BOOK COLLECTORS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LIX, Issue 6856, 17 February 1883, Page 3

BOOK COLLECTORS.

(AH th* Fear B*und.) At this time, when the ealee of tho Hamilton, Sunderland and other largo librariee are arousing the interest of the outside world, it may bo interesting to note some fact* connected with purchaser* and their purchase*. To most people, giving forty pound*, one hundred, or even one thousand pound* for a commonplace-looking book, teem* either maniacal folly or wickedness, and as "no one becomes suddenly villainous,” eo tho book buyer, beginning cautiously, is gently led on the downward path by the eubtle influences which eeem to emanate from his treasures, until ho flings aside all pretence of economy or utility in making his purchases. Although many collectors have become historic on account of the number or rarity of their possessions, the type remains tho same both in the giants who bid their hundreds, or their less fortunate brethren who are confined to shillings. Both, in many oases, desire a book, not on account of its literary value—which is of little importance in their eyeshot because it is black-letter, or is uncut, has some misprint in it, has a specially broad margin, or is a solitary specimen. Both typos, again, too often believe that the last use to which a book can be put it to read it. Nor la the true collector, however wealthy he may be, satisfied with buying largely at auction rooms or in booksellers’ shops after the orthodox fashion. To him, os to other enthusiast*, the real pleasure lies in the chase. He delights in prowling round all likely or unlikely places, in the hope that amidst the mass of decaying and forgotten lore he may unearth a treasure that will momentarily satisfy him, and that will arouse the envy of his friends and rivals.

Some enthusiasts bare added to their shelves by less prosaic means than mere purchase. Sir Bobert Gotten, the founder of the precious Oottonian collection, held a pardon from James the First for all the State records that he might hare embezzled. In another instance a bibliophile was once found hiding his rarest books. Being asked the reason, he replied: “ The Bishop of Ely dines with me to day." The prelate referred to was More, who held this diocese between 1707 and 1714. A French writer states that Pope Innocent the Tenth, when a cardinal, was detected in conveying a tempting volume into his own possession. From accusation and denial, he and the injured owner proceeeded to blows, when the missing article dropped from the cardinal’s robes.

To notice the formation of public libraries would carry us beyond the limits of this article, but* we may glance at some of the great collectors who have‘helped to moke book-buying fashionable here and in America. In the scarce and heavily written works of Dr Dibdin are many examples of the ardent connoisseurs of the beginning of this century. Among them perhaps the most famous, both for his generosity, aridity, and industry, was Bichard Heber, who possessed the largest private library ever collected—more than one hundred thousand volumes. At his death he held large collections in London, Oxford, Paris, and Brussels, and small rills of five thousand volumes or so in Ghent, Antwerp, and other places. Some of his purchases he had never seen. All came alike to his omnivorous grasp. He was as ready to buy a gathering of ten thousand volumes without seeing them, as to travel hundreds of miles to secure one rare and desirable book. Dr Dibdin, in Bibliomania, lengthily describes him under the name of " Attious," but does not seem to approve of his accumulation of many copies of the same edition of a work. Heber’e reply, when jested with on this strongly marked form of the collector’s rapacity was, “ Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One for bis show copy, which be will probably keep at bis country house; another for his own usej and, unless he is inclined to part with this second or risk the injury of the first, he must needs have a third at the service of bis friends.” A truly angelic unselfishness which few bibliophiles attain to I There is a fine reference to Hober in the introduction to the sixth canto of Marmion.

