William Carew Hazlitt

“ The man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. On the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. It is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year’s end to year’s end. ”

“ From the very limited nature of my resources I have been forced to content myself with being a casual buyer. I have witnessed the dispersion of all the finest assemblages of coins, which have come to the hammer or into the market in the course of nearly twenty years, and have involuntarily played the part of a spectator and note-maker, where it would have delighted me to compete for the best with the best. ”

“ One of the last men who collected books for their own sake, and not from mere ostentation and purse-pride, was the late Mr Samuel Sanders, who, as he informed me, had been a buyer from his youth, and who bequeathed his extensive collections to one of the Colleges. I knew him very slightly. But, not long before his death, I was in the room at Sotheby’s and expressed to a stranger my regret at having missed the day before an unique Wynkyn de Worde, of which I lacked the true particulars. ”

“ At Bloomsbury Street is one of my numismatic libraries of reference, to which I have long enjoyed free access. The custodian is not only well versed in coins and other curiosities, but is a reader and a repository of much entertaining literary and theatrical anecdote. I know that I take more than I give; but Whelan now and again consults me about an old book or a continental coin, which he does not happen to have seen. ”

“ A man might well hesitate and wonder whether there was any good in persevering with a hobby personal to himself.
I do not know whether Mr Huth suspected me of extravagance in the purchase of curiosities, but I remember that he one day, at Prince’s Gate, when we were together, rather gravely, yet with his usual gentleness, observed that it was very important to husband one’s resources—to use his own phrase. ”

“ Foragers are observed collecting in one market by virtue of their special knowledge lots suitable for disposal in this way in another or others; and they have a machinery adapted to their peculiar requirements. Their stock is always a floating one. Thousands of pounds pass through their hands in a season. There are not many in the line, for it demands some capital, some credit, and some courage. There is one house, which avers that it carries on this system for the public good—in order to diffuse a conversance with numismatic science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The London Library copy of the Heber Catalogue bears unmistakeable traces of my industrious manipulation in years gone by. I conceived a strong regard for that extraordinary, that unique collection and its accomplished owner. Of his private history I have heard certain anecdotes, which indicate that his life was not a [Pg 21] very happy one, nor the end of it very comfortable; but as a scholar, as a bibliographer, and as a benefactor to the cause which he so zealously espoused and on which he lavished a noble fortune, he was a man to whose equal I am unable to refer. ”

“ Thousands of precious volumes, which might be mine, if I had been otherwise situated, are merely as a question of form and pecuniary arrangement in the British Museum, in the Bodleian, or in some private library; they are one and all before me at any moment, when I choose to summon them. I remember how they are bound, and the story which each tells; but they are in the keeping of others. ”

“ Now alike in Wellington Street and here all is changed. A new school has arisen, and every article of the slightest consequence is carried to the last shilling—and beyond. The highest bidder never despairs of finding, when he gets home, somebody more enthusiastic or more foolish than himself. I sometimes look round, while a sale is proceeding, and nearly all the faces are strange. They are those of young men, who represent firms, or who speculate on their own account. There are no cheap lots, save to the preternaturally knowing or lucky. ”

“ But the coin and medal have their turn to come. There is not, perhaps, [Pg 341] any one living, who will witness the vast revolution in prices, when the wealthier citizens of the United States become our rivals for what is finest and scarcest in this remaining field.
One obstacle in the way of coins coming to the front is the inherent necessity for keeping them out of view; they are not so showy as pictures, china, furniture, or even books; and they demand on the part of an amateur, desirous of accomplishing equally satisfactory results, a larger amount of study and caution. ”

“ 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 Æneid, which was unique in a second sense—in being the only lot of value among a mass of rubbish.
The auctioneer’s world is classifiable 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. ”

“ One misses the perspective, the art, the sentiment, so omnipresent in genuine antiquities. As a sort of grown-up child’s hobby-horse it might be well enough, I thought; but when it acquires its own literature and Society, and, before you can see completeness in the near distance, locks up the purchase-money of a considerable estate, that fantasy and myself take different turnings. ”

