely executed at home.

A very fair and comprehensive idea of the salient features in the present series may be gained from the Grenville and Huth catalogues and from Hazlitt's Collections (General Index). Considerable stress is laid by collectors on a large-paper copy with the Decisions filled in in MS., the Memorandum, &c., of the List of Claims, 1701, in connection with the Irish forfeitures. But in fact a copy of this work is always available, when any one wants it, which is seldom enough.

There was no regular printing here till the beginning of the seventeenth century, although one or two Marian tracts falsely purport to have come from the Waterford press. Dublin had a printer, John Frankton, who worked from 1601 to 1620 or thereabout, and produced many books, tracts, and broadsheets, some not yet recovered; the city also boasted a Society of Stationers in 1608, and many volumes appeared at London "Printed for the Partners of the Irish Stock," referring to the Plantation of Ulster. The places in Ireland itself, where the art of typography was pursued, were Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Belfast (as in the section just dismissed). But the rarest articles in the earlier series emanated from London or from Continental presses, the writings of Nicholas French and Cranford's Tears of Ireland, 1642, taking a prominent rank in the latter category.

The leading collectors on Irish lines have been Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Grenville, Mr. Huth, Mr. Bradshaw, Canon Tierney, Mr. Shirley, and Bishop Daly.

In the English series I have supposed the admission of a certain number or proportion of foreign books, which are of catholic interest, and have acquired a standing among many classes of collectors whose bias is principally national. But there are two other series of very unequal extent, importance, and costliness, which more directly appeal to the buyers of these islands, namely, the earlier Anglo-American literature belonging to the Colonial period, and the American reproductions of the favourite books of Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Thackeray, and others in the present century. The latter category enters into the department of curiosities, and has yet to acquire bibliographical importance. In one or two cases, works issued at home in numbers have been published in the States in book-form prior to their appearance here. This happened with the Yellow-Plush Correspondence, reprinted direct from Fraser's Magazine at Philadelphia in 1838, and curious as the writer's earliest separate publication. These papers were not collected in England till 1841.

The products of the Colonial period include all the books emanating from American presses between 1640, the date of the Bay Psalm-Book at Cambridge, N.E., from the press of Stephen Day, and the Declaration of Independence. There has been a disposition to treat the whole of this output of printed matter with a special tenderness and reverence on political grounds; but it obviously is of a very mixed and unequal character, and, as time goes on, there must be a continuous winnowing process, and a consignment to oblivion of a vast assortment of the dullest theology and of political ephemerides. There will always remain a rich heirloom to our American kinsfolk and ourselves of historical nuggets in the shape of narratives of the fortunes and careers of the Pilgrim Fathers, their experiments in statecraft, their religious trials, their early superstitions and strange intolerance of personal liberty in a land chosen by its settlers for liberty's sake; and of course there is a section of literary products appertaining to the New World, namely, ritualistic ordinances, liturgical manuals, and collections of statutes, which derive what one is bound to term an artificial interest from the local circumstances, or, in other words, from the place of origin. A theological treatise, a Bible, a volume of prayers, or a law-book, published in England in the second half of the seventeenth century, may be worth from sixpence to a sovereign; if it bears the imprint of Boston, Cambridge (N.E.), New York, Philadelphia, or New London, its value may be computed in bank-notes. The Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, was lately sold for L109, and the Papers Relating to Massachusetts Bay, 1769, for L8, the latter in boards. The reason (so far as there is any) for this inflation is twofold: the patriotic sentiment which leads American amateurs to desire the oldest and most precious typographical and historical monuments of their country, and, secondly, the perhaps less justifiable enthusiasm of some Englishmen for books which, as they may plead, are the offspring of the States while they were still English settlements. A copious and fairly contemporary view of the extensive family of works belonging to the earlier Anglo-American library may be found in the bibliographies of Stevens, Sabin, and Harrisse, and in the Grenville, Huth, Lenox, and Tower catalogues. There is not only no line of collecting which is more difficult and more costly than the present, but none which, within the last twenty years, has, so far as first-rate rarities are concerned, more seriously advanced, even inferior copies of certain books fetching at times five times as much as good ones did in the seventies. Just lately the call appears to come from the other side of the Atlantic. There are two or three new bidders. That is sufficient.



