English Book Collectors Part 14

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Bindley's library was a remarkably fine one, and few collections have contained a larger number of works of early English literature, especially of those of the time of Elizabeth and James I. Many of these books were excessively rare, and some of them unique. Among them were the _Venus and Adonis_ of Shakespeare, printed in 1602; his _Poems_ printed in 1640, and several of the first editions of his separate plays in quarto. The library also comprised a large portion of the extraordinary collection of poetical sheets, consisting of ballads, satires, elegies, etc., formed by Narcissus Luttrell, who, Sir Walter Scott says, 'seems to have bought every poetical tract, of whatever merit, which was hawked about the streets in his time, marking carefully the price and date of the purchase.'

After Bindley's death his books were sent to Evans of Pall Mall for sale. They were disposed of in five portions. The first sale took place in December 1818, and the fifth, which consisted of omissions, in January 1821. There were nine thousand three hundred and eighty-three lots in the five sales, which occupied forty-six days, and realised upwards of seventeen thousand five hundred pounds. The following are a few of the more notable books, and the prices they fetched in the sales:--_The Temple of Gla.s.se_, printed by Berthelet, forty-six pounds, four s.h.i.+llings; Chute's _Beawtie Dishonoured_ (London, 1529)--Steevens's copy, thirty-four pounds; Lewicke's _t.i.tus and Gisippus_ (London, 1562), twenty-four pounds, thirteen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence; Parker, _De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae_ (London, 1572), forty-five pounds, three s.h.i.+llings; Nicolas Breton's _Floorish upon Fancie_ (London, 1577), forty-two pounds; Hunnis's _Hyve full of Hunnye_ (London, 1578), eighteen guineas; _The Forrest of Fancy_ (London, 1579), thirty-eight pounds, six s.h.i.+llings and sixpence; Markham's _Tragedie of Sir Richard Grinvile_ (London, 1595), forty pounds, nineteen s.h.i.+llings; Robert Fletcher's _Nine English Worthies_ (London, 1606), thirty-seven pounds, sixteen s.h.i.+llings; Dolarny's _Primerose_ (London, 1606), twenty-six pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings; and Purchas's _Pilgrimes_, five volumes (London, 1625), thirty-four pounds, thirteen s.h.i.+llings. The first edition of _Oth.e.l.lo_ sold for fifty-six pounds, fourteen s.h.i.+llings; of _Love's Labour Lost_ for forty pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings; and the _Venus and Adonis_ of 1602 for forty-two pounds. Seven hundred and eighty-one pounds, one s.h.i.+lling were obtained for the Luttrell collection of poetical sheets; and fifty-two pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings for a little _Manual of Devotions_, one inch and seven-eighths long, and one inch and three-eighths broad, written on vellum, and bound in gold, said to have been given by Anne Boleyn on the scaffold to her Maid of Honour, Mistress Wyatt.

Bindley's portraits, prints, drawings, and medals were sold by Leigh and Sotheby in 1819, and realised seven thousand six hundred and ninety-two pounds.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 83: _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. lxxviii. part ii. p. 631.]

WILLIAM PETTY FITZMAURICE, FIRST MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE, 1737-1805

William Petty Fitzmaurice, third Earl of Shelburne and first Marquis of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin on the 2nd of May 1737. He was first privately educated, and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, which he left early to take a commission in the Guards. He served with the British troops under Prince Ferdinand in Germany, and was present at the battles of Kampen and Minden, where he distinguished himself by his personal valour. He became a Major-General in 1765. In May 1760, and again in April 1761, he was elected member for Wycombe, but he sat for a short time only in the House of Commons, as the death of his father on the 10th of May 1761 called him to the House of Lords. In April 1763 he was placed at the head of the Board of Trade and Plantations, a post which he held only till September in the same year; but in 1766, when Pitt, Earl of Chatham, formed his second administration, he included Lord Shelburne in it as Secretary of State for the Southern Department, to which, at that time, the Colonial business was attached. From this post, however, he was dismissed in October 1768 by the Duke of Grafton, whose influence in the Cabinet became paramount when the Earl of Chatham's illness prevented him taking an active share in the government. Lord Shelburne remained out of office until March 1782, when on the formation of the Rockingham administration he became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. This ministry was dissolved on the death of Lord Rockingham on the 1st of July in the same year, and the King entrusted Lord Shelburne with the construction of a new one, which lasted but little over seven months, as it was defeated in February 1783 by the vote of the Fox and North coalition. Shortly after his retirement he was created Earl Wycombe and Marquis of Lansdowne. Lord Lansdowne did not again accept office, but devoted himself to the augmentation of his fine library, the formation of which had occupied his attention for many years. It was especially rich in historical and political ma.n.u.scripts, and comprised, among other collections, one hundred and twenty-one volumes of the papers and miscellaneous correspondence of Lord Burghley, including his private note-book and journal, which had formerly been in the hands of Strype the historian.