“ Whatever may be true of books, manuscripts, coins, or stamps, paintings and prints are the greatest snare and pitfall of all. I have frequently gazed with private misgivings, which I might have found it difficult to explain or justify, at a portrait in a broker’s shop, and as I passed and re-passed the place have speculated on the real history of the production. I know full well that the preposterous sums realised for the artist in fashion—at present it is Romney—are explainable on principles, which would make me hesitate to enter the field as a competitor under any circumstances. ”

“ The money of the ancients, more especially that of Greece, when one casts one’s eyes on its portraiture, symbols, legends, fabric, and costume, I treasure as everlastingly impressive testimony to the force of soil, climate, and social and religious conditions, and as the basis of every essay of any pretensions in collecting. The difficulties and dangers are unusually great, as the disparities of estimated value are great ”

“ The dealers ignore this aspect of the question; they merely concern themselves with what is rare or common, dear or cheap. I negotiated a thaler of Wallenstein; the price was rather high; but I agreed to take it on account of the celebrity of the man. The vendor had never heard of him; he knew it only as an uncommon piece! You purchase a small gold coin of ‘El Reschid’; the hand, which is held out to receive the money for it—not so much over the metal—is not conscious that it may have been actually through those of the striker, the hero of the Arabian Nights, nor forsooth does he care. ”

“ For it becomes clearly apparent that the costliest pieces are not the most powerful in their appeal to us on historical or artistic grounds. Remember that we have to take into account these points of interest: history, with which is closely embodied religious cult, biography, topography, and art. A thoroughly well-meaning dealer exclaims, if you challenge the quotation for some indifferent specimen of a not too remarkably executed tetradrachm or drachma:—‘But look at the rarity! the last one sold for so much.’ And I am sorry to say, that this plea too frequently prevails. ”

“ There is no problem in commerce or in morality more difficult of solution than that, which is involved in the question of right on the part of persons, who in the first place make it their study, and in the second their livelihood, to outstrip and outwit the rest of the world in a particular sphere of industry, to combine together for their own profit and the defeat of what is termed legitimate competition. ”

“ I have known very few persons in my time, who seemed thoroughly to understand what a fine coin was. It is not sufficient that it is well-preserved or even fleur de coin; for it may have been badly struck, or it may be damaged by a flaw or by the cleaner. It should be well struck, perfectly preserved, and unsophisticated. If there is a tone or patina, that should be pure and uniform.
The value and force of condition in coins are not fully recognisable, till one is fortunate enough to accumulate a body similar in style and rank. ”

“ Mr Pyne used to say that there were three prices for old books—the market, the fancy, and the drop one—and I imagine that his taste, if not his resources, led him to espouse the last in great measure, so that he never became master of many volumes of first-rate consequence. He told me that the rise in the figures for rare early literature at the Bright sale in 1845 drove some of the existing collectors out of the market. What would they think, if they were now among us, and witnessed £2900 given for two imperfect copies of Caxton’s Chaucer? ”

“ Whelan stands in due awe of my excruciating and almost outrageous passion for state, and looks upon me (with much good-nature) as a most difficult party to please and to fit. He is fully aware, how narrow my means are, and seldom tenders me, except as a compliment or for numismatic purposes, his grander bijoux. Yet in all my series there are some few, which I highly prize, and which came to me thence; and I may particularise a very rare British copper coin of Cunobeline, which brought £7, 17s. 6d. at the Montagu sale, but cost its former possessor £40, 10s. ”

“ It may not be, indeed is not, generally known, how wide a diversity of persons offer their possessions or acquisitions to the national library. There are great differences of opinion respecting the questions of rarity and value, and the authorities are most unconscionably plagued by a host of individuals of imperfect bibliographical attainments, who shoot parcels of old volumes in Great Russell Street in the expectation of a more or less rich harvest, in which they are apt to be more or less disappointed. ”

“ So that the Coin, rather even than the Book—not looking, of course, at the practical side—is the most manageable species of property, for supposing outlay to be a governing principle, all the other classes of objects of art are more or less [Pg 352] vertu; and certain books have of late become so through the entrance into the field of the Fortunatus type of bibliophile.
The diversity of paths is wonderfully great, whether the means of acquisition are abundant or scanty; and for either contingency, as regards extent, there is a plea and a defence. ”