The Confessions of a Collector Part 5

Bohn of Canterbury helped me to a good thing or two. That is a neighbourhood formerly most rich in early English books; and a good deal of obscurity hangs over certain incidents connected with the books once belonging to Henry Oxenden of Barham and to Lee Warly, and to the hand, which Sir Egerton Brydges seems to have had in obtaining some of the rarest for the library at Lee Priory. A sale of the residual portion of the Lee Warly collection took place _in situ_ many years ago, and a few remarkable items found their way to Mr Huth, particularly Oxenden of Barham's MS. _Commonplace Book_, 1647, in which the original proprietor had written a list of his old plays bound up together in six volumes. I copied out this inventory for the Huth catalogue; but it was one of the numerous omissions made by Mr Ellis _to save s.p.a.ce_. Bohn met with a fair number of curious tracts, some of which he sold to me. Two of them were _The Metynge of Doctor Barons and Doctor Powell at Paradise Gate_, printed early in the reign of Edward VI. and in verse, and the _History of King Edward the Fourth and the Tanner of Tamworth_, a black-letter ballad in pamphlet form with woodcuts, both unique. Mr Huth declined the former, G.o.d knows why, but took the latter.

Through the late Mr Sabin I once sent a couple of commissions to New York for as many unique items, which had been sold at Sotheby's in 1856, a little before my time, among the Wolfreston books. They were the _Cruel Uncle_, 1670, the story of Richard III. and his nephews, and _A Map of Merry Conceits_, by Lawrence Price, 1656. I secured the latter only for 5, 5s., and it went to the national library. This was my sole transatlantic experience in the way of purchases.

I have now and then of course laid my hand on a stray volume or so in some unexpected corner, as when I was in Conway in 1869, I ran through a local stationer's humble stock, and discovered Paul Festeau's _French Grammar_, 1685, a phenomenally rare book, of which I never saw more than two copies, and those of different editions. It cost me sixpence and the labour. The author was a native of Blois, where, says he, 'the true tone of the French tongue is to be found by the unanimous consent of all Frenchmen.'

At another time, a bookseller at Wrexham had attended the house-sale of the Rev. Mr Luxmoore's effects in the vicinity, and among the lots was Richard Whitford's _Work for Householders_, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1533--the unique copy which had been Sir Francis Freeling's. The buyer had marked this 3, 3s., without finding a customer; I basely offered him 2, and he accepted the amount. It is the copy described in the Huth catalogue. It reached Mr Huth through Ellis, who estimated it to me at 12.

The Luxmoore books were represented to me as having been thrown out on a lawn, and sold at random; and the same story was related of a second haul, which I once made of a Mr Fennell in Whitefriars, including an unique copy of Chamberlain's _Nocturnal Lucubrations_, 1652.

I have never been a stall-hunter. I do not rise sufficiently early; and, sooth to say, it has grown by report a barren quest. At Brooks's in Hammersmith, which I mention more particularly below, I would turn over dreary lots of volumes which he had carted away from some house-sale for a song; but I never laid out anything there or elsewhere. I always found the cheapest books were to be obtained at the auctions, or at Mr Quaritch's, or at Mr Ellis's. To be sure, Brooks once had uncut cloth copies of the first editions of Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, _Maud_, and _Princess_ at ninepence each, or two s.h.i.+llings the three; but I pa.s.sed them.

A sensible proportion of my discoveries was thus turned to good account; but such was not invariably the case. I have, on the contrary, now and then ordered a book or books from a country catalogue, simply because it or they were undescribed by me, and when I had done with them, I was often obliged to be satisfied with reimbursing myself. Again, it sometimes occurred that I transcribed the full particulars in a shop, and went no farther. One of my latest adventures in this latter way was at Messrs Pickering & Chatto's in the Haymarket, where I have always met with the greatest kindness and consideration. On information received, as the policeman says, I proceeded to the premises, and there, surely enough, I found a dilapidated and imperfect copy, yet still a copy, of the First Part of the First Edition of Johnson's _Seven Champions of Christendom_, 1596. The Second Part, 1597, was in the Heber sale from Isaac Reed's collection, where it fetched 17s. But no trace of the First was discoverable, till this one turned up, dog's eared, torn, and deficient of three leaves at the end. It was in the original vellum wrapper, and must have been reduced to its actual degradation by excess of affection or of neglect. It has been my fortune to rescue from oblivion many and many an item in our early literature, of which only just so much survived as was absolutely needed to make out the story; and I have known cases, in which it has been requisite to employ two or even three copies, all defective, to accomplish this.

