Читать книгу The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections - A. Edward Newton - Страница 8

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THE true book-lover is usually loath to destroy an old book-catalogue. It would not be easy to give a reason for this, unless it is that no sooner has he done so than he has occasion to refer to it. Such catalogues reach me by almost every mail, and I while away many hours in turning over their leaves. Anatole France in his charming story, “The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard,” makes his dear old book-collector say, “There is no reading more easy, more fascinating, and more delightful than that of a catalogue”; and it is so, for the most part; but some catalogues annoy me exceedingly: those which contain long lists of books that are not books; genealogies; county (and especially town) histories, illustrated with portraits; obsolete medical and scientific books; books on agriculture and diseases of the horse. How it is that any one can make a living by vending such merchandise is beyond me—but so are most things.

Living, however, in the country, and going to town every day, I spend much time on the trains, and must have something to read besides newspapers—who was it who said that reading newspapers is a nervous habit?—and it is not always convenient to carry a book; so I usually have a few catalogues which I mark industriously, thus presenting a fine imitation of a busy man. One check means a book that I own, and I note with interest the prices; another, a book that I would like to have; while yet another indicates a book to which under no circumstances would I give a place on my shelves. When my library calls for a ridding up, these slim pamphlets are not discarded as they should be, but are stored in a closet, to be referred to when needed, until at last something must be done to make room for those that came to-day and those that will come to-morrow.

On one of these occasional house-clearings I came across a bundle of old catalogues which I have never had it in me to destroy. One of them was published in 1886, by a man I knew well years ago, Charles Hutt, of Clement’s Inn Gateway, Strand. Hutt himself has long since passed away; so has his shop, the Gateway; and, indeed, the Strand itself—his part of it, that is. I sometimes think that the best part of old London has disappeared. Need I say that I refer to Holywell Street and the Clare Market district which lay between the Strand and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which Dickens knew and described so well? Hutt in his day was a man of considerable importance. He was the first London bookseller to realize the direction and value of the American market. Had he lived, my friends Sabin and Spencer and Maggs would have had a serious rival.

All the old catalogues before me are alike in one important respect, namely, the uniformly low prices. From the standpoint of to-day the prices were absurdly low—or are those of to-day absurdly high? I, for one, do not think so. When a man puts pen to paper on the subject of the prices of rare books, he feels—at least I feel—that it is a silly thing to do—and yet we collectors have been doing it always, or almost always—to point out that prices have about reached top notch, and that the wise man will wait for the inevitable decline before he separates himself from his money.

Now, it is my belief that books, in spite of the high prices that they are bringing in the shops and at auction, have only just begun their advance, and that there is no limit to the prices they will bring as time goes on. The only way to guess the future is to study the past; and such study as I have been able to make leads me to believe that for the really great books the sky is the limit.

“The really great books!” What are they, and where are they? I am not sure that I know; they do not often come my way, nor, when they do, am I in a position to compete for them; but as I can be perfectly happy without an ocean-going yacht, contenting myself with a motor-boat, so can I make shift to get along without a Gutenberg Bible, without a first folio of Shakespeare, or any of the quartos, in short, sans any of those books which no millionaire’s library can be without. But this I will say, that if I could afford to buy them, I would pay any price for the privilege of owning them.

A man may be possessed of relatively small means and yet indulge himself in all the joys of collecting, if he will deny himself other things not so important to his happiness. It is a problem in selection, as Elia points out in his essay “Old China,” when a weighing for and against and a wearing of old clothes is recommended by his sister Bridget, if the twelve or sixteen shillings saved is to enable one to bring home in triumph an old folio. As a book-collector, Lamb would not take high rank; but he was a true book-lover, and the books he liked to read he liked to buy. And just here I may be permitted to record how I came across a little poem, in the manuscript of the author, which exactly voices his sentiments—and mine.