The library also contained a considerable portion of the important collection of State papers ama.s.sed by Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls in the reign of James I.; the historical collections of White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, which amounted to a hundred and seven volumes, many of them being in the bishop's handwriting; the heraldic and genealogical collections of Segar, St. George, Dugdale, Le Neve, and other heralds; and some valuable legal, topographical, musical, biblical and cla.s.sical ma.n.u.scripts. The collection of ma.n.u.scripts, which amounted to one thousand two hundred and forty-five volumes, was acquired in 1807 by the Trustees of the British Museum for the sum of four thousand nine hundred and twenty-five pounds. The printed books, among which were many valuable topographical works and some rare volumes of English literature, numbered about twenty thousand. They were sold by Leigh and Sotheby in 1806, and together with the maps, charts, books of prints, etc., realised over eight thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. The Marquis, who collected pictures and sculpture as well as books, died on the 7th of May 1805, at the age of sixty-eight, and was succeeded by his son John Henry.

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK, 1739-1780

The Honourable Topham Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sydney Beauclerk, and a grandson of the first Duke of St. Albans. He was born in 1739, and on the death of his father in 1744 succeeded to the estates which Lord Sydney had inherited from Mr. Richard Topham, M.P. for Windsor. In 1757 Beauclerk matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, but seems to have left the University without taking a degree. While he was at Oxford he made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who appears to have been greatly attracted to him on account of his wit and conversation.

This intimacy surprised many of Johnson's friends, for although Beauclerk valued science and literature, he was also gay and dissipated.

'What a coalition,' said Garrick, when he heard of it, 'I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round-house.' Notwithstanding somewhat frequent squabbles, the friends.h.i.+p lasted for upwards of twenty years, and on Beauclerk's death Johnson remarked of him--'that Beauclerk's talents were those which he had felt himself more disposed to envy, than those of any whom he had known.'[84] His conversational powers were evidently of a very high order, for Dr. Barnard, Bishop of Limerick, in his well-known lines on Dr. Johnson, writes of him:

'If I have thoughts, and can't express 'em, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek; Smith, how to think; Burke, how to speak; And Beauclerk to converse.'

Beauclerk married on the 12th of March 1768 Lady Diana Spencer, eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, two days after her divorce from Lord Bolingbroke and St. John. He died at Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on the 11th of March 1780, leaving one son and two daughters.

Beauclerk possessed a fine library of upwards of thirty thousand volumes, which he kept at his residence at Muswell Hill, near London, stored, as Horace Walpole informs us, 'in a building that reaches half-way to Highgate.' It did not contain many rare books, but it was rich in works relating to natural history, voyages and travels, and English and French plays; and Dibdin says that it was also valuable to the general scholar, and to the collector of English antiquities and history. It also possessed a few curious and choice ma.n.u.scripts. Some of the books appear to have belonged to Mr. Topham, but most of them were collected by Beauclerk. After his death they were sold by auction by Mr.

Paterson 'at the Great Room, heretofore held by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures, opposite Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, London,' on Monday, April 9th, 1781, and the forty-nine following days. A priced copy of the catalogue is in the British Museum.

Beauclerk, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society, was a collector of natural curiosities, as well as books, and botany was one of his favourite studies. He had also an observatory at Muswell Hill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 84: Boswell, _Life of Johnson_ (London, 1811), vol. iii. p.

460.]

REV. BENJAMIN HEATH, D.D., 1739-1817

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. BENJAMIN HEATH, D.D.]

