The Confessions of a Collector Part 4

His commercial transactions became sufficiently wide and lucrative, and all my purchases of him did not go to Mr Huth. A curious little piece of luck befel me in the case of a Chaucer wanting the end, which he had kept for years, and at length sold to me in despair. The next week Reeves & Turner obtained a second of the same impression by Thomas Petyt, _wanting the commencement_. Reeves let me take out the leaves I required for a trifle. I never experienced from Pearson any deficiency of straightforwardness, except that once Mrs Noseda and he had, I think, a joint hand in pa.s.sing off a facsimile frontispiece of Taylor the Water-Poet's Works, and I was the victim. I said nothing, but, like the Frenchman's jackdaw, thought the more. He was an exceptionally shrewd and vigilant character, and nearly broke Lovejoy of Reading's heart by getting from his a.s.sistant an uncut copy of Ruskin's poems for a s.h.i.+lling during Lovejoy's absence. But Pearson paid the price, which the fellow asked. I was in the shop, when he had just received through a third party a lovely copy of Walton's _Angler_, 1653, in the pristine binding for 14 plus 3, 10s. to the bringer. The last copy in the market in precisely the same condition brought successively 310 and 415. Someone tells me that in both cases the buyer and the seller was one and the same party. Poor Walton! like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, and our other Great Ones, he has been converted into _bric-a-brac_. To your millionaire amateur it does not signify whether it is a book or a tea-pot or a violin, if the price is high enough--better still, if it is higher than was ever given before.

That is his intelligent seeing-point. In the present instance the holder of the Walton, if the above-named view be correct, did not meet with a customer so enthusiastic as himself. He was a trifle too much _in excelsis_.

Pearson was almost the introducer of those stupendous prices for really first-rate books or rarities in book-form, which have now gone on ascending, till it is hard to tell where they will stop. Frederic Locker told me that he had asked him fifty guineas for a prose tract by Southwell a few years anterior in date to any recorded. Why not five hundred? With Pearson's successors I have had many years' pleasant acquaintance. _Verb.u.m sap._ The volumes, which have changed hands on that ground, would form a library and a fine one.

With the late James Toovey I never had a single transaction. But Mr Huth often spoke of him and of the _Temple of Leather and Literature_, as his place of business in Piccadilly was jocularly called from Toovey's predilection for old morocco bindings. I do not pretend to know what was the exact nature of this business; but it must have been a very profitable one. Ordinary bookselling made only a small part of it. I always took Toovey to be a Jew, till I found that he was a Catholic; and it was a laughable circ.u.mstance that, when the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle-Hill had to be valued, he was the very person selected to perform the task, although Phillipps had laid down in his will that the house should never be entered, nor the books examined, _by Mr Halliwell or a Papist_.

Willis & Sotheran's in the Strand was known to me by tradition. My father had bought books of Willis in early times, when the latter was in Prince's Street and in the Piazza, before he joined Mr Sotheran. The shop in the Strand united with Pickering's and one or two more to supply me with a handful or so of curiosities, while I remained what is termed an _amateur_. Later, it was one of the marts, to which I regularly resorted with advantage in quest of the wants of Mr Huth or the British Museum. An old-established business, it mechanically attracted year by year an endless succession of private parcels and single lots, which generally rendered the monthly catalogues remunerative reading. It is more than a quarter of a century ago, since I received one of these lists at Kensington, and spied out two unique items in the shape of _Cookery Books_ of the Elizabethan period at 10s. 6d. each. I was on the top of the next omnibus going Londonward, and entered the premises with a nervous uncertainty not legible on my countenance. I applied for the lots; _they brought them to me_; they were in splendid state; I clapped them in my pocket, and I left the place with a lightened heart. I met some of my friends, who were coming in, as I walked out, and I guessed their mission.

How sorry I was for them! Mr Pyne was one. There came into my thoughts a saying of Mr Huth's elucidatory of the success of his firm: 'We do not profess,' quoth he, 'to be cleverer than other folks; but we get up earlier in the morning.'