So far I have presented a sketch of my life-long touch with the collectors of books and the dealers in them, and have shown that to a certain extent I am ent.i.tled to rank in both categories, my own share in the commercial side being due to the exigencies, to which I have adverted, rather than to choice. I think it not improbable that during the period from 1868 to 1878 the regular trade might have been prepared to raise a handsome subscription to send me and my family to a distant colony. Yet I exercised an influence beneficial rather than the reverse on their businesses, since I paid them their prices, and relieved them of large numbers of volumes, which they might have kept on their shelves. There was a jealousy, however, and a natural one.

Of books with autographs and inscriptions I have published in more than one periodical rather copious particulars and varied examples, ranging in date from the monastic era to our own days. I have generally found no difficulty in judging as to the character of entries in books by private owners; and considering the large number of surviving volumes which contain matter of this kind, fabrications are certainly uncommon, as well as fairly self-convicting.

Yet it cannot be a source of surprise, that the less experienced book-hunter falls into occasional traps. It is so pleasant and so tempting to be master of some copy which has once been consecrated by the fingers of a king or a queen, or a king's lady, or a queen's favourite, or a renowned soldier, poet, or whatever it may be, that we do not always pause to weigh the decent probabilities, do we?

The worst thing of all to do is to trust to ordinary catalogues and dealers of the commoner type. The latter have constantly by them specimens of the libraries of Queen Elizabeth, Mary of Scotland, James I., with imposing lateral, if not dorsal, blazons, and autograph attestations of proprietors.h.i.+p or gift. An eminent member of the trade once offered me a copy of May's _Lucan_, in which the translator, quoth he, had written, 'Ben Jonson, from Thomas May.' I recollect an early Chaucer with _Thomas Randolph_ on the t.i.tle; of course the vendor avouched it to be the signature of the poet. Joseph Lilly had a black-letter tome with the name _George Gascoigne_ attached to it, and advertised it as a _souvenir_ of that distinguished Elizabethan writer; but unluckily the writer died, before the book was printed. There was similarly more than a single W.

Shakespear just about the same period of time; but we have not come across any sample of his cunning in caligraphy. Perhaps he _wrote_ better than the dramatist. That excessively interesting _Florio's Montaigne_, 1603, in the British Museum carries the impress of former appurtenance to our great bard, and its history is much in its favour; but some question it (do not some question everything?), not that the inscription belongs to a namesake, but that it does so to a disciple of Mr Ireland junior.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the manner, in which one may be misled without remedy by an auctioneer's catalogue, a copy of Cranmer's Bible, 1549, was offered for sale a few years since, and, says the cataloguer, 'on the second leaf occurs "Tho. Cranmer" in contemporary handwriting.' In fact, some one at the time under the line of dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury had inserted his name, to shew who he was. But there was no unwillingness on the part of the auctioneer's a.s.sistant--or the auctioneer himself--to catch a flat. Alas! that the world should be so full of guile!

Henry Holl and myself were once parties to a mild practical joke on a fas.h.i.+onable bookseller and stationer named Westerton near Hyde Park Corner, who engaged to procure for his clients at the shortest notice any books required. We drew up between us a list of some of the rarest volumes in the English language, and one or the other took it to Westerton's, desiring the latter to let him have them punctually the following day. We did not go near the shop for some time after that, I remember. Of course we never heard anything of our _desiderata_. The fellow woke up probably to the hoax.

There is not the slightest wish on my part to disparage the qualifications of the bookseller as a type; but it has always struck me as unreasonable, looking at the large number of persons, whose subsistence is wholly derived from this pursuit--and often a very good one, too--to represent the calling as an indifferent and an uncommercial line of industry. For there must be thousands earning livelihoods by it, although very few realise the El Dorado of 500 a year, which I have heard Mr Quaritch cite as a kind of minimum, which it is in the power of any poor creature to make out of books. Moreover, it is to be recollected that many and many, who have chosen the employment, would scarcely be capable of discharging the duties of any other; it is recommendable for variety and liberty; and it brings those engaged in it into contact with celebrated people and interesting incidence.

_Imprimis_, as of every other calling, there are too many booksellers.

