Collection

“ It is pleasant, in looking over a geological collection, to think that every stone we see has given a pleasure. A collector of Caxtons, a collector of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards corrected ”

“ There is a set of collectors, alas! whose inclinations are not virtuous. The most famous of them, a Frenchman, observed that his own collection of bad books was unique. That of an English rival, he admitted, was respectable,—“mais milord se livre à des autres préoccupations!” He thought a collector’s whole heart should be with his treasures. ”

“ A new world of commerce and machinery, having slain and forgotten a past race of artist craftsmen, makes clumsy atonement by sweeping together the fragments of their work and calling the collection a museum. From the four corners of the earth these relics have been gathered. Our hungry minds are bidden to make choice according to fancy, for here is variety of food! ”

“ The elegant trifles of literature, the wild strains of fancy, the pleasing amusements of harmless wit, shall, therefore, be considered as necessary to our collection. Nor shall we omit researches into antiquity, explanation of coins or inscriptions, disquisitions on controverted history, conjectures on doubtful geography, or any other of those petty works upon which learned ingenuity is sometimes employed. ”

“ A nucleus is soon formed, and, that accomplished, the collector is in the toils of his hobby, and unless he is an utter failure, one of those hopeless and helpless folk who can never learn to discriminate between the true and the false, he speedily acquires a collection which has not only provided him with a delightful recreation but is a source of considerable pride. ”

“ One humble but time-honored method, which has proved useful in every popular movement, recorded in history, is that of "taking up a collection." People may laugh at it and the collections be small but we must not be deterred by ridicule nor discouraged by the apparent insignificance of the returns. ”

“ Who has not in his ears the hum of many lyrics heard by him in his childhood [Pg vi] —from mother, or nurse, or some old crooning dame at the fireside—which are to be found in no collection, and which are now to himself but like a distant, unformed sound? All our collectors, whilst smiling in triumph over the pearls which they have brought up and borne to the shore, lament the multitude of precious things irrecoverably buried in the depths of oblivion. ”

“ It will afford the reader much pleasure if he should form a collection of old specimens and frame them around his walls, for then he will fully appreciate their charm. In examining his own collection the author has spent many a pleasant hour, for these gaily coloured chintzes are among the most articulate relics which have come down to us. They breathe the spirit, the feelings, and the ideals of the periods wherein they were made. They show lucidly the various changes in fashion and the rise and wane in the popularity of certain forms of decoration. ”

“ Like the possessor of a splendid collection, who is indifferent to or turns away from common pictures, we have a selector gallery in our own minds. In this sense, the knowledge of art is its own exceeding great reward. ”

“ Old books, a picture or two, some worthless table ornaments, innumerable articles which could not be described or classed except as odds and ends, form a portion of the collection which goes on accumulating, and which has no ultimate destination. ”

“ If, therefore, the collection fails to meet the full requirements of the anthropologist, it must be remembered that the obstacles in the way of realizing his ideal of a perfect collection are insurmountable. ”

“ The collection as a whole will afford excellent amusement for the fireside, will prove a splendid store-house from which to draw material for anecdote or illustration, is valuable for public reading or entertainment, and will be found enjoyable reading for private perusal, while as a cure for an attack of the blues it is unfailing. ”

“ To collect early bindings is a noble hobby, but one which is, and ever must remain, the hobby of a few wealthy collectors, whereas the collection of ex-libris was, until quite recently, a taste requiring patience and skill rather than a well-filled purse. ”

“ It is not necessary to spend words here upon describing his activity as a collector or his munificence as a patron of letters. We shall run less risk of exaggeration if we draw from so unemotional a document as the inventory of his books, made at his decease. A short survey of the collection, if dry, will at least afford some basis of solid fact. ”

“ I should advise the young collector who wishes to make sure of success not to be too catholic in his tastes at first, but to confine his attention to a single period and a single school. I should also advise him to make from time to time a careful catalogue of what he buys, and to preserve it even after he has weeded out certain items. He will then be able to make a clear comparative estimate of the importance and value of his collection, and by studying one species at a time, to become thoroughly conversant with what it can teach him. ”

“ It is a wonderful and magnificent thing that the gathering of books in this country is in the hands of leaders of her industries, the so-called business kings, and not in the hands of college professors and great scholars. The latter, generally, in forming a collection make a sad mess of it. The instinct of the collector, the heluo librorum of Cicero, is entirely different from that of the scholar. ”

“ They were at their best strolling through some exhibit or preliminary view of an art collection offered for sale, when all their inmost convictions of what was valuable and enduring in art would come to the surface. ”

“ It would much conduce to the magnanimity and honour of man, if a collection were made of the extraordinaries of human nature, principally out of the reports of history; that is, what is the last and highest pitch to which man’s nature, of itself, hath ever reached, in all the perfection of mind and body. ”

“ All collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the exercise of serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting. ”

“ He considers it as a museum, having evidently in view a collection of curiosities, the thing above all others a National Gallery should not be. “Then, again, as every collection has in view some definite purpose, the systematic fulfilment of that purpose on the most enlarged basis—in other words, systematic arrangement, and a wholeness or completeness in relation to its particular purpose, seem necessary to the idea of a national collection.” Words, words, words! all to envelop a commonplace truth that no one need be told. ”