Mr Huth owed his copy of Caxton's _Game of Chess_ to Willis & Sotheran. An individual brought it into the shop, and offered it for sale. It was in vellum, but wanted A i. and A viii., the former a blank leaf. What the firm gave, I never heard; but when Lilly approached them on behalf of Mr Huth, the demand was 1000. It is always wise to start with a margin. The ultimate figure was 300. It was the second edition, of which Trinity College, Cambridge, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, and Lord Tollemache, have perfect copies.

It was the buyer (Francis), whom Willis & Sotheran employed about 1860, to whom we were all indebted for discovering at or near Plymouth the unique tragedy of _Orestes_, 1567, which went to the Museum, and for a duplicate of which Payne Collier safely offered at the time fifty guineas, and the equally rare copy of Drayton's _Harmony of the Church_, 1610, which was acquired by Mr Corser, and at his sale by Mr Christie-Miller. I have not heard that the West of England has of recent years yielded many such finds as it formerly did. It was long a profitable hunting ground.

Speaking of Drayton, of whose early editions it has fallen to my lot to secure several at different times, I am reminded that in Willis & Sotheran's 1862 catalogue appeared that eminent writer's _Tragical Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy_, 1596, of which only three copies are known; the volume turned out on examination to want a leaf; but luckily in another list issued by the firm there was a second example misdescribed as _Drayton's Poems_, which, though elsewhere imperfect, supplied the immediate deficiency; and the duplicate, which had served me so well, was wasted. I had been about the same time disappointed by missing at a shop in Old Bond Street (not Boone's) the _English Ape_, 1588, in the original binding at 2, 12s. 6d.; and curiously enough the house in the Strand purchased it, bound it in red morocco, and put it in a subsequent monthly circular at 5, 5s. I had to stretch my purse-strings, and go to the higher figure.

I have elsewhere given Willis himself credit for introducing me to a small literary commission, which if it did not yield much money, did not entail much labour. The only other experience of the same cla.s.s afforded me the labour without any result. It was a parson of independent fortune, who called me in for my opinion on certain _Diaries of Travel_, which he had written, and which he thought (most correctly) in need of editors.h.i.+p. The negotiation came to nothing, and so did my fee. It was not my province to inform the reverend gentleman that his MSS. were waste-paper, nor would the mention of his name be of any utility. He was unconsciously one of those sempiternal caterers for the paper-mill, whose unprinted effusions generally figure in the auctions among the bundles in the wane of the season, and they resemble in their inevitable doom the processions through the streets of the drover's charges on their way to our shambles. Let us pray that from the pulp of this holy man's _derelicta_, swept out by his executors, something worthier and more durable may evolve.

There is quite a group of minor or secondary dealers, whose absolute rank to me was indifferent, and from whom it has been my fortune in the course of my career as a bibliographical huntsman to bring away spoils of the chase neither few nor unimportant.

An odd case of rather shallow misrepresentation occurred, when I went to an emporium in Conduit Street in search of a copy of Stapylton's _Musoeus_, 1647. It was marked 5s. 6d. in the catalogue, but, said the owner, 'that is a misprint for 15s.' I put down the larger sum, merely inquiring how the odd sixpence crept in!

The Wallers of Fleet Street, originally next to Saint Dunstan's Church, subsequently higher up, had known my grandfather. The younger was my more particular acquaintance, and helped me to many choice items. I recollect that I refused a spotless copy of Lamb's _Tales from Shakespear_, in old sheep, 1807, for 7s. 6d., which Waller a.s.sured me that Mr George Daniel had seen, and estimated at a guinea; and I regret this more than I congratulate myself on the acquisition of an unique folio MS. of Edmond Waller's Poems, which his namesake had got from a furniture sale for one s.h.i.+lling, and let me have for fifty, of an unknown impression of _A Description of Love_, 1629, tenderly and mercifully swaddled between two imperfect books in a volume, and itself (the sole thing of value) as clean as a new penny, and several other ungratefully forgotten blessings. It was to the Waller volume that the last editor of the poet was indebted for the unprinted and otherwise undescribed dedication to Queen Henrietta Maria, of which I furnished the earliest notice an age since to _Notes and Queries_. By the way, I must not overlook the matchless copy in boards uncut of the _Papers relating to the Colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay_, published at Boston, 1769, for which I tendered Waller 5s., and for which an American house gave 8.

