W. Roberts

“ One thing, however, the majority of book-collectors agree in, and that is in regarding their own generation as a revolution—they have, as Butler has described it in his picture of an antiquary, 'a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra.'
Differing in many, and often material, points as one book-collector does from another, the entire passion for collecting may be said to focus itself into two well-defined grooves. A [xvii] man either collects books for his own intellectual profit, or out of pure ostentatious vanity. ”

“ It is certain that our history does not afford any name of the first importance, certainly none which can be classed with Anne of Austria (wife of Louis XIII.) , the Duchesse de Berry, Catherine de Médicis, Christina of Sweden, Diane de Poitiers, the Comtesse Du Barry, Marie Antoinette, the Marquise de Pompadour, or of at least a dozen others whose names immediately suggest themselves. The only English name, in fact, worthy to be classed with the foregoing is that of Queen Elizabeth, who, in addition to her passion for beautiful books, may also be regarded as a genuine book-lover and reader. ”

“ An American has advised his readers to 'own all the books you can, use all the books you own, and as many more as you can get.' The advice is good, and it is well to remember that by far the majority of great book-collectors have lived to a ripe old age. The companionship of books is unquestionably one of the greatest antidotes to the ravages of time, and study is better than all medical formulas for the prolongation of life.
The man who has resolved upon getting together a collection of first-class books may not unreasonably be appalled at the difficulties which stand in the way. ”

“ Just as the minds of no two men run in precisely similar grooves, so no two libraries are found to be identical. Many bear a very striking resemblance to one another, but in more than one respect they will be found to differ. The splendid library formed by Mr. R. Copley Christie, the president or past-president of quite a number of learned societies, is altogether unique, so far as this country is concerned, and his library in a garden—truly the summum bonum of human desires!—at Ribsden, near Bagshot, is certainly one of the most remarkable which it has been our privilege to examine. ”

“ Collectors love a clean book, but a book scrawled on may have other merits. Thackeray's countless caricatures add a delight to his old school books; the comments of Scott are always to the purpose; but how few books once owned by great authors come into the general market. Where is Dr. Johnson's library, which must bear traces of his buttered toast? Sir Mark Sykes used to record the date and place of purchase, with the price—an excellent habit. The selling value of a book may be lowered even by a written owner's name, but many a book, otherwise worthless, is redeemed by an interesting note. ”

“ A book is worth just as much as its vendor can get for it, and no more. Rarity is not synonymous with high commercial value. There may be only four copies of a particular book in existence, but if the only three people in the world who want it have provided themselves with a copy each, the fourth example is not worth twopence. We have seen this kind of thing illustrated within the past few years. Very small poets are published in very small editions, but nobody buys them, and the books therefore have no market value—in fact, they are superfluous. Hundreds of rare books are superfluous. ”

“ The friendly confidence which is necessarily extended to one's agent at a distance will undoubtedly in time bring an ample return for my labours, but so far as the present is concerned, I ask for nothing but the pleasure of attending to the wants of those who are as yet without an agent in London. Whether the books to be procured through my intervention be rare or common, single items or groups, the gems of literature and art or the popular books of the day, I shall be happy to work in every way for book-lovers of every degree. ”

“ The book-collector is doubtless too prone to despise everything which is not quite in his line, forgetting that all branches of literature contribute in some degree, greater or lesser, to the bulk of human knowledge. No man can be universal, even if he had the wealth of a dozen Rothschilds, or the mental vigour and versatility of a hundred Gladstones. ”

“ IN few phases of human action are the foibles and preferences of individuals more completely imbricated than in that of book-collecting. Widely different as were the book-hunters' fancies at the beginning and at the end of the eighteenth century, yet it would not be possible to draw a hard and fast line. For the greater part of that time the classics of every description and of every degree of unimportance held their own. Reluctant, therefore, to abandon the chief stimulant of their earlier book-hunting careers, many collectors still took a keen interest in their primi pensieri. ”

“ There are many varieties of the ignorant collector type. The most fruitful source is the nouveau riche. Book-collecting is greatly a matter of fashion; and most of us will remember what Benjamin Franklin said of this prevailing vice: 'There are numbers that, perhaps, fear less the being in hell, than out of the fashion.' The enterprising individual who, on receipt of a catalogue of medical books, wired to the bookseller, 'What will you take for the lot?' and on a price being quoted, again telegraphed, 'Send them along,' was clearly a person who wished to be fashionable. ”

“ If the better-class tradesman, or professional man, spends a few pounds at Christmas or on birthday occasions, he feels that he has become a patron of literature. How many men, who are getting £1,000 a year, spend £1 per month on books? The library of the average middle-class person is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the cruelest possible commentary on his intelligence, and, as a matter of fact, if it contains a couple of volumes worthy of the name of books, their presence is more often than not an accidental one. ”

“ Booksellers gradually migrated from the heart of London to a more westerly direction. The bookstall followed, not so much as a matter of course as because there was no room for it; land became extremely valuable, and narrow streets, which are also crowded, are not a congenial soil for the book-barrow. The Strand and Holborn and Fleet Street districts, both highways and byways, became a favourite spot for the book-barrow during the last century, and remained such up to quite modern times—until, indeed, [154] the iconoclastic wave of improvements swept everything before it. ”