CHAPTER IX

The Modern Side—Words of advice—The place and functions of Free Libraries—Coleridge and Byron period—Unhealthy state of the market—The Dickens and Thackeray movement—Fashions in books—A valuable suggestion—Slight actual demand for costly modern productions—Two often make a market—Effect of time in settling value—Forecast of the durability of a few names—A large-paper copy of Byron's poems, 1807—Cheap literature not a modern invention—The published price noted on the face of early volumes—An episode—Practical buyers not to be considered collectors—The first edition considered from editorial and other points of view.

IN the acquisition of modern books, far greater caution is requisite than in that of the older literature, since the output is so enormous, and the changes in taste and depreciation in value so rapid and so capricious. The Free and other Circulating or Reference Libraries throughout the country must prove of immense service in superseding the necessity of purchasing volumes of temporary interest or of expensive character; and the average collector will, and does, find that a certain number of dictionaries of various kinds, and of works which happen to be favourites, suffice to exhaust his space and resources. The Free Library is an undoubted boon in two ways: in enabling us to read or consult books which we do not care to buy; and again, in affording us an opportunity at leisure of judging whether such and such a volume merits more than a passing notice and perusal. The sole method of arriving at this information is to take the publication home. Even where shelf-room and funds are forthcoming, there is slight danger of any large percentage of recent literature being added to the stores of a judicious householder. To read, perhaps only to skim, and return, will be the general rule.

It is inexpedient to lend oneself too exclusively to a period or a school; for even where one has to study for a purpose a particular class of authors, or a particular subject or group of subjects, the local institution is at hand to help one; and the cheap reproductions of the writings of the earlier centuries, erring, as they do, on the side of indulgence, place it in the power of individuals of modest means to have at their elbows a representative assemblage, not necessarily a cumbrous one, of the literature from Chaucer to the present day, so that they may form a comparative estimate of the intellectual activity and wealth of successive ages, while, at the same time, the Greek and Latin authors are procurable in a collective shape, if they desire to compare notes and satisfy themselves on the obligations of the moderns to the ancients.

It amounts to this, that the Free Library is an agency which should save us to a very material extent from actually acquiring books which are not worth holding; it is not only a medium for reference, but for testing and winnowing. But for the select private bookcase it is not, or ought not to be, a substitute.

The Free Library is in its infancy and on its trial. In course of time the spread of education and the force of experience will confer on it better governing bodies, and better governing bodies will guarantee better curators. The actual generation of librarians, or so-called librarians, is the product of inefficient committees of control and selection; and the worst part is that some of these gentlemen receive salaries which would almost enable their employers to secure the services of qualified officers.

I am not personally of the opinion that those institutions are an unmixed blessing. For already there was a marked tendency to a decline in the taste for collecting among the middle classes in the United Kingdom, available resources being devoted to other outlets more generally acceptable to families; and the facilities afforded by the Free Library virtually amount to each individual parishioner being enabled, without appreciable cost, to possess books on a far larger scale than if he had a collection actually his own. The unfavourable operation of this state of affairs is twofold: it injures the literary market, and it promotes superficiality of study in the case of books which should be owned, not borrowed, to be thoroughly mastered and understood.

The range of choice, which embraces the writers of the modern school in prose and verse, is both wide and difficult. During many years past the number of authors within these lines has been continually on the increase, yet, while merit and value may be questions of opinion, there can be no serious or legitimate doubt that the output of literary work of high character is not greater than it was, if indeed as great. In the course of a quarter of a century many popular names have either fallen or faded out of remembrance, alike of authors who belonged to antecedent generations, and of those who have enjoyed a transient and artificial celebrity, and have come and gone, as it were, under the eyes of their immediate contemporaries. With the advantages offered by lending libraries, it appears to be imprudent on the part of any one who cannot conveniently form an extensive collection of modern books to buy on the recommendation of the press or the trade new favourites; for literary acquisitions are unfortunately apt to occupy space, and, save in very exceptional cases, to deteriorate in value. Even the original editions of the later works of Tennyson are not in great demand, and the high figures realised by one or two of his early productions are explainable in the same way as those given for Byrons and Shelleys.