The Rev. Benjamin Heath, D.D., one of the sons to whom Mr. Benjamin Heath gave a part of his books, was born on the 29th of September 1739.

He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, of which College he became a Fellow. After leaving the University he was appointed an a.s.sistant master at Eton, and in 1771 succeeded Dr. Sumner as headmaster of Harrow, a post he held for fourteen years.[85] He died on the 31st of May 1817, at the rectory of Walkerne in the county of Hertford, a living given to him by his College, which he held with the rectory of Farnham in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. He was buried at Exeter. Dr.

Heath, who was 'a scholar and a bibliomaniac,' added greatly to the library given to him by his father, for which he built a large room at Walkerne, where, says Dibdin, 'he saw, entertained, and caressed his friends, with Alduses in the forenoon, and with a cheerful gla.s.s towards evening, hospitable, temperate, kind-hearted, with a well furnished mind and purse, and with a larder and cellar which might have supplied materials for a new edition of Pynson's _Royal Boke of Cookery and Kervinge_, 1500, 4to.'[86] Some years before his death Heath offered his books to King's College, Cambridge, for half the sum they had cost him; but the College authorities declined the purchase, and he then sold the princ.i.p.al portion of them to some private individuals, who, Dibdin believes, were Messrs. Cuth.e.l.l and Martin, for three thousand pounds beneath the sum they ultimately produced,[87] and they instructed Mr.

Jeffery of 11 Pall Mall to sell the books by auction. The sale took place on Thursday, the 5th of April 1810, and twelve following days and Wednesday, May 2nd, and eighteen following days. It consisted of four thousand seven hundred and eighty-six lots, which realised eight thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine pounds. The sale catalogue states that the library consisted of 'rare, useful and valuable publications in every department of literature, from the first invention of printing to the present time, all of which are in the most perfect condition.'

Another catalogue, with the prices and purchasers' names, of which it is said only two hundred and fifty copies were printed, was published later in the year by Constable of Edinburgh. Both the catalogues are to be found in the Library of King George III. in the British Museum.

Dibdin describes this sale in enthusiastic terms in his _Bibliomania_:--'Never,' he writes, 'did the bibliomaniac's eye alight upon "sweeter copies"--as the phrase is; and never did the bibliomaniacal barometer rise higher than at this sale! The most marked phrensy characterized it. A copy of the Editio Princeps of Homer (by no means a first-rate one) brought 92:[88] and all the ALDINE CLa.s.sICS produced such an electricity of sensation that buyers stuck at nothing to embrace them!'[89]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: Dibdin, _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. iii. p. 368.]

[Footnote 86: Dibdin, _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. iii. p. 369.]

[Footnote 87: _Ibid._, iii. 370.]

MAJOR THOMAS PEARSON, 1740?-1781

Major Thomas Pearson was born about the year 1740 at Cote Green, near Burton-in-Kendal, Westmoreland. He was educated at Burton, and came to London about 1756 to fill a post in the Navy Office, which he resigned in 1760. In the course of the following year he left England, having obtained a cadets.h.i.+p on the Bengal Establishment, in which he rose to the rank of Major. He distinguished himself on several occasions, and was particularly noticed by Lord Clive, to whom he adhered during the mutiny fomented by Sir Robert Fletcher, at whose trial he held the office of Judge Advocate. In 1767 Pearson married a sister of Eyles Irwin, the traveller and writer. This lady died in the following year, and an epitaph inscribed to her memory may be found, together with other poetical pieces by Pearson, in vol. iv. of Pearch's _Collection of Poems_. Pearson returned to England in August 1770 with Governor Verelst, under whom he had acted as Military Secretary, and built a house for himself at Burton, in which he collected a very extensive library, consisting of works on the history, antiquities, topography, and heraldry of Great Britain and Ireland, foreign history, voyages and travels, natural history, etc., but it was princ.i.p.ally remarkable for the large number of books in all branches of old English literature, and it was especially rich in the works of the early poets and dramatists.