Within my memory their ranks have sensibly increased. They are not dealers in the sense in which Mr Quaritch is one; their training has been slight and superficial; and their stocks are of the thinnest and poorest quality.

Still, in town and country alike, they maintain a sort of ground, and when you pa.s.s and repa.s.s their places of business, you wonder how they live, and conclude that the occupation must be profitable even on the smallest scale. For the bargain-hunter--from his point of view--there is nothing to be got out of these outlying or minor emporia nowadays; the whole actual traffic in valuable commodities centres in two or three London auction-rooms and half-a-dozen West-End houses. For all the rest it is a scramble and a pittance. I have almost ceased to look at ordinary shop catalogues; and the stall was a thing of the past before my day. If I wanted a cheap book, I should go to Mr Quaritch or to a sale-room. Your suburban and provincial merchant in all kinds of second-hand property is desiccated.

Much the same appears to be at present predicable of the publisher. He tells you that it is a poor vocation, a slender margin for himself, yet the number of houses devoted to the business was never greater, and of some the experience and capital must be equally limited, as the printer and paper-maker can tell you.

A curious, almost comic, side in the question of literary earnings, is the habitual propensity for embracing one of two extremes. A. is coining money; his publishers are all that a man could desire or expect; he has taken so much in such and such a time from them on account of his last book. You listen to his tale with jesuitical reticence; you have just parted from a member of the firm, who has told you exactly how many copies have been sold, and you can do the rest for yourself. B., on the contrary, never makes any appreciable sum by his efforts; all publishers are rogues; and the public is an a.s.s. How much in both these views has to be allowed for temperament and imagination? Perhaps B. does nearly as well as A.

CHAPTER IX

At the Auction-Rooms--Their Changeable Temperature--My Finds in Wellington Street--Certain Conclusions as to the Rarity of Old English Books--Curiosities of Cataloguing and Stray Lots--A Little Ipswich Recovery--A Narrow Escape for some Very Rare Volumes in 1865--A Few Remarkable Instances of Good Fortune for Me--Not for Others--Three Very Severe 'Frosts'--A Great Boom--Sir John Fenn's Wonderful Books at last brought to Light--An Odd Circ.u.mstance about One of Them--The Writer moralises--A Couple of Imperfect Caxtons bring 2900--The Gentlemen behind the Scene and Those at the Table--Books converted into _Vertu_--My Intervention on One or Two Occasions--The Auctioneers' World--The 'Settlement' Principle--My Confidence in Sotheby's as Commission-Agents--My Three _Sir Richard Whittingtons_.--_A Reductio ad Absurdum_--The House in Leicester Square and Its Benefactions in My Favour--Change from the Old Days--Unique A.B.C.'s and Other Early School-Books--The Somers Tracts--Mr Quaritch and His Bibliographical Services to Me--His Independence of Character--The British Museum--My Resort to It for My Venetian Studies Forty Years Ago--The Sources of Supply in the Printed Book Department--My Later Att.i.tude toward It as a Bibliographer--The Vellum Monstrelet and Its True History--Bookbinders--Leighton, Riviere, Bedford, Pratt--Horrible Sight which I witnessed at a Binder's--My Publishers--Dodsley's Old Plays--My Book on the Livery Companies of London--Presentation-Copies.

I now proceed to speak a few words about the two auctions, with which I have been familiar--Sotheby's and Puttick & Simpson's. Both these distributing agencies repay careful study. You must consider the circ.u.mstances, and bear in mind Selden's maxim, _Distingue Tempora_. The rooms are very variable in their temperature. Now it is high, now low. It is not always necessarily what is being sold, but what is being asked for.

For instance, just at the present moment there is a desperate run on sixteenth and seventeenth century English books and on _capital_ productions, because a few Americans have taken the infection; they know nothing of values, so long as the article is right; and therefore the price is no object. It is merely necessary to satisfy yourself that your client wants the book or books, and you may without grave risk pose at the sale-room table and in the papers as a model of intrepidity. But the game does not usually last very long; the wily American soon grows weary or distrustful; and the call for these treasures subsides, and with it the courage of the bidders. The market resumes its normal tranquillity, till a fresh fad is set afloat with similar results. No prudent buyer loses himself in these whirlpools. He watches his opportunities, and they periodically recur amid all the feverish compet.i.tion arising from temporary causes.