The Modern Side of collecting is classifiable into numerous branches, according to the point of departure, as some differ in their view of what is modern from others. If we have to lay down a dividing line, however, we should make it comprehend the last decade of the eighteenth century, when many of the writers who were the contemporaries of our immediate foregoers began their literary careers.

Then, again, there are two branches of the later literature: the more recent writers themselves, and the reproductions, as I have noted, of the writers of former periods; and the extent to which the edited collections have been carried places it within the power of many who so desire to specialise on a certain line, and to deal representatively with the rest.

The specialist who proposes to himself as a field for his activity the Coleridge and Byron period, or who, again, confines his efforts to the writings of one or two of that set, has his work before him. Generally speaking, the first editions, which are those usually desired, are not uncommon; but there is almost always a crux, an introuvable, for which the not altogether blameable dealer puts on the screw, and charges more than for all the remaining items. Bohn's Lowndes yields a fair account of this family of literature; and Alexander Ireland, Richard Herne Shepherd, and others have bestowed vast pains on drawing up monographs on Coleridge, Hazlitt, Hunt, Shelley, Lamb, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, and the rest. It is difficult to foresee what the final upshot may be; probably, when fabulous prices have drawn forth from their hiding-places additional copies of many of these latter-day objects of keen pursuit, the market will fall and the craze will subside. It is a purely artificial and spurious one.

A second group, to whose books a collector may reasonably and conveniently confine his attention, consists of the poets and prose-writers who are still, or who were till lately, among us; and a fairly numerous body of matter falls within this class, as we may judge from a glance at the names which present themselves in the publishers' and booksellers' lists. In selecting the contemporary school, there is the undoubted advantage that you can institute a comparison between the book and its author, and that you may fall in with him at dinner, in a drawing-room or in a shop, and congratulate him or solicit an explanation of some fine but obscure passage; and should you also be literary, he has the opportunity of exchanging compliments with you. The old dead writers receive praise and offer no equivalent.

During a series of years there was a notorious run, which, as usual, became indiscriminate, on first editions of the writings of Dickens, Thackeray, and other foremost men of the period, eclipsing, as it seemed, even the demand for the earlier English classics, till the auctioneers and booksellers in their catalogues underlined at a venture every editio princeps, though it might be the last as well as the first, and, whether or no, a book of no mark. But the enthusiasm has at last contracted itself within narrower and more intelligent limits, and is restricted to productions which rank as masterpieces or are special favourites, and then all postulates have to be satisfied, all bibliographical minutiae have to be studied. It is impossible to foresee how far this latest compromise may last; but whatever it is, there must always be some novelty to keep the market going, and bring grist to the mill. The world of fashion comprehends books as well as bonnets and dresses; but the literary section is a humble one by comparison, and is in few hands. Every fresh mode has somewhere its starter, and it usually prevails long enough to suit the purposes of the trade, when it makes way for its successor.

If one had the ordering of these strategical devices, one would imagine that the true policy was to buy up a given class of books, procure the insertion of a clever article or two in the press, extolling their merits and lamenting the public ignorance and neglect, and then launch a Jesuitically constructed catalogue devoted to such undeservedly disregarded treasures. But we may have been forestalled. Who knows?

The less current and every-day literary ware appeals to a more or less narrow constituency. There is a proverb, "The wool-seller knows the wool-buyer;" and it has to be so in books. There are volumes which, if they do not from their character or price suit one of a circle of half-a-dozen collectors, with whose means and wants the whole trade is generally familiar, are exceedingly likely to suit nobody outside the public libraries at public library prices. So much is this the case, that many booksellers do not think it worth their while to publish catalogues, and content themselves with reporting to the most probable purchaser fresh acquisitions. With certain very special and costly rarities two often make a market.