I had not much to do with the Rimells and the Walfords. The former put in my way two or three rarities, and I furnished them with a couple of valuable _Americana_ for the Carter-Brown library at New York. The books which I a.s.sociate with this firm are Philipot's Elegies on the Death of William Glover, Esquire of Shalston in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, 1641, which cost me 4s., and Gardyne's _Theatre of the Scottish Kings_, 1709, both alike scarce to excess. Of neither are more than two copies known, and the Grenville one of the second is mutilated. Mr Christie-Miller would have been glad to possess the Philipot; but it went to the national library; the Gardyne pa.s.sed into the Huth collection.

The Walfords were instrumental in enabling me to track out a pamphlet by Taylor the Water Poet relative to a murder at Ewell in 1620, of which I had been on the scent for years, and of which a copy at last occurred in a huge pile of miscellanies at Sotheby's tied up together at the close of a season. I found that Walford was the buyer; and when I waited on him, it turned out that it was a commission. For whom? Well, a customer in Scotland. But he did not want the account of a transaction at Ewell! Well; he would write, if I would name my price. I offered 10s. The tract came up; I took all the particulars; and the Museum relieved me of it at 4, 4s. No duplicate has ever been seen, I believe.

John Russell Smith was one of my earliest publishers. I became acquainted with him in 1857 in that capacity, and continued to do literary work on his behalf down to 1869. I subsequently purchased a large number of old books of him and of his son, Alfred Russell Smith, through whose hands pa.s.sed some very rare articles less highly appreciated by him than by myself. Which was the truer estimation, I do not know; but Smith now and then ingenuously stated to me that a lot in the catalogue, which I selected, had been ordered over and over again. Such was the case with the _Book of Measuring of Land_, by Sir Richard de Benese, Canon of Merton Abbey, printed at Southwark about 1536 by James Nicholson, priced 15s. in the original stamped binding, and Henry Vaughan the Silurist's _Thalia Rediviva_, marked 25s. Smith said one morning that a party had sent him three tracts, which he shewed me, and wanted 25s. for the lot; and he should expect 5s. for his trouble, if they would suit me. 'Very well,'

said I. But the party advanced to 30s. and Smith by consequence to 35s.

Still I was agreeable; and at that figure they became mine. Two of them were by Taylor the Water Poet, one unique--the original narrative of his journey to Bohemia, 1620; and it was, as so many of these exceedingly rare items often are, in a perfect state of preservation.

I once went through Hotten's stores in Piccadilly, and found nothing but the copy which Mr Huth had, of Wither's _Psalms_, printed in the Netherlands, 1632, in unusually fine condition, and marked 15s. Hotten had from Cornwall, in a volume, Cowley's Poems set to music by W. King, 1668, and Bunyan's _Profitable Meditations_, the latter unique, and now in the British Museum. I somehow missed that; but I bought the Cowley; it is the identical one described in the Huth catalogue. Hotten had a curious propensity for marking his old books at figures, which might denote the exiguity of his profit--or the reverse. He would not ask 18s. or a guinea, but 19s. 6d.

There was a const.i.tutional and aggravating p.r.o.neness on his part as a publisher to the pursuit of a tortuous path in preference to a straight one; and I am afraid that he took a certain pride in trying to outwit or overreach his client. Most unwillingly I had in the case of a small book, which he took, to involve him in two bills of costs from his sheer perversity in regard to his engagements; and the curious, but unfortunate sequel was that his successors, in taking over the interest, repudiated their balance of liability, and exposed themselves to a farther superfluous outlay. What was a poor author to do?