I was visiting Princeton not long ago, that beautiful little city, with its lovely halls and towers; and interested in libraries as I always am, had secured permission to browse at will among the collections formed by the late Laurence Hutton. After an inspection of his “Portraits in Plaster,”—a collection of death-masks, unique in this country or elsewhere—I turned my attention to his association books. It is a difficult lot to classify, and not of overwhelming interest; not to be compared with the Richard Waln Meirs collection of Cruikshank, which has just been bequeathed to the Library; but nothing which is a book is entirely alien to me, and the Hutton books, with their inscriptions from their authors, testifying to their regard for him and to his love of books, are well worth examination.

I had opened many volumes at random, and finally chanced upon Brander Matthews’s “Ballads of Books,” a little anthology of bookish poems, for many years a favorite of mine. Turning to the inscription, I found—what I found; but what interested me particularly was a letter from an English admirer, one Thomas Hutchinson, inclosing some verses, of which I made a copy without the permission of any one. I did not ask the librarian, for he might have referred the question to the trustees, or something; but I did turn to a speaking likeness of “Larry” that hung right over the bookcase and seemed to say, “Why, sure, fellow book-lover; pass on the torch, print anything you please.” And these are the verses:—

BALLADE OF A POOR BOOK-LOVER

I

Though in its stern vagaries Fate

A poor book-lover me decreed,

Perchance mine is a happy state—

The books I buy I like to read:

To me dear friends they are indeed,

But, howe’er enviously I sigh,

Of others take I little heed—

The books I read I like to buy.

II

My depth of purse is not so great

Nor yet my bibliophilic greed,

That merely buying doth elate:

The books I buy I like to read:

Still e’en when dawdling in a mead,

Beneath a cloudless summer sky,

By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed,

The books I read—I like to buy.

III

Some books tho’ tooled in style ornate,

Yet worms upon their contents feed,

Some men about their bindings prate—

The books I buy I like to read:

Yet some day may my fancy breed

My ruin—it may now be nigh—

They reap, we know, who sow the seed:

The books I read I like to buy.

ENVOY

Tho’ frequently to stall I speed,

The books I buy I like to read;

Yet wealth to me will never hie—

The books I read I like to buy.

Two things there are which go to make the price of a book—first the book itself, its scarcity, together with the urgency of the demand for it (a book may be unique and yet practically valueless, because of the fact that no one much cares to have it); and second, the plentifulness of money, or the ease with which its owner may have acquired his fortune. No one will suppose that, at the famous auction in London something over a hundred years ago, when Earl Spencer bid two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds for the famous Boccaccio, and the Marquis of Blandford added, imperturbedly, “ten,” and secured the prize—no one will suppose that either of the gentlemen had a scanty rent-roll.

In England, the days of the great private libraries are over. For generations, indeed for centuries, the English have had the leisure, the inclination, and the means to gratify their taste. They once searched the Continent for books and works of art, very much as we now go to England for them. They formed their libraries when books were plentiful and prices low. Moreover, there were fewer collectors than there are to-day. We are paying big prices—the English never sell except at a profit—but, all things considered, we are not paying more for the books than they are worth. There are probably now in England as many collectors as there ever were, but nevertheless the books are coming to this country; and while we may never be able to rival the treasures of the British Museum and the Bodleian, outside the great public libraries the important collections are now in this country, and will remain here.

And I am not sure how much longer the London dealers are going to retain their preëminence. We hear of New York becoming the centre of the financial world. It will in time become the centre of the bookselling world as well, the best market in which to buy and in which to sell. With the possible exception of Quaritch, George D. Smith has probably sold as many rare books as any man in the world; while Dr. Rosenbach, on the second floor of his shop in Philadelphia, has a stock of rare books unequaled by any other dealer in this country.

Ask any expert where the great books are, and you will be told, if you do not know already, of the wonders of Mr. Morgan’s collections; of how Mr. Huntington has bought one library after another until he has practically everything obtainable; of Mr. William K. Bixby’s manuscripts, of Mr. White’s collection of the Elizabethans, and of Mr. Folger’s Shakespeares.