Time will perform its habitual office or function for us and our successors of separating from the multitudinous accumulation of modern published or printed matter such portion as, on deliberate inquiry and scrutiny, appears to be of permanent value. There is no doubt that much will be thrown aside; but the residuum which will bear the test of dispassionate judgment must prove considerable in itself, and also when taken into account as an appendix to the record left by preceding generations of writers. There may be certain authors and authoresses whom our descendants will like to have by them, even though they may no longer exert a sensible influence on literature and thought, just as we prize many of the older schools and types for characteristics and allusions which strike us as curious or entertaining; and soon, as decade follows decade, and the twentieth century has well opened, men and women, who were our grandsires' contemporaries, will seem through the lengthening vista almost as remote as they were from the Stuart epoch with its Elizabethan and Shakespearian traditions.

It is useless and invidious to particularise, and, besides, when one has drawn up a list of names, which are more or less obviously ephemeral, one cannot be certain as to the rest. Some must live; some may.

The astonishing demand for the first editions of our modern poets and novelists has, as was generally anticipated, subsided, and in some cases almost ceased; and it is extremely doubtful whether the taste will ever assume again the same unhealthy proportions. For one result of the matter has been to make it perfectly clear that copies of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, and so forth, exist in much greater plenty than was at first supposed, though very little reflection should have sufficed to establish the fact as an eminent probability; and all that was needed to draw them from their resting-places was the series of paragraphs in the press conveying to holders how valuable their property had unexpectedly become. Shall we not have more copies of Shelley's poor little brochure of 1810 offered for sale ere long, as well as of Thackeray's Exquisites and King Glumpus?

At the same time, while we insist that the survival of means of supply is too large, and the market too limited, to sustain the extravagant quotations of recent years, there will ever remain persons prepared to give generous prices for absolutely first-class examples of the best modern authors. There must be no qualification, nothing secondary, nothing dubious; and with these provisos, we do not venture to predict that the competition might not become keener than ever. The same experience will result here and there, whenever a book forming a desideratum in more than one cabinet occurs for sale, and is perhaps the first copy which has been offered. At Sotheby's in June 1896, Shelley's Oedipus Tyrannus, 1820, it is said, was carried under these circumstances to L130. It was, we believe, one of two copies, picked up by a well-known amateur for fourpence each. On another account—its perfectly immaculate state in boards—a large-paper copy of Byron's poems, 1807, was thought by Mr. Edward Huth not too dear at L105. It had been acquired by a London bookseller in exchange for one in morocco from a correspondent in Yorkshire, the latter receiving the bound book (which cost the vendor L27) and L18 difference, so that there was a profit on the transaction of L60. Seriously speaking, the purchase was extravagantly dear, for the book on large paper is at all events not scarcer than on small. One of the most signal incidents, however, in modern auctioneering annals was the sale of MSS. copies of the Endymion and Lamia of Keats in the poet's handwriting for L1000, and the subsequent offer to the purchasers at that figure of a large advance for their bargain. These two items are printed, and the written copies were those employed by the printer, as upon the first leaf of each MS. were the directions as to size. They were in the familiar round schoolboy hand, and presented occasional corrections. We heard a suggestion that there might have once, at all events, been a duplicate copy in existence. If the lots were worth the money, what would the manuscript of Venus and Adonis or Hamlet fetch?

The mischief which proceeds from the advertisements through the press of sensational sale prices is not one for which either the buyers or the sellers are responsible. It is due to the notorious circumstance that very few persons are able to discriminate accurately between an important item in an auction or elsewhere, and another submitted to their approval, ostensibly and professedly identical, but actually very different. A certain familiar type of bookseller will tell you that a copy of such or such a work fetched L50 under the hammer last week, but that he can let you have his—same edition, same date, same nearly everything—for fifty shillings. Of course it is no such matter; yet the bait is often swallowed, and the poor (or possibly rich) fish caught.