When he was in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, I saw a good deal of John Salkeld, a north-countryman, whom I always found perfectly satisfactory and reliable. He never had occasion to carry out the practice on me, as I was a most exemplary paymaster, especially in those cases, when I thought that the money was at once an object and an encouragement; but Salkeld often spoke to me of less punctual clients at a distance, whom he should like to _hug_. My most notable adventure in connection with him was the result of a catalogue, which he sent to me, so that I got it the last thing on a Sat.u.r.day night. There was a Wither's _Emblems_, Daniel's _Works_ and _Panegyrick_ in a volume on large paper, and one or two other matters. They were not very cheap; but they were worth having, thought I.

I knew that Salkeld resided over his shop, and on the Sunday evening I walked up to town from Kensington, proceeded to Orange Street, found my man at home, and carried off my plunder in triumph. What charming books they were! For no better a copy of the Wither Mr Huth had paid Toovey 40.

Both wanted the pointers to the dial.

Like so many other of my doings in the book-market, the solitary experience which I had of a person named n.o.ble was with an immediate eye to Mr Huth. He (n.o.ble) had come into possession of a handful of scarce old English tracts, including a volume containing several by Lady Eleanor Audley, a very rare item in the series of George Chapman's poetical works--his _Epicede on Prince Henry_, 1612, absolutely complete with the folded engraving, and Joshua Sylvester's Elegy on the same personage, so difficult to procure in such condition as Mr Huth always desired. These treasures I converted for n.o.ble into cash, and was immediately afterward favoured with a casual suggestion elsewhere, which led me to take them to Riviere to be measured for new coats, except the Lady Audley volume, which I deposited at Great Russell Street. I had paid n.o.ble 2 for it, thinking it must be worth 3; but before I reached Bloomsbury, I thought that it might not be too dear at 7, 7s.

The only other misadventure of the kind--if it may be so termed, as no unpleasant consequences ensued--was in connection with a book, which some one stole from Stibbs in Museum Street, and sold to Salkeld, who sold it to me. I was apprised by the original owner that he had traced it to my hands; but I pointed out that I had purchased it in good faith in open market, and for the rest I referred him to the Trustees of the national library, where it had found a resting-place.

Messrs Jarvis & Son succeeded during my acquaintance with them in stumbling upon a variety of bargains and prizes, which I usually appropriated. One was a splendid copy of Greene's _Pandosto_, 1592, the only known one of that of 1588 in the Museum being imperfect. A second acquisition was the copy, which had belonged to James I. of the long-lost first edition of Lennard's translation of Charron _De la Sagesse_, dedicated to PRINCE HENRY; and a third was a singular metrical tract by John Mardelay, Clerk of the Mint to Henry VIII. called _A Rueful Complaint of the Public Weal to England_, printed under Edward VI., and completely unknown.

There was a remarkable coincidence between this Mardelay piece and an equally unique little volume by Thomas Nelson, 1590, which I purchased elsewhere about the same time, that both were folded in a precisely similar manner, as if the old owner grudged the s.p.a.ce, which they occupied in a drawer or a box. They were perfectly clean and very much as they had left the printer's hands. The Nelson was the hitherto undiscovered pageant of the Fishmongers under the mayoralty of John Allot, Lord Mayor of London, and Mayor of the Staple, and was six-and-twenty years anterior to any of which the company was aware. It was not published, but privately issued to members. I held this to be a great find, and I reproduced the text in the _Antiquary_, before I parted with the original to the Museum.

The printer could not make out the meaning of _staple_, and in the first proof put _steeple_.

There was one more striking episode in my temporary contact with Jarvis & Son. I saw in a catalogue of miscellaneous books sold at Sotheby's in 1890 a lot, which fixed my attention as a bibliographer. It was the English or Anglicised version of Henryson's _aesop_, printed at London in 1577, and of which David Laing, in his edition of the old Scotish poet, 1865, speaks as having been seen by him in the library of Sion College, when he visited that inst.i.tution about 1830. He mentions that he wished to verify something at a later date, and that the volume had disappeared. I found on inspection that this was the identical book, no other being known anywhere, and I bought it under the hammer for 6, and let Jarvis & Son have it for 12, 12s. They sold it to Lord Rosebery. It had probably been a wanderer above half a century, since it quitted the College in the pocket of some divine of elastic conscience or short memory.

