The Great Book-Collectors Part 8

Archbishop Tenison had furnished another n.o.ble library near St. Martin's Lane 'with the best modern books in most faculties'; 'there any student might repair and make what researches he pleased'; and there too were deposited Sir James Ware's important Irish MSS. and many other portions of the Clarendon Collection, until offence was taken at their having been catalogued among the papers of the Archbishop.

In Dulwich College there was another library to which Mr. Cartwright the actor gave a collection of plays and many excellent pictures; and 'here comes in,' says Oldys, 'the Queen's purchase of plays, and those by Mr.

Weever the dancing-master, Sir Charles Cotterell, Mr. c.o.xeter, Lady Pomfret, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague'; and here we might mention the sad case of Mr. Warburton the herald, whose forte was to find out valuable English plays. Shortly before his death in 1759 he discovered that the cook had used up about fifty of the MSS. for covering pies, and that among them were 'twelve unpublished pieces by Ma.s.singer.' Something may be said too as to the older collections formed in London for the use of schools. At Westminster, it has been well said, Dean Williams 'enlarged the boundaries of learning.' According to Hackett, he converted a waste room into a n.o.ble library, modelling it 'into a decent shape,'

and furnis.h.i.+ng it with a vast number of learned volumes. The best of them came from the library of Mr. Baker of Highgate, who throughout a very long life had been gathering 'the best authors of all sciences in their best editions.' Dean Colet had endowed St. Paul's School with philological works in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; but these were destroyed in the great fire, together with the whole library of the High Master.

This was Mr. Samuel Cromleholme, who had the best set of neatly-bound cla.s.sics in London; 'he was a great lover of his books, and their loss hastened the end of his life.' The shelves at Merchant Taylors and in the Mercers' Chapel were almost as well filled as those at St. Paul's; and Christ's Hospital at that time had a good plain library in the mathematical school, with globes and instruments, 'and s.h.i.+ps with all their rigging for the instruction of lads designed for the sea.'

In the College of Physicians was a fine collection 'in their own and the other faculties.' Selden bequeathed to it his 'physical books,' and it was enriched by a gift of the whole library of Lord Dorchester, 'the pride and glory of the College.' We can only mention a few of the libraries described by Oldys. The Jews, he says, had a collection at Bevis Marks relating to the Talmud and Mischna and their ceremonial wors.h.i.+p: the French Protestants had another at the Savoy, and the Swedes another at their Church in Trinity Lane. The Baptists owned a great library in the Barbican. The Quakers had been for some years furnis.h.i.+ng a library with all the works written by the Friends. John Whiting published the catalogue in 1708; 'and in my opinion,' says our critic, ''tis more accurately and perfectly drawn up than the Bodleian Library at Oxford is by Dr. Hyde, for the Quaker does not confound one man with another as the scholar does.' Francis Bugg, he adds, 'the scribbler against them,' had a better collection of their writings than any of the brethren; 'but I think I have read in some of his rhapsodies that he either gave or sold it to the library at Oxford.'

Charles Earl of Sunderland was the greatest collector of his time. He bought the whole library of Hadrian Beverland, 'which was very choice of its kind,' and a great number of Petau's books as mentioned before; 'no bookseller,' it was said, 'hath so many editions of the same book as he, for he hath all, especially of the cla.s.sics.' Shortly before his death in 1772 he commissioned Mr. Vaillant to buy largely at the sale of Mr.

Freebairn's library. In Clarke's _Repertorium_ we are told how a fine Virgil was secured: 'and it was noted that when Mr. Vaillant had bought the printed Virgil at 46 he huzza'd out aloud, and threw up his hat for joy that he had bought it so cheap.' The great collection was afterwards taken to Blenheim, and has been dispersed in our time; 'the King of Denmark proffered the heirs 30,000 for it, and "Queen Zara" would have inclined them to part with it.' When the Earl of Sunderland died, Humphrey Wanley saw a good chance for the Harleian. 'I believe some benefit may accrue to this library, even if his relations will part with none of the works; I mean by his raising the price of books no higher now; so that in probability this commodity may fall in the market, and any gentleman be permitted to buy an uncommon old book for less than forty or fifty pounds.' If we listen to the Rev. Thomas Baker, the ejected Fellow who gave 4000 books to St. John's at Cambridge, we shall hear a complaint against Wanley. Lord Oxford's librarian when he saw a fine book, even in a public inst.i.tution, used to say, 'It will be better in my lord's library.' Baker might have said, 'a plague on both your houses!' What he wrote was as follows:--'I begin to complain of the men of quality who lay out so much for books, and give such prices that there is nothing to be had for poor scholars, whereof I have felt the effects; when I bid a fair price for an old book, I am answered, "The quality will give twice as much," and so I have done.'