The relatively cheap literature of the present day has been thought to be a revival rather than an invention. We meet with tracts published in the reign of Elizabeth with the express notation of the price of issue, namely, one penny. The Book of Common Prayer, 1549, was to be sold at 2s. 2d. unbound, and 4s. in paste or boards. The ordinary amount charged for a tract extending to thirty or forty pages, and for a quarto play, was 4d. or a groat. The first folio Shakespeare, 1623, cost the original purchaser 20s.; Percival's Spanish Dictionary, 1599, appears to have come out at 12s. There are lists of advertisements attached to publications of the later Stuart era showing that a large variety of popular productions brought the printer or stationer twopence or a penny. A curious little edition of Coffee-House Jests, 1760, bears the imprint:—

"Drogheda. Printed for the sake of a Penny: Sold in Waterford, Cork, and Kilkenny."

But throughout these statistics, which are capable, of course, of infinite augmentation, we have to keep before us the difference in the value of money, and the purchasing power of the same amount in other and more practical directions; and it follows that the printed matter offered to-day for threepence or sixpence had no real parallel in former times, and that the absolutely cheap book is a product of modern facilities for manufacture.

The published price not unfrequently presents itself at the foot of the title on books of the late seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries. The simplicity of some individuals who are ranked among occasional or casual buyers was illustrated many years since by a man going into a shop in Fleet Street and putting down eighteenpence in payment of Hubert's Edward II., 1721, in the window. The bookseller explained to him that his price was 5s. "But," insisted the customer, "look at the title-page; it was published at 1s. 6d." "Then you had better go to the publisher," observed the other, replacing the volume.

Book-collecting seems scarcely to concern very closely those who regard the pursuit from a severely practical point of view, or in the aspect of absolute intrinsic importance. It is true enough that one may form, not only a library, but a remarkably extensive one, of books of reference and study; but this does not quite answer to the idea of a bibliophile—in fact, it is little more than the digestion into book-form of a mass of learning and useful information. Again, if, without embracing such classes of volumes, we limit ourselves to those which, as we express the matter above, are positively important, we of course find on our shelves all the capital authors, ancient and modern; yet how many we should have to reject which are accounted indispensable to a choice cabinet! And such is apt to be more peculiarly the case in a selection formed on Anglo-French lines, as anybody may readily judge by examining a catalogue of this kind, where pages and pages are occupied by irritating trifles of no solid pretensions whatever, not even those evident in personal or heraldic accessories.

The general rule may be applied to our modern books, that, whatever they may be for purposes of instruction or entertainment, they seldom represent the outlay, and still more rarely a profit upon it when the day arrives for realising. During some time past we have witnessed the rise and fall, or at least disappearance from the front rank, of individuals and schools of individuals whose writings no amount of friendly support in the press was capable of propping up beyond three or four seasons. It is not that some of them may not hereafter, like our older authors, return to notice and currency; but they will suffer that intermediate period of neglect which has been experienced by well-nigh all our greatest names in letters. There is for literature, in common with its buyers, an earth, a purgatory, and a heaven—or something else. The public cannot keep pace with the vast and unbroken succession of literary produce, and the favourites of the day pass over to neutral ground, with very few exceptions, when their honeymoon has expired, to await the deliberate verdict of posterity on their merit and their station. To the investor for a more or less immediate return, however, they are precarious possessions, unless the market be carefully watched. The wealthy and absolutely uncommercial amateur disregards these risks and these counsels; and he is in a sense to be envied.

The question of the First Edition is not limited to any era of literary history and production, and the call for this class of book, at first (as usual) rather unreasoning, begins to be more critical and narrow. The author to be thus honoured by his posterity must have a certain bouquet and vogue. He must be a Shakespeare, a Jonson, a Herrick, a Burton, a Defoe, a Bunyan, a Burns, or (if we cross the sea) a Moliere, a Montaigne, or a Cervantes.