At Sotheby's my finds have been endless. It is in those rooms that ever since 1861, when I made notes at the Bandinel sale, I have figured as an inevitable feature in the scene, when anything remarkable, either bibliographically or commercially, has been submitted to the hammer; and I have not often had reason to lament oversights on one score or the other.

When I have missed a lot, of which I desired the particulars for my collections, it has ill.u.s.trated my conviction of the immense unsuspected rarity of a preponderance of the national fugitive literature. This accident occurred in the case of a tract called _The Declaration of the Duke of Brabant_ (Philip III. of Spain) _proffering a Truce with the Netherlands_, 1607, and I have not since met with a second copy. It is over twenty years ago. I have occasionally registered the t.i.tle of a piece, which I have found in the warehouse in the hands of a cataloguer; and it was fortunate that I did so as regarded _A Farewell to Captain_ (afterward Sir Walter) _Gray_, on his departure for Holland, 1605, as the article was never again seen. There has been a good deal of this sort of miscarriage. Quite at the outset of my bibliographical career, the most ancient printed English music-book, 1530, was bought for the British Museum at the price of 80; it was only the _Ba.s.sus_ part with that to _Triplex_ bound up at the end; and the cataloguer _had put it into a bundle_. Attention was drawn to the mistake in time, and the lot was re-entered with full honours. On the other hand, I have been repeatedly indebted to Sotheby's staff for useful and valuable help. Mr John Bohn never failed to point out whatever he supposed to be of service, and in 1891 Mr A. R. Smith shewed me a small volume printed at Ipswich by John Owen about 1550, ent.i.tled _An Invective against Drunkenness_, so far known only from Maunsell's catalogue, 1598.

In quite the earlier portion of my experience here occurred the disastrous and destructive fire of 1865, which made a holocaust of the Offor library, and proved fatal to much of Lord Charlemont's. It was a most fortunate circ.u.mstance that just at the moment Halliwell-Phillipps had some of the rarest of the Charlemont books on loan from the auctioneers at his private house in Old Brompton, and they were thus saved.

I was away, when Mr Bolton Corney's books were sold at Sotheby's, and did not see them. But one was returned by the buyer as imperfect; it was Drayton's _Odes and Eglogs_ (1605), and was said to want two leaves. I examined it, and found that it was complete, and had two duplicate leaves with variations in the text. I bought it for 1, 11s., and sold it to John Pearson on my way home for 8. 8s. A somewhat a.n.a.logous incident befel me at the Burton-Constable auction in 1889, where a volume containing the _Theatre of Fine Devices_, 1614, the only copy known, and several other rare pieces in the finest state, was sold with all faults, because a copy of Wither's _Motto_, 1621, at the end, was slightly cropped. I left a commission of 8, 8s. for this, and saw it knocked down for 1, 12s. I put the Wither in the waste-paper basket, and divided the rest between the British Museum and Messrs Pearson & Co. There were two other dispersions of curious old books, which I may exemplify. At the Auchinleck sale the prices were not low, but were extremely moderate, considering the character of many of the early Scotish tracts there offered; but the other instance, where a gentleman had with the a.s.sistance of John Pearson and others formed a collection of early English poetry, making the _Bibliotheca Anglo-poetica_ the nucleus, was a deplorable fiasco. Books went for fewer s.h.i.+llings than they were worth pounds. I bought Drayton's _Mortimeriados_, 1596, _clean and uncut_, which Mr Quaritch had acquired for the late owner for 17, for 16s. No one particularly wanted that cla.s.s of books just at the moment, and the field was open to the opportunist.

The proprietor, who was living, must have been gratified. I never witnessed a more thorough frost than this except at the Pyne sale already described and at those of the dramatic libraries of Mr Kershaw and Dr Rimbault, although I believe that the firm is steadfastly persuaded that the most signal collapse, in recent times at least, was the two-days'

auction of Prince Lucien Bonaparte's philological stores, which realised 70! The Kershaw and Rimbault affairs were rather notable as yielding a large crop between them of old English plays, which were not in the Huth library, and which dropped to myself at nominal prices. The slaughter of Rimbault's property took place on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I recollect the buzz in the room, when s.h.i.+rley's _Lady of Pleasure_ was carried to 14s. I bought nearly everything worth buying.

