NOTABLE LIBRARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1931, Page 11

NOTABLE LIBRARY

BIRKENHEAD AS COLLECTOR. A curious rumour has been heard of late that Lord Birkenhead, that eager and catholic collector of books, had sold the greater part of his library some years before his death. That this rumour is unfounded is shown by the most cursory glance over the volumes that are to be sold by auction by Messrs Hampton and Sous in pecember, for though the collection is not very large—some 10,000 volumes in all —it includes treasures enough to stand for the accumulation of a collector’s lifetime, writes Dermot Morrah, once a Fellow of' All Souls College. Lord Birkenhead’s literary taste proves to have covered a wide field. Theer are comparatively few legal works here (though there are both the first and the second edition of “Blackstone”), for this is not the exChancellor’s professional library. But there are large sections of the classics, of politics, of certain branches of history, of modern poetry, mostly English, and of the great eighteenth century writers of fiction and belles lettres, both English and French, though many of the latter are in translation. A very large part are first or rare editions, and a great number of the books are in beautiful bindings by the masters of the art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The gem of the collection is the quarto' edition of Homer, in two volumes, printed by the Elzevir Press at Amsterdam in 1656, and nobly bound in red leather for the Duchess de Pompadour, with her arms in gold on the cover. An inscription inside records that this copy later passed through the hands of William Morris, who presented it to Burne-Jones. Habent sua fata libelli —it is a strange pedigree that goes back from a great lawyer-politician through a poet and a painter to the most famous courtesan of modern times. Besides these magnificent volumes lies a copy of the first impression of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” — a crude, unlovely specimen of midnineteenth century book production, yet notable to the collector for its great rSrity. There are many fine editions of Greek and Latin authors, and almost as many of standard English works. One of the most interesting of these last is one of several editions of Boswell, for it-shows signs of constant reading and stands in Lord Birkenhead’s bedroom among the books that were obviously his regular companions. \ These books, which are an extremely mixed selection, and some of which were kept in an old bookcase belonging to Lord Birkenhead’s father, include the entire, works of Conrad, those of Erckman’n—Chatrian in translation, Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Poe, Kipling, O. Henry, and (rather unexpectedly) Crabbe. There are also an edition of Virgil and a translation of Aristotle’s Politics, besides a number of war books, and memoirs of Lord Oxford and Lord Northcliffe.

Downstairs there is a large collection of English poetry, from Chaucer to Mr Masefield, the latter’s works being mostly signed by the author. Modern history is represented by big groups of works on a few specialised subjects. There is much English constitutional history, and a section of some 500 volumes devoted almost entirely to Napoleon, some of them very rare. The devoted High Steward of Oxford is recalled by several shelves full of books on Jho history and antiquities of the university and colleges. Finally, there is a case full of spare copies of Lord Birkenhead's own books, among' which the lay visitor notes with malicious pleasure that the “Judgments of Lord Chancellor Birkenhead,” that compendium of august legal authority, fails to comply with the elementary legal requirement that compels every printed work to bear the printer’s name.