There are as many tastes as there are collectors. Caxtons and incunabula of any sort are highly regarded; even the possession of a set of the Shakespeare folios makes a man a marked man, in spite of the fact that Henrietta Bartlett says they are not rare; but then, Miss Bartlett has been browsing on books rarer still, namely, the first quartos, of which there are of “Hamlet” two copies only, one in this country with a title-page, but lacking the last leaf, while the other copy, in the British Museum, has the last leaf but lacks the title-page; and “Venus and Adonis,” of the first eight editions of which only thirteen copies are known to exist. All of these are as yet in England, except one copy of the second edition, which is owned by the Elizabethan Club of Yale University. Of “Titus Andronicus” there is only one copy of the first printing, this in the library of H. C. Folger of New York. Surely no one will dispute Miss Bartlett’s statement that the quartos are rare indeed.

HENRY E. HUNTINGTON OF NEW YORK

A few years ago he conceived the idea of forming the greatest private library in the world. With the help of “G. D. S.” and assisted by a staff of able librarians, he has accomplished what he set out to do.

But why continue? Enough has been said: the point I want to make is that fifty years from now someone will be regretting that he was not present when a faultless first folio could have been had for the trifling sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, at which figure a dealer is now offering one. Or, glancing over a copy of “Book Prices Current” for 1918, bewail the time when presentation copies of Dickens could have been had for the trifling sum of a thousand dollars. Hush! I feel the spirit of prophecy upon me.

I sat with Harry Widener at Anderson’s auction rooms a few years ago, on the evening when George D. Smith, acting for Mr. Huntington, paid fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. No book had ever sold for so great a price, yet I feel sure that Mr. Huntington secured a bargain, and I told him so; but for the average collector such great books as these are mere names, as far above the ordinary man as the moon; and the wise among us never cry for them; we content ourselves with—something else.

In collecting, as in everything else, experience is the best teacher. Before we can gain our footing we must make our mistakes and have them pointed out to us, or, by reading, discover them for ourselves. I have a confession to make. Forty years ago I thought that I had the makings of a numismatist in me, and was for a time diligent in collecting coins. In order that they might be readily fastened to a panel covered with velvet, I pierced each one with a small hole, and was much chagrined when I was told that I had absolutely ruined the lot, which was worth, perhaps, ten dollars. This was not a high price to pay for the discovery I then made and noted, that it is the height of wisdom to leave alone anything of value which may come my way; to repair, inlay, insert, mount, frame, or bind as little as possible.

This is not to suggest that my library is entirely devoid of books in bindings. A few specimens of the good binders I have, but what I value most is a sound bit of straight-grained crimson morocco covering the “Poems of Mr. Gray” with one of the finest examples of fore-edge painting I have ever seen, representing Stoke Poges Church Yard, the scene of the immortal “Elegy.” I was much pleased when I discovered that this binding bore the stamp of Taylor & Hessey, a name I had always associated with first editions of Charles Lamb.

How many people have clipped signatures from old letters and documents, under the mistaken notion that they were collecting autographs. I happen to own the receipt for the copyright of the “Essays of Elia.” It was signed by Lamb twice, originally; one signature has been cut away. It is a precious possession as it is, but I could wish that the “collector” in whose hands it once was had not removed one signature for his “scrapbook”—properly so called. Nor is the race yet dead of those who, indulging a vicious taste for subscription books, think that they are forming a library. My coins I have kept as an ever-present reminder of the mistake of my early days. Luckily I escaped the subscription-book stage.

STOKE POGES CHURCH A fine example of fore-edge painting

What we collect depends as well upon our taste as upon our means, for, given zeal and intelligence, it is surprising how soon one acquires a collection of—whatever it may be—which becomes a source of relaxation and instruction; and after a little one becomes, if not exactly expert, at least wise enough to escape obvious pitfalls. When experience directs our efforts the chief danger is past. But how much there is to know! I never leave the company of a man like Dr. Rosenbach, or A. J. Bowden, or the late Luther Livingston, without feeling a sense of hopelessness coming over me. What wonderful memories these men have! how many minute “points” about books they must have indexed, so to speak, in their minds! And there are collectors whose knowledge is equally bewildering. Mr. White, or Beverly Chew, for example; and Harry Widener, who, had he lived, would have set a new and, I fear, hopeless standard for us.