Then there was the other side of the picture, as when the Frere, or rather Fenn, books came to the hammer at Sotheby's in 1896. As nothing in the before-mentioned auctions seemed too low, so nothing here seemed to be too extravagant. There was a kind of mysterious halo round the affair. People had heard of such books being in existence, and longed to put the report to a practical test. Herbert, in his revision of Ames, had quoted Sir John Fenn, the John Fenn Esquire of his day, as the owner of certain rarities, of which nothing absolutely reliable was known. But the items really material to myself amounted to no more than twenty, of which several were mere verifications.

Mr Quaritch was in great form. He made himself master of all the princ.i.p.al lots, as any one can do by bidding long enough. A copy of Herbert's _Typographical Antiquities_ with an extra volume of original specimens, of which the chief portion was of very slight significance, produced 255. A volume of tracts, of which nearly all the t.i.tle-pages had been mutilated by Fenn for the sake of the printer's marks, and of which the central interest lay in the first edition of Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, 1592, fetched 80. The first might have been worth 40 and the second (with the defects indicated) 15. A really valuable lot, which belonged to Sir John Fenn, and which had gone somehow equally astray, was subsequently offered for sale at another room, and brought 81. It was Nicholas Breton's _Works of a Young Wit_ (1577), and was one of my bibliographical _desiderata_. I took a full note of it of course, and should have willingly gone to 42 as a matter of purchase. Mr Quaritch trusted to the prevailing American boom, and was there to win the day against all comers with the feeling that those who opposed him had with him only a common market. Failing one or two wealthy enthusiasts, the volume might lie on his shelves, so long as he lived, at that figure. This is what Mr Quaritch himself has characterised as a species of gambling.

What is to be said or thought of the two imperfect copies of Caxton's first edition of the _Canterbury Tales_ bringing in 1895-6 1020 and 1880 respectively? All that can be argued is, that the worth is positively artificial, and that to the individuals, for whom Mr Quaritch destines them, money is a drug or a form of speaking.

Then there was the second folio Shakespear which fetched the unheard-of price of 540, and the third, to which I presently advert. The disregard of precedents in such cases brings a certain type of early literature within the magical circle of _objets de vertu_, when economic laws cease to operate, and books seem to lose their true dignity in the hands of the virtuoso. Beyond a certain financial alt.i.tude there are no _bona fide_ bookmen.

A sale, which might in its way deserve to be cla.s.sed with the Frere-Fenn one at Sotheby's, fell to the lot of the Leicester Square house in 1894.

It was bipart.i.te, and rather on the incongruous principle discountenanced in the Horatian _Epistle to the Pisos_. For the first division consisted of MSS. and printed books formerly belonging to Thomas Astle the antiquary, and chiefly relating to Suffolk, the Tower, and America; while the second was a series of autograph letters, particularly a small parcel addressed by Mottley the historian to Prince Bismarck between 1862 and 1872. The auctioneers looked on the day's sale as worth 150; it realised four times as much. A single lot of _Americana_ brought 216. The Mottley correspondence was highly interesting, and indeed important, and some of the allusions were almost droll from their homely familiarity. The nine letters were knocked down _en bloc_ for 60.

The first item in this remarkable series, written from Vienna, the Hague, and London, found the Prussian statesman at a watering-place in the South of France, and at that time the two men appear to have been well known to each other; for Mottley subscribes himself 'Always most sincerely your old friend;' and the next of 1864 starts with 'My dear old Bismarck.' There was evidently much cordiality and sympathy. A good deal of pleasantry arises out of some photographs of the great German's family and himself, which were a long time in arriving. But a singular interest centres in a letter of 1870, urging the desirability of mediation between the two then belligerent Powers; it is marked _Private and Confidential_; and I do not imagine that anything came of it.

The day's sale embraced another lot of a somewhat mysterious character, as regarded a portion of the contents. I refer to two letters from Sir Christopher Hatton in his own hand to a lady, couched in most familiar and affectionate terms, and subscribed with the same fict.i.tious signature as Hatton employed in corresponding with the Queen herself.