“ Such a collection is ten times more interesting than the ordinary boy's collection of stamps, or crests, or autographs, which any ass can accomplish by sitting at home and bothering other people to give. ”

“ Societies now exist in every part of England, who will be happy to exchange their duplicates for yours. As your collection increased in importance, old members abroad would gladly contribute foreign curiosities to your stock. Neighbouring gentlemen would send you valuable objects which had been lumbering their houses, uncared for, because they stood alone, and formed no part of a collection; and I, for one, would be happy to add something from the fauna and flora of those moorlands, where I have so long enjoyed the wonders of nature ”

“ While it is traditional to add a reminder that various unnamed people contributed to a publication, it is imperative to state here that numerous people are essential to the collection, conservation, preservation, and exhibition of museum objects. Without them no collection would survive and be made available to those who come to study, admire or just enjoy these objects. ”

“ Pewter in a state of dilapidation is no exception to the rule governing the forming of any collection of quality, and no matter what its antecedents, it should present good form to be worthy a place in the worth-while collection, if it is to be regarded{52} with other than the sentiment bestowed upon a chipping from the Great Pyramid or a bottle of dust from Pompeii. ”

“ Another collector with whom I am personally acquainted has read this chapter through at my express request, and consequently cannot reasonably say that I have endeavoured to question the soundness of his discretion behind his back. He accumulates books with a history. If a book has no history, he will have none of it. In his library are many volumes which I must confess I have a great regard for, but which I know can never be mine, for each is unique, and the whole collection is destined for a public museum in the end. ”

“ A collection, therefore, for cultural purposes should contain, as we have said above, casts of the finest sculpture of the different periods not shown in rooms where there are originals, and period rooms or rooms in which the different arts produced are shown in their relation to one another, and picture galleries containing such pictures as will not fit in with the arrangement of the rooms by period. ”

“ A description of a museum is by no means an easy task, even in the case of a small collection; but, when the number of specimens is as large as in the present instance, it is only possible to enumerate a very small proportion of the many treasures. ”

“ Into this class fall paintings and drawings of all sorts, gems, sword-guards, lacquer, and ivories, and a thousand other objects of art. In the second, where duplicates have been produced in large numbers, the collector has a new ideal—to complete a collection that contains examples of every variety of the subject, be they artistic:—coins, etchings, or engravings of any sort; natural objects:—butterflies, or crystals, or things which belong neither to nature nor art:—postage-stamps, the majority of book-plates, and other trifles so numerous that even a bare list might extend to pages. ”

“ There is now to be a deep and solemn consultation, as when two ambassadors are going over a heavy protocol from a third. It happened to me to see [32] one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless errand of inspection to a reputed collection; he was hot and indignant "A collection," he sputtered forth—"that a collection!—mere rubbish, sir—irredeemable trash. What do you think, sir?—a set of the common quarto edition of the Delphini classics, copies of Newton's works and Bacon's works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth—nothing better, I declare to you: and to call that a collection!" ”

“ The collection is also helpful in dating type specimens that do not have specific associations with persons and dates. Perhaps even more interesting than the gamut of styles that the collection presents is the panorama of deeds, events, and persons that our forebears considered worthy of recognition. Silver presentation pieces were awarded to persons in almost every walk of life––to military men, to peace-loving Indians, and to men who achieved success in politics and agriculture. ”

“ I was, in fact, in the reading-room of the great British Library, an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled,” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought. ”

“ The collection is most remarkable, even when we remember the large sums of money, and the patience and ability, which have for many years been focussed on its formation. It will one day be deposited in the museum at Chantilly, near Paris, where it will be at the disposal of those who wish to study its contents. ”

“ The collector, as a rule, sets out in the beginning with little knowledge and with no very definite notion of what he intends to collect. If he is to profit by his efforts or is to end by having an interesting group of possessions, he must before long define for himself the idea of a collection and the conception which his own is to express. He may decide to obtain at least one representative example of the work of every important artist ”

“ The collection, like the works mentioned earlier, is of unknown authorship, and is plainly the product of many men through many generations. But the style gives evidence of a finished literary tradition; the nameless and numerous contributors appear to have been men of books rather than the simple story-tellers of an age of oral delivery. ”

“ Sentiment was strong in the early nineteenth century, and among the love tokens of that day, chiefly the work of amateurs, some very beautiful and unique curios were produced. These, too, have come down to the collector of the twentieth century, and help him to secure specimens representing every decade, so that in a large collection, carefully selected, the slow and yet sure progress made in the fine arts, and the improvement in the ornamental surroundings in the home, is made clear. ”

“ The scope of the collection may be seen by a glance at the catalogue, whose departments embrace architecture, art-study, anatomy, biography, book-illustration, cathedrals and churches, costumes, decorative, domestic, and industrial art, heraldry, painting, and picturesque art. ”

“ Isolated objects are of little value; a collector may accumulate a number of amusing and elegant specimens, but it is only by combination, concentration, and comparison, that an entertaining collection can be converted into an instructive museum, and Archaeology erected into a science. ”