The library of John, Duke of Boxburghe, sold in 1812, consisted of some thirty thousand volumes. One of these was the famous Valdarfer Decameron, which then fetched two thousand two hundred and sixty pounds, was afterwards sold for eight hundred pounds, and has recently been knocked down for five hundred and eighty-five pounds. The Bookford library at Fonthill was not only famous for its contents, but also for the luxuriousness of its bousing, Galleries containing cabinets and book-oases of choice and elaborately carved woods, open-worked ceilings, alabaster aud porpbvry tables and chimneypieces, chased panels, portraits, and other articles of historical interest combined to heighten its artistic charm to the reader. The owner, however, hod an unenviable reputation for the selfishness and churlishness which caused him to refuse all use of its valuable contents to students, in this way acting in striking contrast to Heber, whoso generosity never refused friend or stranger. Beekford bought the library of the historian Gibbon to “have something to read when I pais through Lausanne ”

The manuscript portion of the library of Hubert Harley, Earl of Oxford, is now in tbe British Museum. This consisted of some three hundred and fifty thousand pamphlets, historical, classical, and genealogical. Harley was one of those collectors who combine luxuriance of binding with their floe taste in books. The binding of only a portion of bis library is said to have cost him eighteen thousand pounds f Although somewhat anterior to the period of which we are speaking, we may refer to a most interesting collection and ite collector. A good collection of pamphlets has always pcssessedinoaloulable value to the student of history and manners. George Thomason, bookseller, of The Hose and Crown, St. Paul’s Churchyard, bad, in 1041, the hanpv idea of forming & ooj&ptato collection of tbe worse then issuing daily from tbe press, whether for King or Parliament. Bor more than twenty years he gathered them, perseveringly and impartially. Ho spent thousands of pounds on them— directly and indirectly. He risked gw« ( confiscation, and imprisonment. Ho bad to send them now into-Snmy, now into Essex, as the danger appeared most imminent, but through all hie cares and anxieties he never wavered in hie purpose. Although an ardent Boyftli*t,he kept tbe most scurrilous attacks on tbe King as carefully as those which wore

more akin to bis political belief, only sometimes writing a word of esustio orilitlsm on the title-pages of the former. In all, he appear* to have garnered some thirty .five thousand separate publications, which he hound in two thousand two hundred and twenty volume*. Thomason died, a di at pointed wan, in 1 016, before which date he had received and refused one offer of four thousand pounds for them, which sum ho did not consider sufficient fo cover hi* outlay. Charts* the Second directed the royal stationer, BAeartw, to buy them from Thomason’* heir*, but the king found it difficult to provide money for such a comiu-atively unimportant purposes tho acquisition of these valuable relic*. He, therefore, granted the M arne family permission to re-s-H them. (his, however, they found it dillleu.t to do, their importance not being recognised, until, in 1762, George tho Third purchased them from tho then representative* of tho Mearno family for three hundred pound* and presented them to the British Museum, where thav are now known at tho " King’* Pamphlet#.” And to one of these pamphlet* u curious interest U attached. Charles the First sent to Thomason to borrow it, end, while reading it, happened to let it fall in the mud. Ho returned it with an apology for his carelessness, and the collector noted tho fact* on tho little book, which still retains memorandum end mudstain. Other bibliophiles, beside* poor Thomason, have oarneo the gratitude of the nation by, directly or indirectly, bequeathing their treasure* to it. Amongst these were Sir Han* aloauc, Sir Joseph Banks, tho Rev Mr Ornohorodo, and the Hon Mr Grenville, whose gifts amount in oil to some ninety thousand volumes which tho donors have, at various times, loft to tho British Museum. Mr Grenville’s library wo* especially rich in rare and beautifully bound works.

George the Third and George tho Fourth wore also te some extent collectors, but it may bo fairly supposed, from their characters, that their purchases were prompted more by an imaginary tense of duty owing to their poiition, than by any real desire to form a library. George tho Fourth preiented tho royal collection, of about smnty thou*and volume*, to the Museum, in 1623; intending the gift to aot a* a *op to the people when the perennial question of his debt* recurred.

No form of subdivision is minute enough to classify their collectors correctly. Sometimes they devote themselves to "large paper ” copies 5 others only purohaio vellum printed works or manuscript* : the shelves of others are loaded with ponderous folios. Some cultivate one special groove, *uoh at tho drama, or reserve their love for volumes revered for—and sometimes only for—thoir antiquity. Others agsin seek eagerly after suppresied books or works that have been cancelled on account of some typographical errors—errors which are sometimes very humorous in their iuappropriatenoeo. A few words ought to be said concerning a class who, if not collectors, are often tho cause of collectors—second-hand booksellers.