The Earls of Pembroke were for several generations the patrons of learning. 'Thomas, the eighth Earl, was contemporary with those ill.u.s.trious characters, Sunderland, Harley, and Mead, during the Augustan age of Britain'; he added a large number of cla.s.sics and early printed books to the library at Wilton, and his successor Earl Henry still further improved it by adding the best works on architecture, on biographies, and books of numismatics; 'the Earl of Pembroke is stored with antiquities relating to medals and lives.'

Lord Somers had the rare pieces in law and English history which have been published in a well-known series of tracts. Lord Carbury loved mystical divinity; the Earl of Kent was all for pedigrees and visitations; the Earl of Kinnoul made large collections in mathematics and civil law; and Lord Coleraine followed Bishop Kennett in forming 'a library of lives.'

Richard Smith was remembered as having started in the pursuit of Caxtons in the days of Charles II.; the taste was despised when Oldys wrote, but it eventually grew into a mania. 'For a person of an inferior rank we never had a collector more successful. No day pa.s.sed over his head in which he did not visit Moorfields and Little Britain or St. Paul's Churchyard, and for many years together he suffered nothing to escape him that was rare and remarkable.'

Mr. John Bridges of Lincoln's Inn was another 'notorious book-collector.'

When his books were sold in 1726 the prices ran so high that the world suspected a conspiracy on the part of the executors. Humphrey Wanley was disappointed in his commissions, and called it a roguish sale; of the vendors he remarked 'their very looks, according to what I am told, dart out harping-irons.' Tom Hearne went to Mr. Bridges' chambers to see the sale, and descanted upon the fine condition of the lots: 'I was told of a gentleman of All Souls that gave a commission of eight s.h.i.+llings for an Homer, but it went for six guineas; people are in love with good binding rather than good reading.' Some of the entries in the catalogue are of great interest. The first edition of Homer, printed at Florence in 1488 on large paper, went for about a quarter of the price of an Aldine Livy.

Lord Oxford secured a 'Lucian' in uncial characters, and a splendid Missal illuminated for Henry VII. There was a large-paper 'Politian' in two volumes, very carelessly described as 'finely bound by Grolier and his friends'; but the best of all was the MS. Horace, with an exquisite portrait of the poet, 'from the library of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary.'

Dr. Mead was a collector of the same kind. All that was beautiful came naturally to this great man, of whom it was said that he lived 'in the full suns.h.i.+ne of human existence.' He was the owner of a very fine library, which he had 'picked up at Rome.' He had a great number of early-printed cla.s.sics, which fetched high prices at his sale in 1754; his French books, according to Dibdin, and all his works upon the fine arts 'were of the first rarity and value,' and were sumptuously bound.

His chief literary distinction rests on his edition of De Thou's 'History' in seven folio volumes. He had received a large legacy from a brother, and spent it in the publication of a work 'from which nothing of exterior pomp and beauty should be wanting'; the ink and paper were procured from Holland; and Carte the historian was sent to France 'to rummage for MSS. of Thua.n.u.s.'

Oldys has a few notes upon curious collections which he thought might be diverting to a 'satirical genius.' A certain Templar, he says, had a good library of astrology, witchcraft, and magic. Mr Britton, the small-coal man, had an excellent set of chemical books,'and a great parcel of music books, many of them p.r.i.c.ked with his own hand.' The famous Dryden, and Mr. Congreve after him, had collected old ballads and penny story-books.

The melancholy Burton, and Dr. Richard Rawlinson, and the learned Thomas Hearne, had all been as bad in their way. Mr. Secretary Pepys gave a great library to Magdalen College at Cambridge: but among the folios peeped out little black-letter ballads and 'penny merriments, penny witticisms, penny compliments, and penny G.o.dlinesses.' 'Mr. Robert Samber,' says Oldys, 'must need turn virtuoso too, and have his collection: which was of all the printed tobacco-papers he could anywhere light on.'