Not knowing much myself, I have found it wise not to try to beat the expert; it is like trying to beat Wall Street—it cannot be done. How can an outsider with the corner of his mind compete with one who is playing the game ever and always? The answer is simple—he can’t; and he will do well not to try. It is better to confess ignorance and rely upon the word of a reliable dealer, than to endeavor to put one over on him. This method may enable a novice to buy a good horse, although such has not been my experience. I think it was Trollope who remarked that not even a bishop could sell a horse without forgetting that he was a bishop. I think I would rather trust a bookseller than a bishop.

And speaking of booksellers, they should be regarded as Hamlet did his players, as the abstract and brief chronicles of the time; and it would be well to remember that their ill report of you while you live is much worse than a bad epitaph after you are dead. Their stock in trade consists, not only in the books they have for sale, but in their knowledge. This may be at your disposal, if you use them after your own honor and dignity; but to live, they must sell books at a profit, and the delightful talk about books which you so much enjoy must, at least occasionally, result in a sale. Go to them for information as a possible customer, and you will find them, as Dr. Johnson said, generous and liberal-minded men; but use them solely as walking encyclopædias, and you may come to grief.

I have on the shelves over yonder a set of Foxe’s “Martyrs” in three ponderous volumes, which I seldom have occasion to refer to; but in one volume is pasted a clipping from an old newspaper, telling a story of the elder Quaritch. A young lady once entered his shop in Piccadilly and requested to see the great man. She wanted to know all that is to be known of this once famous book, all about editions and prices and “points,” of which there are many. Finally, after he had answered questions readily enough for some time, the old man became wise, and remarked, “Now, my dear, if you want to know anything else about this book, my fee will be five guineas.” The transaction was at an end. Had Quaritch been a lawyer and the young lady a stranger, her first question would have resulted in a request for a retainer.

But I am a long time in coming to my old catalogues. Let me take one at random, and opening it at the first page, pick out the first item which meets my eye. Here it is:—

Alken, Henry—Analysis of the Hunting Field. Woodcuts and colored illustrations. First edition, royal 8vo. original cloth, uncut. Ackerman, 1846. £2.

It was the last work but one of a man who is now “collected” by many who, like myself, would as soon think of riding a zebra as a hunter. My copy cost me $100, while my “Life of Mytton,” third edition, I regarded as a bargain at $50. Had I been wise enough to buy it five and thirty years ago, I would have paid about as many shillings for it.

With sporting books in mind it is quite natural to turn to Surtees. His “Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities” is missing from this catalogue, but here are a lot of them. “Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour” in full levant morocco, extra, by Tout, for three guineas, and “Ask Mamma” in cloth, uncut, for £2 15s. “Handley Cross” is priced at fifty shillings, and “Facey Romford’s Hounds” at two pounds—all first editions, mind you, and for the most part just as you want them, in the original cloth, uncut. My advice would be to forget these prices of yesteryear, and if you want a set of the best sporting novels ever written (I know a charming woman who has read every one of them) go at once to them that sell.

But while we are thinking of colored-plate books, let us see what it would have cost us to secure a copy of À Beckett’s “Comic History of Rome.” Here it is, “complete in numbers as originally published,” four guineas; while a “Comic History of England,” two volumes, bound by Riviere from the original parts, in full red levant morocco, extra, cost five guineas. I have tried to read these histories—it cannot be done. It is like reading the not very funny book of an old-time comic opera (always excepting Gilbert’s), which depended for its success on the music and the acting—as these books depend on their illustrations by Leech. It is on account of the humor of their wonderfully caricatured portraits of historic personages, in anachronistic surroundings, that these books live and deserve to live. What could be better than the landing of Julius Cæsar on the shores of Albion, from the deck of a channel steamer of Leech’s own time?

Did you observe that the “History of Rome” was bound up from the original parts? This, according to modern notions, is a mistake. Parts should be left alone—severely alone, I should say. I have no love for books “in parts,” and as this is admitted heresy, I should perhaps explain. As is well known, some of the most desired of modern books, “Pickwick” and “Vanity Fair” for example, were so published, and particulars as to one will indicate the reason for my prejudice against all books “in parts.”

