J. Herbert Slater

“ The result of every investigation into the causes which regulate the value of books has shown conclusively that no publication is of great worth merely because it is scarce. The scarcity is a secondary and not a primary cause. Highly appreciated English publications of the sixteenth and two following centuries may be counted by thousands; but the number of inferior treatises, which have long ago sunk into eternal oblivion, which never were of any value, and never will be, are as the sand on the sea-shore. ”

“ Catherine de Medicis herself had the taste of Diana for beautiful bindings, and kept a staff of workmen, who vied with each other in the production of beautiful specimens of ornamentation. She had the mania of the true book collector, for on the death of the Maréchal de Strozzi, she laid violent hands on his choice and valuable library, promising to pay for it sometime, but ultimately dying herself without doing so. ”

“ In truth, if all books were read, it is only reasonable to suppose that all libraries would be small; and, as we know the contrary to be the fact, we must acknowledge the truth of the main proposition to a very large extent. The happiness of the book lover, as we know him when in the plenitude of his glory, consists by no means in reading, but in the contemplation of his possessions from afar ”

“ A book is sometimes handled gently, not because of any merits of its own, but simply on account of its cover, which thus becomes its protector in a double sense. Like those old earthen boxes, which on being broken are found to contain the clay tablets of Assyria, many of which run as far back as 1500 years before the Christian era, bindings were doubtless originally intended to act the part of preservatives; beauty of design and even neatness would be after-considerations, and entirely subservient to the sole object, that of protection. ”

“ Few collectors, who are not specialists, care very much for the utility of their libraries; in many cases, indeed, it is not a question of utility at all, but of extent, though I apprehend that no one would wish to crowd his shelves with rubbish merely for the sake of filling them. As an immense proportion of the books which have been published during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries clearly come under that category, the collector has much to avoid, and stands in need of considerable experience to enable him to make a selection. ”

“ Of one thing the collector may be quite confident: he has here plenty of material for the study of a lifetime, and, what is greatly to the point, ample opportunity of accumulating a representative series of examples of the press. Good Elzevirs, though rare, are not hopelessly so; while bad ones are as plentiful as blackberries. In this respect, at any rate, the Elzevir collector has a great advantage over many of his fellows, whose hunting-grounds are circumscribed, and who frequently would give anything to obtain even a mutilated copy from the press of their favourite printer. ”

“ It cannot be denied that, from a practical everyday stand-point, the collector who buys to sell has everything in his favour. Why should he not employ his knowledge to advantage? why be compelled to stock his library at a loss which will fall chiefly on his immediate descendants? ”

“ Only one or two copies are known to exist, as Bewick found the enterprise too expensive to pay, and accordingly discontinued it. The owner of this treasure was an old woman, who had derived her infant ideas of lions and tigers from its well-thumbed leaves, and who refused to part with an old friend, though sorely and even desperately pressed to do so.
How often is the enthusiastic book hunter thwarted when his hopes are on the point of being realised; how often must he succumb to what he may consider to be nothing better than prejudice or obstinacy? ”

“ Their books are strangers, and even though they should learn them by heart, they would be strangers still. The remembrance of happy hours spent with a lost volume is to them as nothing compared with the ringing metal which replaces it; or to put the case as pleasantly as possible, we will say that the speculator regards a book as possessing an interest quite apart from its literary or domestic value. ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of dead and forgotten books must be annually disposed of, for nominal sums, in London alone, and there is no telling how often these and others may have been turned over and flung aside by passers-by before they eventually find a market. Among all this profusion of rubbish, a certain percentage of valuable pieces must necessarily exist, and these, from the very circumstances under which they are offered for sale, will be unknown, and more or less unbound and uncut. ”

“ Baskerville started as a printer in Birmingham in 1756, having spent hundreds of pounds in the experimental casting of type, which he ultimately brought to the highest state of perfection. Every book printed by him is a masterpiece: his paper is clear and elegant and of a very fine quality, while the uniformity of colour throughout testifies to the care taken in printing every sheet. ”

“ But however bound, and whatever device, maxim, or motto he employed, the name of Grolier invariably causes great excitement among amateurs. The value of any of his books is proverbial, and their scarcity equally so. A rare book may occasionally be snapped up for a hundredth part of its worth, not so a magnificent specimen of binding, which courts further inquiries on the part of the vendor, and, as we all know, "further inquiries" are usually fatal to the would-be snapper-up of unconsidered valuables. ”

“ In buying books at a cheap rate, or, in other words, when making a bargain either at a shop or an ordinary street-stall, the purchaser will have to observe the maxim, "Caveat emptor," and it will probably not be until he arrives home with his treasure under his arm that he will have the satisfaction of ascertaining that his bargain is a real one, or the mortification of adding another imperfect book to the long row already on his shelf.
Imperfect books are frequently what is called "made up," that is, completed from other copies, themselves imperfect in other respects. ”

“ Some years previously to this, Aldus Manutius had bound his own books at Venice, and he took as much care of their dress as he did of the text. Some of these bindings appear to be imitations of the designs sculptured on the walls of mosques, and it was from the East therefore that the great Venetian school obtained its first instruction in the art. The book lover rejoices exceedingly when he meets with any of these ancient Italian bindings, but if he can only possess a Maioli, his cup of happiness literally overflows. ”

“ By degrees the book lover made demands upon art, and, in obedience to an universal law, the supply answered to his call. Cicero, we are told, was a connoisseur of bindings, and himself employed famous workmen to glorify his rolls of papyrus and vellum, or to bind up his diptychs in the manner of our modern books, but more expensively, if the tastes of the old Roman are not belied, than the majority of book lovers can afford to do in these latter days. ”