For 'curiosity or dotage' none could beat Mr. Thomas Rawlinson, whose vast collections were dispersed in seventeen or eighteen auctions before the final sale in 1733. Mr. Heber in the present century is a modern example of the same kind. 'A book is a book,' he said: and he bought all that came in his way, by cart-loads and s.h.i.+p-loads, and in whole libraries, on which in some cases he never cast his eyes. The most zealous lovers of books have smiled at his duplicates, quadruplicates, and multiplied specimens of a single edition.

Thomas Rawlinson, for all his continual sales, blocked himself out of house and home by his purchases: his set of chambers at Gray's Inn was so completely filled with books that his bed had to be moved into the pa.s.sage. Some thought that he was the 'Tom Folio' of Addison's caricature, in which it was a.s.sumed that the study of bibliography was only fit for a 'learned idiot.' Hearne defended his friend from the charge of pedantry, and declared that the mistake could only be made by a 'shallow buffoon.'

Rawlinson had a miserly craving after good books. If he had twenty copies of a work he would always open his purse for 'a different edition, a fairer copy, a larger paper.' His covetousness increased as the ma.s.s of his library was multiplied: and as he lived, said Oldys, so he died, among dust and cobwebs, 'in his bundles, piles, and bulwarks of paper.'

Upon Dr. Mead's death his place in the book-world was taken by Dr.

Anthony Askew, who travelled far and wide in search of rare editions and large-paper copies. In describing the sale of his books in 1775 Dibdin almost lost himself in ecstasies over the magnificent folios, and the s.h.i.+ning duodecimos 'printed on vellum and embossed with k.n.o.bs of gold.'

It has been said that with this sale commenced the new era in bibliography, during which such fabulous prices were given for fine editions of the cla.s.sics; but the date should perhaps be carried back to Dr. Mead's time. Some credit for the new development should also be ascribed to Joseph Smith, who collected early-printed books and cla.s.sics at Venice, while acting as English consul. His first library was purchased by George III. in 1762, and now forms the best part of the 'King's Library' at the British Museum. His later acquisitions were sold in 1773 by public auction in London. Among other cla.s.sical libraries of an old-fas.h.i.+oned kind we should notice the Osterley Park collection, only recently dispersed, which was formed by Bryan Fairfax; it was purchased _en bloc_ in 1756 by Mr. Francis Child, and pa.s.sed from him to the family of the Earl of Jersey.

Topham Beauclerc housed his thirty thousand volumes, as Walpole declared, in a building that reached halfway from London to Highgate; his collection was in two parts, of which the first was mainly cla.s.sical, and the other was very rich in English antiquities and history. In 1783 was sold almost the last of the encyclopaedic collections which used to fill the position now occupied by great public libraries. Mr. Crofts possessed a treasury of Greek and Roman learning; he was especially rich in philology, in Italian literature, in travels, in Scandinavian affairs; 'under the shortest heads, some one or more rare articles occur, but in the copious cla.s.ses literary curiosity is gratified, is highly feasted.'

Dr. Johnson's books were dispersed in a four-days' sale in 1785. A copy of the interesting catalogue has lately been reprinted by The Club. The most valuable specimen, as a mere curiosity, would be the folio with which he beat the bookseller, but we suppose that very little on the whole was obtained for the 662 lots of learned volumes that had sprawled over his dusty floor. The Doctor had but little sympathy with the fas.h.i.+ons that were beginning to prevail. He laughs in the _Rambler_ at 'Cantilenus' with his first edition of _The Children in the Wood_, and the antiquary who despaired of obtaining one missing Gazette till it was sent to him 'wrapped round a parcel of tobacco.' 'Hirsutus,' we are told,'very carefully ama.s.sed all the English books that were printed in the black character'; the fortunate virtuoso had 'long since completed his Caxton, and wanted but two volumes of a perfect Pynson.' In our own day we can hardly realise the idea of such riches; but the 'Rambler'

scouted the notion of slighting or valuing a book because it was printed in the Roman or Gothic type. John Ratcliffe of Bermondsey was one of these 'black-letter dogs.' He had some advantages of birth and position; for, being a chandler and grocer, he could buy these old volumes by weight in the course of his trade. He died in 1776, the master of a whole 'galaxy of Caxtons'; his library is said to have held the essence of poetry, romance and history; it was more precious in flavour to the new _dilettanti_ than the copious English stores of James West, the judicious President of the Royal Society; it was far more refined than the 'omnium gatherum' scattered in 1788 on Major Pearson's death, or Dr. Farmer's ragged regiments of old plays and frowsy ballads, and square-faced broadsides 'bought for thrice their weight in gold.'