With the first edition in some bibliographical schemes is associated the Best One. The possessor of both may pride himself on being able to show the earliest and latest state of the writer's mind, what he originally conceived, and what he decided to leave behind him as his ultimum vale. For the most part, however, first thoughts are treated as better than second, and it may actually be the case that, alike in ancient and modern books, the too fastidious and wavering ancient poet, or playwright, or essayist has done himself in maturer years an injustice by blotting the fresh impulses of his noviciate. It is a case, perhaps, where the public is entitled to intervene, and taking the two readings, deliver its award—always supposing that the text is that of a man worth the pains, and, again, that both versions are the language of the author, not that of the editor. It is obvious that, as a matter of literary and scientific or technical completeness, the last edition of a work is the most desirable; but it is particularly the case with volumes endeared by personal associations, such as Gilbert White's Selborne, that one prefers the text as the author left it, even if one has to be at the pains to consult a second publication for up-to-date knowledge. The present point is one to which I have adverted in an earlier place.

Apart from the collector, the first and the best impressions of writers of importance, whose texts underwent at their own hands more or less material changes, are necessarily an object of research to the editor or specialist who has dedicated his attention to such or such a study; and he is apt to pursue the matter still further than the amateur, who does not, as a rule, esteem the intermediate issues. It is this feeling and need which have led, since critical and comparative editions came into fashion, to the accumulation by their superintendents of an exhaustive array of titles and dates, with hints of the most remarkable various readings; and the cause of bibliography has gained, whether, in drawing together the series, the book-hunter or the literary worker be the pioneer. From the editorial and bibliographical points of view a complete sequence of the writings of our more distinguished and durable authors is generally practicable; but of excessively popular or favourite books, even of the Elizabethan era, it is imperfect. We refer to such cases as the so far unseen second impression of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim and the ostensible disappearance of the original quarto of Love's Labor's Lost.

Two questions connected with the present part of the subject before us, now better understood and managed, were under the old system, so far as we can ascertain or judge, permitted to remain in a very loose and vague state. We allude to the law of copyright and the revision for the press. Prior to the institution of the Stationers' Company and the existence of a Register, the sole protection for authors and publishers was by the grant of a privilege or a monopoly for a term of years; yet even when registration had become compulsory, and was supposed to be effectual, spurious editions constantly found their way into the market, while books of which the writers might desire, on various grounds, to keep the MSS. in their own hands, found their way into print through some irregular channel. Such was the case with Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603, and (in a somewhat different way) with the third edition of his Passionate Pilgrim, 1612; and we perceive that of Bacon's Essays during some years two parallel impressions were current without ostensible interference or warrant. There are frequent instances in which authors state that their motive in hastening into type was the rumour that a surreptitious and inaccurate text was threatened, as if there was no legal power to prevent such a class of piracy.

The correction of proofs by early writers, if we except books of reference, and those not without qualification, was evidently very lax and precarious. The entire body of popular literature, the drama included, offers the appearance, when we investigate examples, of having been left to the mercy of the typographers, and the faulty readings of old plays are more readily susceptible of explanation from the fact that we owe their survival in a printed form as often as not to the clandestine sale of the prompters' copies to the stationer. The editors of our dramatists have consequently found it an extremely laborious task to restore the sense of corrupt passages, and have sometimes abandoned the attempt in despair. Not a few of the pieces in the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may signalise the unique tragedy of Appius and Virginia, 1575, as a prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining uncertainty as to the true reading of numerous places in Shakespeare himself.

Our collectors, however, are not particularly solicitous to study the present aspect of the matter, and the hunter for First Editions is by no means likely to care an iota about the purity of the text, but may be more apt to congratulate himself on the ownership of the genuine old copy with all the errors of the press as vouchers for its character. Who would exchange a second Hamlet of 1604 for a first one of 1603, simply because the former happens to contain as much more, and the latter is little better than a torso?