It is so usual to a.s.sociate the owners.h.i.+p of a library in middle-cla.s.s hands with a single generation--scarcely that very often--that events like the Auchinleck, Astle, and Frere sales strike and impress us, and often, indeed generally, produce results gratifying to the beneficiaries; and so it was with the Berners Street and Way affairs. Volumes, which were known to exist somewhere, at last emerged from their places of concealment. Mr Swainson had bought many of his books at the sale of George Steevens in 1800; the Way lot belonged to about the same date. Among the latter were such prizes as the original editions of _Arthur of Little Britain_ and _England's Helicon_. The Berners Street business took place on the premises; there was of course a settlement; and John Payne Collier, who looked in, could get nothing. I was offered, some time after, a rare little treatise, which I declined; and I subsequently heard a queer story about a copy of it (? the same) having been removed from Joseph Lilly's tail-pocket, while he was attending the auction. I put this and that together.

It was certainly much the same thing at the Osterley Park, Beckford, and Fountaine sales. The quotations are suggestive of lunacy, not on the part of the immediate purchasers, who are middlemen, but on that of the ulterior acquirer behind the scenes. What could be more childishly extravagant or absurd than 610 guineas for Henry VIII.'s _Prayer Book_ on vellum, 1544, with MSS. notes by the king and members of his family? What could be indeed? Why, the 435 paid for a third folio Shakespear, 1663-4, with both t.i.tles--a book which has been repeatedly sold for 60 or 70, and which the auctioneers misdescribed, as if it had been something unique and unknown. The Beckford books realised perfectly insane prices, and were afterward resold for a sixth or even tenth of the amount to the serious loss of somebody, when the barometer had fallen. The Thua.n.u.s copy of Buchanan's Poems, 1579, which was carried to 54, was offered to me in October, 1886, for 15. Of course there have always been inflations of value for special articles or under particular circ.u.mstances here and elsewhere; and I must confess to an instance of _malice prepense_ at one of the Corser sales at Sotheby's, when I made Ellis pay 100 for Warren's _Nursery of Names_, 1581, by sitting next to Addington at the table, and whispering in his ear the praises of the book and its fabulous rarity. He left it at 99. There was no other compet.i.tor within a fifty-pound note's distance. The Museum could not have gone beyond 30 or 35.

I stood behind Quaritch at Sir John Simeon's sale in Wellington Street, and when it came to two lots, the first being the _History of Oliver of Castile_, printed at York in 1695, and the second one of David Laing's publications, I told him that if he would let me have the first, I would not bid on the second. He was so amiable as to a.s.sent, and the almost unique little volume fell to me at 7s. Unhappily some one else opposed him for the Laing, which realised its normal value. I looked as grieved as I could, when he good-humouredly turned round to inquire what he had got.

I have said that 1861 marked the date, when I graduated at Sotheby's as a bibliographer. As a private buyer to a sparing and experimental extent I had known that house since 1857, when I was baulked, as I have elsewhere related, in my attempt to obtain an unique copy of the Earl of Surrey's English version of the _Fourth Book of Virgil's aeneid_, which was unique in a second sense--in being the only lot of value among a ma.s.s of rubbish.

The auctioneer's world is cla.s.sifiable into two sections: Buyers and Sellers. If you do not belong to one of these divisions, the profession scarcely knows where you come in in the economy of nature. You enter into the nondescript species. The man with the hammer views his commission as the elixir of life, as the sole object, for which men and women are born and exist; he has no other motive or seeing-point; and he does not expect others to have it. Your friends, as a rule, estimate you according to the house, in which you live, and the undertaker by the order, which he gets for your funeral; but the auctioneer appraises you by your value to him as a bidder at his table and by the marketable quality of the property, which you leave behind. If it happens that you are only a scholar, occasionally picking up a cheap lot, or a bibliographer, taking notes for the benefit of others without profit and without thanks, he eyes you with a mixture of commiseration and surprise, and has a private feeling, perhaps, that there is a percentage somewhere. And so there is--in Fame, for which he cares nothing except as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for his business; and it is natural enough, that the staff takes its cue from the princ.i.p.al, and unless you distribute _largesse_, sets you down as a troublesome nondescript.

I think that I am right in saying that it was the member of the firm of Walford Brothers, who attended the sales, who was referring at the table to the knock-out system, and Mr Hodge, who was in the rostrum, disclaimed any knowledge of such a thing, whereupon says Mr Walford to him, 'You are the only person who does not know about it, then.' The other day at the sale of the Boyne coins nine continental dealers were counted--_confreres_ indeed. Had it not been for the English compet.i.tion, the result would have been absolutely disastrous.