M. Paris de Meyzieux was the owner of a splendid library. Dibdin has described his third sale, held in London during 1791, when the bibliomaniacs, it was said, used to cool themselves down with ice before they could face such excitement. Of himself he confessed that when he had seen the illuminations of Nicolas Jany, the snow-white 'Petrarch,' the 'Virgil' on vellum, life had no more to offer: 'after having seen only these three books I hope to descend to my obscure grave in perfect peace and happiness.' The _Livre d'Heures_ printed for Francis I., which had belonged to the Duc de la Valliere, was bought by Sir Mark Sykes, and became one of his princ.i.p.al treasures at Sledmere.

Mr. Robert Heathcote had a most elegant library, in which might be seen the tallest Elzevirs and several Aldine cla.s.sics 'in the chaste costume of Grolier.' It is said that the books pa.s.sed lightly into his hands 'in a convivial moment,' much to their former owner's regret. About the year 1807 they pa.s.sed into the miscellaneous crowd of Mr. Dent's books; and twenty years afterwards the whole collection was dispersed at a low price, when the book-mania was giving way for a time to an affection for cheap and useful literature.

The fever was still high in 1810 when Mr. Heath's plain cla.s.sics were s.n.a.t.c.hed up at very extravagant terms. Colonel Stanley's library was typical of the taste of the day. His selection comprised rare Spanish and Italian poetry, novels and romances, 'De Bry's voyages complete, fine cla.s.sics, and a singular set of _facetiae_.' It was sold in 1813, a few weeks after the dispersal of Mr. John Hunter's very similar collection.

This was immediately followed by an auction of Mr. Gosset's books, which lasted for twenty-three days: they seem to have chiefly consisted of divinity and curious works on philology. Mr. John Towneley's library was sold a few months afterwards. Mr. Towneley was the owner of a fine 'Pontifical' of Innocent IV., and a missal by Giulio Clovio from the Farnese palace; his celebrated MS., known as the 'Towneley Iliad,' was bought by Dr. Charles Burney, and pa.s.sed with the rest of his books to the British Museum. In 1816 Mr. Michael Wodhull died, after half-a-century spent in the steady collection of good books in the auctions of London and Paris: the recent sale of his library has made all the world familiar with his well-selected volumes, bound in russia by his faithful Roger Payne, and annotated on their fly-leaves with valuable memoranda of book-lore. We shall not repeat the story of Mr. Beckford's triumphant career, of the glories of Fonthill or the later splendours of the Hamilton Palace collection. We should note his purchase of Gibbon's books 'in order to have something to read on pa.s.sing through Lausanne.'

'I shut myself up,' said Mr. Beckford, 'for six weeks from early in the morning till night, only now and then taking a ride; the people thought me mad; I read myself nearly blind.' Beckford never saw the books again 'after once turning hermit there.' He gave them to his physician, Dr.

Scholl, and they were sold by auction in 1833; most of them were scattered about the world, but some are said to be still preserved at Lausanne in the public library.

This period was marked by the rivalry between bibliophiles of high rank and great wealth, whose Homeric contests have been worthily described by Dibdin in his history of the Bibliomania. A note in one of the Althorp Caxtons records a more amicable arrangement. The book belonged to Mr.

George Mason, at whose sale it was bought by the Duke of Roxburghe: 'The Duke and I had agreed not to oppose one another at the sale, but after the book was bought, to toss up who should win it, when I lost it; I bought it at the Roxburghe sale on the 17th of June, 1812, for 215 5s.'

The Duke was chiefly interested in old English literature, Italian poetry, and romances of the Round Table; but we are told that shortly before his death he was 'in full pursuit of a collection of our dramatic authors.' It was at his sale that the Valdarfer Boccaccio was purchased by Lord Blandford, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, for 2260, a sum which at that time had never been reached as the price of a single volume. It pa.s.sed into the great collection at White Knights, which then contained, in addition to some of the rarest English books, the 'Bedford Missal,'

another missal given by Queen Louise to Marguerite d'Angouleme, and a volume of prayers from the hand of the caligrapher Nicolas Jany. On the 17th of June, 1819, the White Knights library was sold on behalf of the owner's creditors; and the 'Boccaccio' found a safe home at Althorp, where George, Earl Spencer, had by fortunate purchases, by zeal in the pursuit of books, and by the aid of an accomplished librarian, formed that matchless collection which Renouard justly described as 'the finest private library in Europe.'