The long uncertainty and insecurity of authors' rights, whatever may be thought of the present position of the matter, led at a very early date to the adoption of such safeguards against plagiarism as it was in the power of specialists, at all events, to impose. Some time after its original publication in 1530, we find John Palsgrave, compiler of the Eclaircissement de la Langue Francoise, prohibiting the printer from giving or selling copies to any one without his leave, lest his profits as a teacher of the language should be prejudicially affected; and so it was that preceptors often reserved the right of sale, and dealt direct with buyers, and in one case (only a sample) a treatise on Shorthand by Richard Weston (1770) is delivered to purchasers at eighteenpence on the express condition that they shall not allow the book to leave their own hands or premises.



CHAPTER X

Our failure to realise the requirements of Illustrated Books—The French School—La Fontaine's Contes et Nouvelles, 1762—Imperfect conception of what constitutes a thoroughly complete copy—The Crawford copy—Comparative selling values of copies—The Fables of the same author—Dorat—La Borde—Beaumarchais—Contrast between the English and French Schools—Process-printing—The Edition de Luxe—Its proper destination and limit—The Illustrated Copy—Increasing difficulty in forming it—Unsatisfactory character of the majority of specimens—Analogy between the French taste in books and in vertu—Temper of the foreign markets—The Anglo-American collector—The Parisian gout—The famous mud-stained volume of tracts in the British Museum—Foreign translations of early English tracts.

OF the Illustrated Book, the Illustrated Copy, and the Edition de Luxe we have spoken a few words elsewhere.[2] These are three forms of competition, which represent as many sources of danger and disappointment to the inexperienced. When we refer to illustrated books we of course signify books with woodcuts and other graphic embellishments from the earliest period, such as the Block Books, the Game and Play of the Chess, the Caxton AEsop, the Nuernberg Chronicle, 1493, the Poliphilo, 1499, the Ship of Fools, 1497, and the Dance of Death; collections of Portraits and Views; down to the productions of the modern school, and comprising the popular abridgments of Crouch or Burton, of which an idea may be gained from the list printed at the end of Bliss's Reliquiae Hearnianae, 1857, and the cheap editions of romances and story-books brought out by sundry stationers at prices ranging from threepence to a penny in the closing years of the seventeenth century. In the English series, independently of the woodcuts which incidentally occur in the books printed by Caxton and his immediate successors and the Emblem series, there are Roeslin's Birth of Mankind, by Raynald, 1540, Braun's Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Gemini's Anatomy, 1545, Godet's Genealogy of all the Kings of England, 1563, Saxton's Maps, Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577, Harington's Ariosto, 1591, Holland's Baziologia, 1618, and Heroeologia, 1620, the various works illustrated by Pass, Elstracke, Hollar, Barlow, and others, Vicars's England's Worthies, 1645, Ricraft's Survey of England's Champions, 1647, and other publications by Ricraft with engravings, till we come down to the pictorial histories of England by Bishop White, Kennett, and Rapin and Tindal, Pine's Horace, and Buck's Views. No doubt among these there are interesting specimens for the respective periods. It is noticeable that in the Holinshed of 1577 the illustrations are frequently repeated without regard to the context. The engravings by Hollar and Barlow are the most pleasing. But the Basiliologia, 1618, is the rarest book in the whole range of this class of literature. Pine's Horace, even in the first edition, 1733, with the Post Est reading, is common enough; and it has been found uncut. So far as we are concerned, we should prefer it in the original morocco. As a text it is of no account.

Coming lower down, we may specify or emphasise a few chefs d'oeuvre, such as Hogarth's Prints in the first or best states, Turner's Liber Studiorum, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Graphic Works, and Lodge's Portraits. But we are neither so wealthy nor so advanced as our French and German neighbours in this direction, and the former may be affirmed to stand alone in the possession of a class of books with engravings germane to the national genius and to the feeling and spirit of the time which produced such masterpieces in their way. Of works illustrated by copper-plates, that by Roeslin on Midwifery, 1540, above-named, seems to be the first in chronological order; but both this and the Gemini of 1545 probably owed their embellishments to foreign sources.