In April, 1916, in New York, the Coggeshall Dickens collection was dispersed, and a copy of “Pickwick” in parts was advertised, no doubt correctly, as the most nearly perfect copy ever offered at a public sale. Two full pages of the catalogue were taken up in a painstaking description of the birthmarks of this famous book. It was, like most of the other great novels, brought out “twenty parts in nineteen,”—that is, the last number was a double number—and with a page of the original manuscript, it brought $5350. When a novel published less than a century ago brings such a price, it must be of extraordinary interest and rarity. Was the price high? Decidedly not! There are said to be not ten such copies in existence. It was in superb condition, and manuscript pages of “Pickwick” do not grow on trees. All the details which go to make up a perfect set can be found in Eckel’s “First Editions of Charles Dickens.”

Briefly, in order to take high rank it is necessary that each part should be clean and perfect and should have the correct imprint and date; it should have the proper number of illustrations by the right artist; and these plates must be original and not reëtched, and almost every plate has certain peculiarities which will mislead the unwary. But this is not all. Each part carried certain announcements and advertisements. These must be carefully looked to, for they are of the utmost value in determining whether it be an early or a later issue of the first edition. An advertisement of “Rowland and Son’s Toilet Preparations” where “Simpson’s Pills” should be, might lead to painful discussion.

But it is difficult to say whether the possession of a copy of “Pickwick” like the Coggeshall copy is an asset or a liability. It must be handled with gloves; the pea-green paper wrappers are very tender, and not everyone who insists on seeing your treasures knows how to treat such a pamphlet; and, horror of horrors! a “part” might get stacked up with a pile of “Outlooks” on the library table, or get mislaid altogether. So on the whole I am inclined to leave such books to those whose knowledge of bibliography is more exact than mine, and who would not regard the loss of a “part” as an irretrievable disaster. My preference is to get, when I can, books bound in cloth or boards “as issued.” They are sufficiently expensive and can be handled with greater freedom. My library is, in a sense, a circulating library: my books move around with me, and a bound book, in some measure at least, takes care of itself. Having said all of which, I looked upon that Coggeshall “Pickwick,” and lusted after it.

There is, however, an even greater copy awaiting a purchaser at Rosenbach’s. It is a presentation copy in parts, the only one known to exist. Each of the first fourteen parts has Dickens’s autograph inscription, “Mary Hogarth from hers most affectionately,” variously signed—in full, “Charles Dickens,” with initials, or “The Editor.” After the publication of the fourteenth part Miss Hogarth, his sister-in-law, a young girl in her eighteenth year, died suddenly, and the shock of her death was so great that Dickens was obliged to discontinue work upon “Pickwick” for two months. No doubt this is the finest “Pickwick” in the world. It has all the “points” and to spare—and the price, well, only a very rich or a very wise man could buy it.

“Blake being unable to find a publisher for his songs, Mrs. Blake went out with half a crown, all the money they had in the world, and of that laid out 1s. 10d. on the simple materials necessary for setting in practice the new revelation. Upon that investment of 1s. 10d. he started what was to prove a principal means of support through his future life. … The poet and his wife did everything in making the book—writing, designing, printing, engraving, everything except manufacturing the paper. The very ink, or color rather, they did make.”—Gilchrist.

But to return to my catalogue. Here is Pierce Egan’s “Boxiana,” five volumes, 8vo, as clean as new, in the original boards, uncut—that’s my style—and the price, twelve pounds; three hundred and fifty dollars would be a fair price to-day. And here is the “Anecdotes of the Life and Transactions of Mrs. Margaret Rudd,” a notorious woman who just escaped hanging for forgery, of whom Dr. Johnson once said that he would have gone to see her, but that he was prevented from such a frolic by his fear that it would get into the newspapers. I have been looking for it in vain for years; here it is, in new calf, price nine shillings, and Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey,” first edition, in contemporary calf, for thirty.