CHAPTER VIII

Messrs Reeves & Turner--My Literary Work for the Firm--My Advantageous Acquisitions Here--Cheap Rates at which Rare Books were Formerly Obtainable--The Large Turn-over of the Business--Wake of c.o.c.kermouth--An Unique Wynkyn de Worde--A Supposed Undescribed Shakespear in a House-Sale at Bognor--Tom Arthur--The Wynkyn de Worde, which I secured for Another s.h.i.+lling--Arthur and Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle Hill--The Bristol Book Shops--Lodge's _Rosalynd_, 1592--Mr Elliot Stock--My Literary Work for Him--One Volume Unexpectedly Productive--Mr Henry Stopes--My Recovery for Him of a Sarum Breviary, which belonged to an Ancestor in Queen Mary's Days--His Wife's Family and Sir Walter Scott--A Canterbury Correspondent and His Benefits--Two More Uniques--A Singular Recovery from New York--Casual Strokes of Good Luck in the Provinces--The Wynkyn de Worde at Wrexham--A _Trouvaille_ in the Haymarket--Books with Autographs and Inscriptions--A Few Words about Booksellers and Publishers.

My much-respected publisher and acquaintance, Mr Reeves, of the firm of Reeves & Turner, was in business in St Clement's Churchyard, when I first met with him about 1873. He succeeded Mr Russell Smith as my publisher, and acted as my agent for some books, while others he entrusted to my editors.h.i.+p. The most important in the latter category were the Dodsley and the Montaigne, to the latter of which I contributed only the Introduction, my father revising the text for me, and seeing the proofs, as I was at this juncture extremely busy with all sorts of ventures, and was, above everything else, intent on a new bibliographical departure. Thousands of volumes had been in my hands during the last few years, had answered my questions, and had gone on their way, leaving me wiser and not poorer. The toll, which they paid me, had placed me in a position to pursue a vast Quixotic undertaking; and I had no other means of executing it.

Messrs Reeves & Turner's premises were a favourite haunt of bargain-hunters in days gone by. Mr Reeves frequently attended outside and country sales, and bought many private lots; and every morning certain members of the trade made the place their first destination. I am not going to allege that I never partic.i.p.ated in the advantages myself; but my gains were occasional and accidental; although I was long an habitual caller at the shop, the necessity for consulting Mr Reeves about some current literary affair making such visits imperative.

I have noticed the somewhat strange absence of perception and training which led Reeves to sacrifice an incalculable amount of valuable property, constantly pa.s.sing through his hands in former years, and often going to others, who knew better how to turn it to account, where I describe the unique collection of _Occasional Forms of Prayer_ of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the statement of the sagacious cataloguer that the volume containing them was so many inches thick. But it was ever so. There was no discrimination. At one time I bought an important first edition of Heywood, 1605, for half-a-guinea, and a theological tract worth a couple of s.h.i.+llings was marked at the same price. They had only just come in, and not to draw undue attention to the Heywood, I tendered a guinea for the two. On another occasion, a lovely little copy of Donatus _De Octo Partibus Orationis_, an unknown ancient impression, four leaves, octavo, fell to me here at 4s. But I should make too long a story, if I were to set down all the _trouvailles_, which I owed to my excellent friend's omission to employ a capable a.s.sistant, or to look into these details himself, I might grow monotonous, unless the circ.u.mstances happened to be salient or peculiar.

Reeves, when he was in business in St Clement's Churchyard, must have for some years done an enormous volume of trade, for he shewed me one day in the early eighties his bank-book, where it appeared that in a year he had paid in 21,000, exclusively of small amounts, which were used as cash.