Our own country is probably weakest in this department; many of the engravings in our early literature are direct copies from the German, Dutch, or French masters; the names of some of our leading artists are those of foreigners; and we have comparatively little to show of strictly original work till the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when we may place our national efforts side by side with uninterrupted Continental series from the middle of the fifteenth. We are also poorly provided with books of reference enabling amateurs to form an idea of the extent of the field and of the relative practicability and costliness of given classes or lines, whereas the foreign collector enjoys the advantage of many excellent and fairly trustworthy manuals. We want a General Guide to English Illustrated Literature, which should exhibit its sources and inspiration, and the epochs and schools into which it is divisible.

Of course, it stands with the present description of literary monuments as it does with the normal book. An enterprise which should aim at being exhaustive would prove excessively serious in point of outlay, and would hardly be so satisfactory as one either on a miscellaneous or a special principle.

Meanwhile, it is desirable that statements offered in catalogues of various kinds should aim at accuracy as far as possible. It is singular what a vitality resides in errors when they have been pointed out by experts, and ought to be recognised. The auctioneers seem to keep the type of certain notes standing, as they are repeated in catalogue after catalogue without any other gain than that of misleading such as know no better. One familiar acquaintance of this class is the dictum that the copper-plates in Hugh Broughton's Concent of Scripture, 1596, are the earliest of the kind executed in England, although they had not only been preceded by the prints in Harington's Ariosto, 1591, but by those accompanying the Birth of Mankind by Roeslin, 1540, and the Anatomie Delineatio of Thomas Gemini, 1545.

The average collector, who possesses tolerable judgment, and has the authorities at his elbow, cannot go far astray if he buys what pleases him among the ordinary books of medium price, and may acquire examples of every period and place of origin, as opportunities arise. Or he may limit himself to early German, Dutch, Italian, or French books with woodcuts, to the French illustrated literature of the eighteenth century, to volumes with engravings by Bewick, Stothard, or Bartolozzi, or to modern works with proof-plates, etchings, and other choice varieties. It is literally impossible to fix any maximum or minimum of cost in this case; so much depends in graphic publications on niceties of difference; and a law prevails here analogous to that which governs the Print, that is to say, that a more or less slight point of detail vitally affects values. Let us take such a familiar instance as Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages. One may have a copy in Bohn's Libraries for a dozen shillings; and one may give seventy or eighty sovereigns for a large-paper copy with india proofs of the four-volume folio edition of 1821. On the whole, the twelve-volume quarto book is almost preferable, as in the folio there is the disadvantage of three volumes having copper-plates and one (the fourth) steel engravings, and the quarto is obtainable for L20 or L25 in morocco.

Very few of the English portraits in the engraved series antecedent to Lodge are trustworthy, as this branch of specialism was not properly studied and understood down to the present century, and even the heads executed by Houbraken are not unfrequently apocryphal. Such a criticism applies less to royal personages than to private individuals, of whom the painted likenesses were apt, after the lapse of years, to be not so easily identifiable.

We have excellent monographs on Bewick and Bartolozzi by Mr. Hugo and Mr. Tuer respectively; and there is the delightful biography of Stothard by Mrs. Bray, 1851, with profuse illustrations of his various artistic productions and progressive style. Many of the scarcer examples of Bartolozzi have been imitated. To the collector who limits his interest to artists in book-shape, the first editions on large or largest paper of the Birds, Quadrupeds, and Select Fables of Bewick are most familiar and most desirable. Stothard is seen to advantage in the engravings to Ritson's English Songs, 1783. Much of his work lies outside the mere library. For a general view of that branch of the subject, Jackson and Chatto's Treatise on Wood Engraving, 1839, may be recommended, so far as the printed book is concerned.

We do not dwell on the modern illustrated literature, which demands less study, and offers few features of interest, especially that produced at home. Too large a proportion of it, however, whatever may be the origin, is indifferent in quality and permanent worth. Publications are at present, like other commodities, prepared with a main eye to sale; the sense of pride and honour on the part of the producer is dulled; he manufactures in gross. There are the showy volumes of Yriate on Venice, Florence, and other subjects, with letterpress written apparently to accompany blocks and plates in the publisher's warehouse.