Let us turn to poetry. Arnold, Matthew, not interesting; nothing, it chances, by Blake; his “Poetical Sketches,” 1783, has always been excessively rare, only a dozen or so copies are known, and “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” while not so scarce, is much more desired. This lovely book was originally “Songs of Innocence” only; “Experience” came later, as it always does. Of all the books I know, this is the most interesting. It is in very deed “W. Blake, his book,” the author being as well the designer, engraver, printer, and illuminator of it.

To attempt in a paragraph any bibliographical account of the “Songs” is as impossible as to give the genealogy of a fairy. In the ordinary sense the book was never published. Blake sold it to such of his friends as would buy, at prices ranging from thirty shillings to two guineas. Later, to help him over a difficulty (and his life was full of difficulties), they paid him perhaps as much as twenty pounds and in return got a copy glowing with colors and gold. Hence no two copies are exactly alike. It is one of the few books of which a man fortunate enough to own any copy may say, “I like mine best.” The price to-day for an average copy is about two thousand dollars.

I can see clearly now that in order to be up to date there must be a new edition of this book every minute. I had just suggested $2000 as the probable price of the “Songs” when a priced copy of the Linnell Catalogue of his Blake Collection reached me. This, the last and greatest Blake collection in England, was sold at auction on March 15, 1918, and accustomed as I am to high prices I was bewildered as I turned its pages. There were two copies of the “Songs”; each brought £735. The “Poetical Sketches” was conspicuous by its absence, while the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” was knocked down for £756. The drawings for Dante’s “Divina Commedia,” sixty-eight in all, brought the amazing price of £7665. And these prices will be materially advanced before the booksellers are done with them, as we shall see when their catalogues arrive. We come back to earth with a thud after this lofty flight, in the course of which we seem to have been seeing visions and dreaming dreams, much as Blake himself did.

“A LEAF FROM AN UNOPENED VOLUME” An unpublished manuscript in the autograph of Charlotte Brontë, written in microscopical characters on sixteen pages measuring 3½ by 4½ inches; in a wrapper of druggist’s blue paper

Continuing to “beat the track of the alphabet,” we reach Brontë and note that now scarce item, “Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,” the genuine first edition printed by Hasler in 1846, for Aylott & Jones, before the title-page bore the Smith-Elder imprint; price two pounds five. Walter Hill’s last catalogue has a Smith-Elder copy at $12.50, but the right imprint now makes a difference of several hundred dollars. About a year ago Edmund D. Brooks, of Minneapolis, was offering Charlotte Brontë’s own copy of the book, with the Aylott and Jones imprint, with some manuscript notes which made it especially interesting to Brontë collectors, the most important of whom, by the way, is my lifelong friend, H. H. Bonnell of Philadelphia, whose unrivaled Brontë collection is not unworthy of an honored place in the Brontë Museum at Haworth. I called his attention to it, but he already had a presentation copy to Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law rhymer.

Burns: the first Edinburgh edition, for a song; no Kilmarnock edition—that fine old item which every collector wants has always been excessively scarce; and in this connection let me disinter a good story of how one collector secured a copy. The story is told of John Allan, from whom, as a collector, I am descended by the process of clasping hands. My old friend, Ferdinand Dreer, for more than sixty years a distinguished collector in Philadelphia, was an intimate friend of Allan’s, and passed on to me the collecting legends he had received from him. Allan was an old Scotchman, living in New York when the story begins, who by his industry had acquired a small fortune, much of which he spent in the purchase of books. He collected the books of his period and extra-illustrated them. Lives of Mary Queen of Scots, and Byron; Dibdin, of course, and Americana; but Burns was his ruling passion. He had the first Edinburgh edition, and longed for the Kilmarnock—as who does not? He had a standing order for a copy up to seven guineas, which in those days was considered a fair price, and finally one was reported to him from London at eight. He ordered it out, but it was sold before his letter arrived, and he was greatly disappointed. Some time afterward a friend from the old country visited him, and as he was sailing, asked if he could do anything for him at home. “Yes,” said Allan, “get me, if you possibly can, the Kilmarnock edition of Burns.” His friend was instructed as to its scarcity and the price he might have to pay for it. On his return his friend, engaged as usual in his affairs, discovered that one of his workmen was drunk. In those days it was not considered good form to get drunk except on Saturday night. How could he get drunk in the middle of the week? Where did he get the money? The answer was that by pawning some books ten shillings had been raised. “And what books had you?” “Oh, Burns and some others; every Scotchman has a copy of Burns.” Then, suddenly remembering his old friend in New York, he asked, “What sort of a copy was it?” “The old Kilmarnock,” was the reply. Not to make the story too long, the pawn-ticket was secured for a guinea, the books redeemed, and the Kilmarnock Burns passed into Allan’s possession.