Yet sadly too little came of all this exhausting labour. He parted at too trivial a profit; he was too eager to turn over; and his a.s.sistants have told me that he often sold out of the open window for sixpence, items which had cost a couple of s.h.i.+llings. The auction-room in Chancery Lane did not, it is to be feared, contribute to his welfare. No man, however, was more honourable or trustworthy. He once remitted 50 to a person, of whom he had purchased a lot of books, on finding them more profitable than he had expected. Someone spoke of him to me as 'a n.o.bleman who dealt in books'--an improvement on Johnson's definition of Tom Davies.

Wake of c.o.c.kermouth, a member of the Society of Friends, who deals in every conceivable and inconceivable object of curiosity, but is a highly deserving and industrious man, sent me on one occasion at 4, 10s. a tract of six leaves from the press of Wynkyn de Worde--the _Stans puer ad Mensam_ of Sulpitius. It was an edition of 1515, earlier than any on record, and the British Museum paid me 12, 12s. for it. The curious part was that some months later Reeves had a very bad copy of the Grammar of the same author from the same press--a thick volume in quarto, marked 6, 6s., and I took a note of it, and left it. Wake, shrewdly calculating that as I had given 4, 10s. for the little tract of six leaves, I could not hesitate to take this one of at least sixty at 10, 10s., bought the lot on speculation, and reported it to me. I returned him my thanks. His deduction was arithmetically, but not bibliographically, accurate.

I had put into my hands at Reeves's one day the catalogue of a house-sale at Bognor, There was a single lot in it: 'Shakespeare's Poems, 8, 1609.'

No such book was known; yet it was perfectly possible that it might have been printed. Reeves thought that it might be worth my while to go down, and inspect it. I did, and had a day at the seaside. The volume was a Lintot! The auctioneer apologised; but he did not offer to defray my travelling expenses.

There are many among us, who remember Arthur in Holywell Street. He was a singular character, and had been a porter, I think, at one of the auction-rooms. My purchases of him were very numerous; and they were always right and reasonable, or I should not have been his client. He left 400 to Mr Ridler his a.s.sistant, who, called in Reeves to appraise the stock, and obtained it within that amount. While Arthur was in business, there was a grammatical tract in English printed by De Worde in his catalogue at 3, 3s. I went in to ask for it, and Ridler said that I could not have it. 'Is it out of the house?' I enquired. 'No,' said he; 'but it is put aside for a gentleman, who always gives me something for myself.'

'What does he give you?' said I. 'A s.h.i.+lling,' quoth he. 'I will give you two.' The lot left the shop in my pocket.

I acquired several curious articles from Ridler himself. He was, as a rule, reluctant to sell anything except through the catalogue. But he made an exception in my favour by pulling out of a drawer on one occasion a very fine copy of the very book which Wake of c.o.c.kermouth had previously offered me; and I agreed to give 8, 18s. 6d. for it. It is now in the Museum. In a second case he sold me, with a stern proviso that it was not returnable on any account whatever, a defective copy of John Constable's Poems, printed by Pynson, 1520, which nearly completed the Museum one--only two copies, both imperfect, being known! The Constable was bound up with a foreign tract of no value in such a manner as to mystify our good friend.

He no longer honours me with his catalogue. I ceased to find much in my way, and perhaps I was not worth the postage. Ridler it was, who once signalised a volume as 'difficult of procuration.'

It was Arthur who had the only copy ever been with the colophon of Slatyer's _Paloealbion_, 1621; he got it for a few s.h.i.+llings of Lazarus in the same street, and sold it to Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle Hill for 15, as Ridler informed me many years ago.

The last mad freak of Phillipps was the transmission of an order to Arthur to send him one of his catalogues _en bloc_. Some of the lots had been sold; but the remainder was duly s.h.i.+pped to the Broadway, Worcesters.h.i.+re; and a pretty parcel of rubbish it must have been! This is _book-scavengering_. You only require a besom and a purse, and a block of warehouses.