In 1776 Pearson again went to India, but after a residence there of five years he fell a victim to the effects of the climate, and died at Calcutta on the 5th of August 1781. Some years after his death his library was brought from Westmoreland, and sold on April 14th, 1788, and twenty-two following days, by T. and J. Egerton at their room in Scotland Yard. The prices obtained at the sale, in which there were five thousand five hundred and twenty-five lots, were very small:--Boccaccio's _The Falle of Princis and Princesses and other n.o.bles_, translated by Lydgate, and printed by Pynson in 1494, fetched but one pound, twelve s.h.i.+llings; _The Castell of Laboure_, also printed by Pynson, two guineas; two books printed by Wynkyn de Worde--Hawes's _Example of Virtu_, and _The Lyf of Saynt Ursula_, translated by Hatfield--seven pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings and one pound, ten s.h.i.+llings; Skelton's _Ryght Delectable Traytise upon a goodly Garlande, or Chapelet of Laurell_, printed by Richard Faukes in 1523--an excessively rare, if not unique book--seven pounds, seventeen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence; Peele's _Polyhymnia_, London, 1590, three guineas; Lyly's _Midas_, London, 1592, seven pounds; and _England's Helicon_, collected by John Bodenham, London, 1600, five pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings. Two volumes of ballads, chiefly collected by the Earl of Oxford, and purchased by Major Pearson at Mr. West's sale, were bought by the Duke of Roxburghe for thirty-six pounds, four s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, and are now, with additions by the Duke, preserved in the British Museum. Books bound for Pearson may be recognised by the device of a bird surmounting a vase, stamped on the panels of the back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DUKE OF ROXBURGHE.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 88: The marked catalogue says 94, 10s.]

[Footnote 89: _Bibliomania_, London, 1811, p. 617.]

JOHN KER, DUKE OF ROXBURGHE, 1740-1804

John Ker, third Duke of Roxburghe, was born on the 23rd of April 1740 in Hanover Square, London. He was the elder son of Robert Ker, second Duke, and on the death of his father in 1755 succeeded to the t.i.tle and estates. While on a tour on the Continent he became greatly attached to Christiana, eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and there is little doubt that she would have become his wife had not King George III. soon afterwards sought the hand of the Princess's younger sister in marriage, when it was considered necessary to break off the match, partly for political reasons, and partly because 'it was deemed indecorous that the elder sister should be the subject of the younger.'

This was a great disappointment to both the Duke and the Princess, who evinced the strength of their affection by remaining single during their lives. George III., probably feeling that he had done the Duke an injury, always manifested a warm friends.h.i.+p for him, and bestowed upon him various appointments in the royal household. In 1768 he was made a Knight of the Thistle, and in 1801 was invested with the Order of the Garter. He died on the 19th of March 1804.

The Duke, who was remarkable both for his fine presence and his mental accomplishments, collected a magnificent library at his residence in St.

James's Square, London. It contained among numerous other treasures the famous Valdarfer Boccaccio, upwards of a dozen volumes printed by Caxton, and many from the presses of Pynson, Wynkyn de Worde, Julian Notary, and other early English printers. The first, second, and third Shakespeare folios were in the collection, as well as a large number of early quarto plays. The library was especially rich in choice editions of the French romances, and in the works of the English dramatists who flourished during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Some rare books printed in Scotland were also to be found in it. The collection of broadside ballads in three thick folio volumes, now in the British Museum, is perhaps the most extensive and interesting ever brought together. It was begun by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, from whose library it pa.s.sed successively to those of Mr. James West and Major Thomas Pearson, and at the sale of the books of the last-named collector it was purchased for thirty-six pounds, four s.h.i.+llings and sixpence by the Duke, who made many additions to it while in his possession. The collection has been admirably edited by Mr. William Chappell and the Rev. J.W. Ebsworth for the Ballad Society. Other books deserving special notice were the first edition of Pliny, printed by J. de Spira at Venice in 1469; Cicero's _Epistolae ad Attic.u.m_, etc., printed at Rome in 1470; the 1580 edition of the _Paradyse of Daintie Devises_, and the first edition of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_.

Among the ma.n.u.scripts the most valuable were Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, bound with Lydgate's _Life of St. Margarete_, on vellum, with illuminations, and the _Mystere de la Vengeance de Nostre Seigneur_, also on vellum.