“ It is evident that no sort of good can be effected by this system, and, indeed, there has not yet resulted any benefit to the literature of the country from the Roxburghe Club. They have not published a single book of any conceivable merit. The truth is that the members, for the most part, are a set of persons of no true taste, of no proper notion of learning and its uses—very considerable persons in point of wealth, but very so-so in point of intellect.'
Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Bibliographer. ”

“ If we could all be as philosophical as this intelligent book-barrow-keeper, doubtless the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune would impress fewer wrinkles on our brows, and help us to think kindly of the friends who put us 'up' to good things in the way of gold-mines and generously left us to pay the piper. ”

“ Samuel Foote, in 'The Author,' makes Vamp say: 'Books are like women, Master Cape; to strike they must be well dressed; fine feathers make fine birds: a good paper, an elegant type, a handsome motto, and a catching title, has drove many a dull treatise through three editions.' These adventitious aids may still possess a potent influence in selling a new book even to-day, but they have little effect on the sale of the books which gravitate towards the book-barrow. ”

“ Interesting and important as is the phase of book-collecting which relates to royal personages, it falls into insignificance beside that of men who have achieved greatness through their own abilities. The books collected by Thomas Cranmer, for example, quite overshadow in interest anything which the whole reign of the Tudors could produce. It has been well said that his knowledge of books was wide, and his opportunities for acquiring them unrivalled. Cranmer was a generous collector, for his library was quite open for the use of learned men. ”

“ As a book-collecting period the sixteenth century, from the accession of Henry VIII.—when books became the organs of the passions of mankind—to the death of Elizabeth, is full of intense interest. The old order had changed; [17] the world itself had made an entirely fresh start. Men and events of the previous two or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. ”

“ We have known grocers, greengrocers, coal-dealers, pianoforte-makers, printers, bookbinders, cheap-jacks, in London, adopt the selling of books as a means of livelihood. Sometimes—and several living examples might be cited—the experiment is a success, but frequently a failure. The knowledge of old books is not picked up in a month or a year. The misfortune which seems to dog the footsteps of many men in every move they make, does not fail to pursue them in bookselling. ”

“ Another type which borders dangerously near to that which we have been describing is the collector who, not necessarily ignorant, collects for himself alone. The motto which Grolier adopted and acted upon—'Io Grolierii et amicorum'—might have been a very safe principle to go upon in the sixteenth century, but it would most certainly fail in the nineteenth, when one's dearest friends are the most unmitigated book-thieves. But perhaps even the too frequent loss of books is an evil to be preferred to the egoistical meanness of the selfish collector. ”

“ It is infinitely easier to name those who have collected books in this vast and unwieldy London of ours, than it is to classify them. To adopt botanical phraseology, the genus is defined in a word or two, but the species, the varieties, the hybrids, and the seedlings, how varied and impossible their classification! Most men have bought books, some have read a few, and others many ”

“ The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting anything, writes to his bookseller and pays his bill. ”

“ The hero is a poor drudging music-teacher and orchestra-player, who has invested every franc of his hard-won earnings in the collecting of exquisite paintings, prints, bric-à-brac, and other rare mementoes of the eighteenth century. Despised by all, even by his kindred, trodden upon as a nobody, slow, patient, and ever courageous, [xix] he unites to a complete technical knowledge a marvellous intuition of the beautiful, and his treasures are for him pride, bliss, and life. ”

“ The doctor's son, a poor curate, entered his late father's library for the first time, and found there a mass of books, which occupied nearly a month in selling, and realized, to his delight, a large sum of money.
The contempt with which Dr. G. received the bookseller's proposal is peculiarly typical of the book-collector. If he cannot obtain what he wants just exactly when he wants it, he does not care about it. ”

“ In a curious little book, 'L'An 2440, rêvue s'il en fut jamais,' published in Paris a century ago, there is a very quaint description of the process by which, in an improved state of society, men would apply themselves not to multiply books, but to gather knowledge. The sages of the political millennium exhibited their stores of useful learning in a cabinet containing a few hundred volumes. ”

“ By this means they make an immediate profit and effect a ready sale. There is beyond this a numerous class of what may be described as 'book-ghouls,' or men who make it a business to haunt the cheap bookstalls and bag the better-class or more saleable books and hawk them around to the shops, and so make a few shillings on which to support a precarious existence, in which beer and tobacco are the sole delights. We once met a man who did a roaring trade of this description, chiefly with the British Museum. ”

“ However much one may denounce the whole system, it is impossible, whatever a particular book-hunter's idiosyncrasy may be, not to feel interested in some of the collections which these enterprising and ruthless biblioclasts manage to get together. Mr. Purcell is an adept at this game, of which, doubtless, Mr. F. Harvey, of St. James's Street, is one of the most clever, as he is certainly the most eminent of professors. Mr. Purcell's collection of prints, engravings, press-cuttings, and so forth, cover an extraordinarily wide field. ”