Thus much may be confidently affirmed of Sotheby's. As commission-agents they are implicitly trustworthy. I have had a long and large experience, and where I have not been able, or have not deemed it politic, to attend in person, I have found that I could depend on the discretion of the auctioneer. Let one instance suffice. In 1882 there appeared in a catalogue published by the firm _The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington_, octavo, 1656, a mediocre copy, but twenty years earlier than any on record. I left a commission of five guineas, and the lot fell to me at as many s.h.i.+llings. Only three copies are known, all of different issues: and every one has been in turn mine. Two are now in the British Museum; the other, from the Daniel sale, is in the Huth library.

There was an imperfect copy of the first edition of the _Paradise of Dainty Devices_, 1576, in a catalogue issued by the firm in 1889. It was described as probably unique, as wanting A 4, which had been supplied from the next earliest edition in the British Museum, and as bound by F.

Bedford; it was further stated, that every possible search had been made for a second copy without success. This was a tissue of romantic inventions on the part, not of the auctioneer, I apprehend, but on that of the ingenious and candid owner, who was rewarded for his pains by seeing his property fetch 100!

Some time before, Mr Burt the facsimilist came up to me at the Museum, and shewed me the copy, asking me whether I could refer him to another, whence the missing leaf might be supplied. I did so; but he eventually took it, not from the next earliest issue, which was not in the library, but from that of 1596. Bedford was dead, when the volume was bound. I leave the _judicial_ reader to sum up!

At one of the Scotish sales at Sotheby's--David Laing's, I think--Kerr & Richardson of Glasgow bought against Quaritch at an utterly extravagant price some specimens of old Scotish binding, but thought better of it afterward, and the next morning Richardson went to Piccadilly, and offered to lose the last bid, if Quaritch liked to have the book. 'No,' replied the other; 'I thank you; I was mad yesterday; but now I have come to my senses again.'

I have recorded in a previous page an anecdote connected with the Simeon sale at Sotheby's. I may take the present opportunity of adding that Sir John Simeon was a resident in the Isle of Wight, and a friend of Tennyson, who met Longfellow under that roof. There is a curious story of Wilberforce, when he was at Winchester, making one of a picnic party at Simeon's, and, the guests strolling about, as they pleased, the bishop was discovered sitting down in a field alone, with a handkerchief over his head as a sunshade, one foot in a rabbit-hole, and in his hand a bottle of champagne.

To the house in Leicester Square I feel myself under considerable obligations for acts of courtesy and kindness. In former years I bought there rather largely; and it was very possible, even in a full room, to obtain bargains, such as do not go many to the sovereign. I remember that it was here that I got the Fishmongers' Pageant for 1590, a tract of the utmost rarity, the _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, 1631, a prose version of the story far scarcer than the play, and mistaken by some of those present for it, till it was knocked down to me, and a volume of early pieces relating to murders, accidents, and other cognate matters in the finest state.

There seemed to be no voice lifted up for them beyond a bid, which I could easily cap. One of the most remarkable early grammars in the British Museum occurred here, and fetched only 44s. although it was in the highest preservation and wholly undescribed. Another work of this cla.s.s, which led to a certain amount of inquiry, was an _A B C_ printed on paper like linen at Riga in Russian Poland for the use of the German children there, who preponderate in number, about 1700--perhaps the oldest example of the kind. It was very appropriately lotted with Thomas Morton's _Treatise of the Nature of G.o.d_, 1599! The two did not bring more than 12s. The Riga Primer was, I conclude, a find, as the British Museum sent down an individual to my house to procure information about it and similar productions in connection with some task which he had before him.

There was a singular little upheaval, so to speak, at Puttick & Simpson's a few years ago, when certain tracts, so far known only from report or the Stationers' Register, occurred. I took memoranda of them all, but somehow omitted to bid for them. What became of the others, I do not know; but an extraordinarily rare Elizabethan pamphlet respecting Edward Glemham, 1591, fell to Mr Quaritch, and from him pa.s.sed to me at 36s. My intimacy with the market-value of these relics inspired my eminent acquaintance by degrees with a distrust of me, and led to a cessation of his catalogues. I own that I should have looked from such a quarter for greater magnanimity.

He sold me a small piece by Ralph Birchensha on Irish affairs, 1602, for 6, 6s., less ten per cent. for cash, and subsequently wrote to demand for what consideration I was willing to surrender it. But both purchases were bespoken: the former for the British Museum, the latter for Mr Huth.