“ For my part I possess no books that I should fear to lend, as my whole library consists of "working copies," useful, probably, but not valuable. The amateur who is the proud owner of a single book out of the common should hide it from the borrower even as from a book worm. ”

“ Suppose, when you are going in your carriage to Westminster Hall, a superior being, who perhaps may have as much power over you as you have over this insect, should say to his companion, 'Kill that lawyer! Kill that lawyer!' How should you like that? I am sure to most people a lawyer is a more noxious insect than a spider. ”

“ IN the short time that intervened between the invention of printing by means of movable type and the end of the fifteenth century some 20,000 different works are known to have been issued from the European press. Many copies of these are doubtless hidden away in old lumber rooms, or in the recesses of imperfectly catalogued libraries of obscure and decaying towns. Some have altogether perished, leaving no trace of their ephemeral existence; others are known by name, but have themselves vanished as effectually as if they had never existed. ”

“ It is a great mistake to suppose that because a given work is scarce, in the sense of not often being met with, it is necessarily valuable. It may certainly be so, but, on the other hand, plenty of books which are acquired with difficulty are hardly worth the paper they are printed upon, perhaps because there is no demand for them, or possibly because they are imperfect or mutilated. ”

“ To this day the impression that big books contain wisdom is all but universal. This has always been so, as witness the temporary reputation of Nicholas de Lyra, who wrote and printed 1800 folios of Commentary on [116] the Bible, and of Aldrovandus, whose thirteen large folio volumes on General Zoology (1599-1668) have greatly perplexed the scientific world ever since they were published. Let not the collector be led away by massive tomes, nor imagine that standard works of acknowledged reputation can often be got for less than they are worth. ”

“ Every bookseller is of necessity a speculator, for it is his [118] business to buy at a low price and to sell at a higher. The amateur, however, should, if he would preserve his title, abstain from traffic of this kind and be satisfied to pay for the privilege of forming a library without regard to the ultimate profit or loss. His pleasure should consist in acquisition and the opportunity afforded of fondling his store while there is time, for he may be absolutely certain that the whole assortment—bookcases, shelves, and all—will find their way to the auctioneer directly he has done with them. ”

“ If the author is "big enough," and the edition is early enough, buy. The probability is you may not realise the full importance of what you have got until you have had time to consult some book of reference; it may indeed turn out that a wretched and dirty reprint has done duty for the original, or it may so be that the book is worthless on its merits. This is one of the risks of book collecting, and, it may be added, one of its charms. ”

“ When the public no longer took pleasure in mental culture, and the whole world was overrun with hordes of barbarians intent upon destruction, learning of every kind was banished to the monasteries, and the monks became the only book lovers, making it their business to transcribe, generation after generation, the volumes which had been saved from the general conflagration. ”

“ In the early days labour was not divided as it is now, and it is well known that Caxton, for example, not merely translated many of his publications, but cast his own type and bound the sheets when ready for publication. Each of these processes was perfected in his own office, and so well that to this day his handiwork is seldom surpassed. Improved apparatus cannot always hold its own against manual dexterity—an observation which becomes more than ever accentuated when we apply it to the art of Typography, perfect in its results almost from infancy. ”

“ There are mutual advantages to be gained in dealing with first-class people, for, if a mistake is made on one side or the other, there is usually no difficulty in rectifying it afterwards. Fine old crusted book-worms of the John Hill Burton type prefer, however, to exercise their own discretion in these matters, looking upon that as no inconsiderable part of the pleasure to be derived from the pursuit of their favourite occupation. ”

“ Thus, should he decide to make Dickens or Thackeray his one author, as so many people are doing now, he will need a guide to direct his course. Memory is so treacherous that he can take nothing on trust, and time so short that he cannot afford to journey two sides of the triangle when he might have taken the third. ”

“ The long line of printers from Caxton, in 1477, to Day, in 1546, and, in a lesser degree, those of the subsequent fifty years, discloses names which are graven on the heart of the collector, who often accounts himself fortunate if he can procure a single specimen from the early English press. As the chance of his doing so, though remote, is by no means impossible, seeing that copies are frequently offered for sale while many others must be hidden away, it is necessary that he should have some ideas of his own. ”

“ In the vast majority of instances, when a book is mutilated it is ruined; even the loss of a single plate out of many will often detract fifty per cent. or more from the normal value, while if the book is "cut down" the position is worse. This lesson as a rule is only learned by experience, and many young collectors resolutely shut their eyes to the most apparent of truisms, until such time as the consequences are brought fairly home to them. It is exceedingly dangerous to purchase imperfect or mutilated books, or to traffic in them at all. ”

“ The first part of a book to get worn out is the binding, for some one or more of its previous owners are almost certain to have ill-treated it either by bending the covers until they crack, or by leaving the work exposed to the rain and damp. When the volume is coverless, and usually not before, it will have been re-bound, and the binder will, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, have trimmed the edges, that is to say, planed them smooth with a machine he has for the purpose. ”

“ Keep out damp, let the shelves be lined if possible with good leather, and last, but by no means least, look at the insides of your books as well as at the outsides.
Collectors of books are continually being asked to lend volumes which happen to take the passing fancy of a friend or even chance acquaintance, and it is frequently a matter of some delicacy to refuse. Not one person in a hundred knows how to treat a book properly, and the borrower is therefore usually regarded as but one degree removed from an enemy. ”