Many a man, with the instinct lying dor* mant in him, has gono into a bookseller's shop for some particular work, and, after lookiug round, has loft it with tho appetite for acquiring fanned into flame for tho remainder of his life. The modem second-hand bookseller is an important factor in tho formation of libraries.

rften born and bred among books, their study hi# profession, ho frequently possesses an amount of knowledge about them wbioh tho amateur, with all his spare time, can never rival.

Although most booksellers have some special branch, their knowledge is frequently varied and large, not only in their especial interests—the dates, editions, and values of books—but also in their contents. And most collectors have experiencod gratefully the courtesy, patience, and persistence often shown in enquiring for and tracking some scarce and desirable volume, in order to obtain which the bookseller has perhaps to put himself into communication with agencies in both hemispheres. One difficulty with which the collector eventually meets —the collector of unlimited purse and insatiable maw at least—is that sooner or later he finds himself opposed to a limited number cf copies of some source book and a relatively unlimited number of competitors for them. Standard works and the loss uncommon rarities he may easily obtain. The volumes of his library may be numbered by thousands. Then arrives the time when—appetite growing with food—he is only to bo satisfied by possessing solitary survivors whose companions have perished from the effects of fire, neglect, or suppression, or rarities whose fame is world wide. But on the rare occasions when those come to the hammer he finds bimsslf confronted by other collectors, equally wealthy and determined, and with buyers for the large public librararies of which so many are now being formed here, in America, and in Australia. It is under these conditions that the startling figures are bid that arouse feelings of derision, or oven of anger, in people who have no sympathy with the collector's ambition. Space will only permit us to append a very few examples of the striking difference a period little more than a century has made in the prices of specimens of old English Literature. The Visions and the Oreede of Fierce Plowman (A.». 1561) was sold in 1766 at the dispersal of the Bawlinson library for three shillings and sixpence. In April, 1888, at the Ouvry sale, it brought ton pounds fifteen shillings. The Ohronyoles of England (1488) was sold in 1776 for seven pounds seven shillings. A copy sold recently " wanting some leaves " lor fifty-six ponnds. Hakluyt's Voyages were selling in 1795 for four pounds ten shillings. They are now worth some thirty-two pounds. Stubbe's Anatomy of Abases, octavo, 1583, sold in 1791 for one pound fourteen shillings, but recently for eleven pounds. It lately obtained one hundred and fifteen pounds. The collector has also made first editions of modern writers fashionable, with corresponding results on the prices. In the case of Tennyson, the first issues of Maud, Poems, and The Lover’s Tale, have produced eight pounds ten shilling!), five pounds fifteen shillings, and thirty-three pounds respectively. First editions of Shelly’s Queen Mab, Alas tor, and Adonain have reached twelve pounds fifteen shillingii, seven pounds two shillings and sixpence, and forty-three pounds each. It is the true hook lover, of limited moans, who suffers by this upheaval of prices. The commercial activity of this century, here and in America, has brought into existence a new and practically uneducated class of men, who consider a library to be os essential asaoarriage, and the guinea stamp of their claim to " gentility." It is those people who, io their eagerness to find another opportunity for ostentation, have driven the old-fashioned collector out of the field. And they are the modern representatives of the class who collect books for all purposes but those of study. There is undoubtedly a vast and eonstantly increasing m*»s of intelligent general readers, but they do not come under oen« sideration here, confining themselves, as they usually do, to standard modern fiction ana literature. They, therefore, do not feel the pressure of which we speak, and which only affects the minority who attempt to gratify their hobby in collecting works of a special class. These conditions mar be in accordance with the laws of Political Economy | but this is small consolation to a disappointed bibliophile who see* works of the old writers, for whom ho lias loving appreciation, absorbed into libraries which the owners too often never use. '