With the exception of Jeffreys and George of Bristol and Wake above named, I have not known much of the provincial dealers. Jeffreys sent me the _Golden Legend_ by Caxton, as I have said, and a few other rare things, and with George my transactions were limited to just one. Mr Pyne had returned from these parts, and had seen at Jeffreys' or Lasbury's (as he thought) Lodge's _Rosalynd_, 1592, at 3, 10s., bound up with an imperfect copy of Lyly's _Euphues_. _He declined it_, but on his arrival home he reconsidered the matter, and wrote to the wrong man. I dropped in, just as he was deliberating whether it was worth while to write to the right one; but he concluded by giving up the volume to me. I had to pay 5 for it, George stating that a party had a.s.sured him it was quite worth the higher sum. I did not dare to dispute the point; I bound the Lodge, for which Mr Huth gave me 42, and let Mr Pyne have the Lyly. The only other copy known of the _Rosalynd_ is in the Bodleian, and the single antecedent impression (1590) exists in an unique and imperfect one. The book, as it is familiar to most people, has the foundation-story of _As You Like It_.

The mention of that drama reminds me that Rosalind and Rosaline were rather favourite names with our early poets. Spenser introduces Rose Daniel, the writer's sister, into his _Faery Queen_ under that designation, as he had done another lady in his _Shepherd's Calendar_.

Shakespear himself has Rosaline in _Love's Labours Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_, and Thomas Newton wrote a poem no longer known beyond its registration in 1604, ent.i.tled: _A pleasant new History; or, a fragrant Posie, made of three Flowers: Rosa, Rosalynd, and Rosemary_.

I edited a few small books for Mr Elliot Stock, and had the opportunity of taking notes of one or two very rare volumes in that gentleman's private library. I met in the shop one day my friend M----, who told me that he had come to buy the new English translation of the _Imitatio Christi_. I expressed surprise. He explained that it was to give away. I still expressed surprise. 'Well,' said he, 'you see it is the fine style.' I had thought that that lay in the original Latin; but I scarcely presumed to hint such a thing. I pa.s.sed for one who had long laboured under a very grave misapprehension, and who was at length undeceived.

I did not grow very rich out of Mr Stock's commissions; they were, as I have mentioned, little undertakings; perhaps they did not sell very well--I fancy that the general editor of the series gave me to understand that his own contributions were the only ones which did. But one of them--the _Old Cookery Books_, introduced me to a city gentleman, whose library I a.s.sisted in completing. He was a very good fellow, who had been spoiled by companies and company-mongers. He had conceived, before I met him, the design of collecting everything in all languages relative to fermented liquors and the processes of their manufacture. He was not fastidious as to condition, though he preferred a good copy to a bad one; and I left his shelves fuller than I found them. He unconsciously made up the deficiency in Mr Stock's cheque; and my researches on his behalf were bibliographically useful to me, as they brought under my notice a variety of pamphlets and other ephemerides ill.u.s.trative of a by no means uninteresting topic. Besides, he threw in my way editorial work worth 700 or more.

A rather curious incident evolved from our temporary acquaintance.

Quaritch had in his catalogue just then a Sarum service-book, which purported to have belonged in Queen Mary's days to one _L. Stokes_; I looked at it; and I saw that the name was _Stopes_, and I concluded that the old proprietor was the same Leonard Stopes who printed an _Ave Maria_ to the Queen in or about 1555. The book also bore the signature of his brother, James Stopes. Leonard was of St John's College, Oxford. The point was, that my casual correspondent was Henry Stopes, and was a descendant of Leonard or James. He was hugely delighted by the discovery; and he purchased the _Breviary_.

It was his wife, a very pleasant and accomplished Scotish lady, daughter of Mr Carmichael, clerk to Sir Walter Scott as Sheriff-Depute, who wrote the almost superfluous confutation of the claims set up on behalf of Bacon to the authors.h.i.+p of Shakespear's plays.

Had it not been for my intuitive surmise, that the inscription in the volume was mis-rendered, a piece of family history, valuable at least in somebody's eyes, might have been overlooked.