After his death his books were sold at auction (1864). This was during our Civil War, and several times the sale was suspended owing to the noise of a passing regiment in the street. Notwithstanding that times were not propitious for book-sales, his friends were astonished at the prices realized: the Burns fetched $106. It was probably a poor copy. A generation or two ago not as much care was paid to condition as now. Very few uncut copies are known. One is owned by a man as shouldn’t. Another is in the Burns Museum in Ayrshire, which cost the Museum Trustees a thousand pounds; the Canfield, which was purchased by Harry Widener for six thousand dollars, and the Van Antwerp copy, which, at the sale of his collection in London in 1907, brought seven hundred pounds; but much bibliographical water has gone over the dam since 1907, and for some reason the Van Antwerp books, with the exception of one or two items, did not bring as good prices as they should have done. They were sold at an unfortunate moment and perhaps at the wrong place. In Walter Hill’s current catalogue there is a Kilmarnock Burns, in an old binding, which looks very cheap to me at $2600. At the Allan sale an Eliot Bible brought the then enormous sum of $825. Supposing an Eliot Bible were obtainable to-day, it would bring, no doubt, five thousand dollars, perhaps more.

This is a long digression. There are other desired volumes besides Burns. Here is a “Paradise Lost,” perhaps not so fine a copy as Sabin is now offering for four hundred pounds; but the price is only thirty pounds; and this reminds me that in Beverly Chew’s copy, an exceptionally fine one, as all the books of that fastidious collector are, there is an interesting note made by a former owner to this effect: “This is the first edition of this book and has the first title-page. It is worth nearly ten pounds and is rising in value. 1857.”

Alphabetically speaking, it is only a step from Milton to Moore, George. Here is his “Flowers of Passion,” for which I paid fifteen dollars ten or more years ago—priced at half a crown.

But let us take up another catalogue, one which issued from the world-famous shop in Piccadilly, Quaritch’s. Forty years ago Quaritch thought it almost beneath his dignity as a bookseller to offer for sale any except the very rarest books in English; very much as, up to within the last few years, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge did not think it worth their while to refer more than casually to the glories of English literature. When we open an old Quaritch catalogue, we step out of this age into another, which leads me to observe how remarkable is the change in taste which has come over the collecting world in the last fifty years. Formerly it was the fashion to collect extensively books of which few among us now know anything: books in learned or painful languages, on Philosophy or Religion, as well as those which, for the want of a better name, we call “Classics”; books frequently spoken of, but seldom read.

Such books, unless very valuable indeed, no longer find ready buyers. We have come into our great inheritance. We now dip deep in our “well of English undefyled”; Aldines and Elzevirs have gone out of fashion. Even one of the rarest of them, “Le Pastissier François,” is not greatly desired; and I take it that the reason for this change is chiefly due to the difference in the type of men who are prominent among the buyers of fine books to-day. Formerly the collector was a man, not necessarily with a liberal education, but with an education entirely different from that which the best educated among us now receive. I doubt if there are in this country to-day half a dozen important bookbuyers who can read Latin with ease, let alone Greek. Of French, German, and Italian some of us have a working knowledge, but most of us prefer to buy books which we can enjoy without constant reference to a dictionary.

The world is the college of the book-collector of to-day. Many of us are busy men of affairs, familiar, it may be, with the price of oil, or steel, or copper, or coal, or cotton, or, it may be, with the price of the “shares” of all of these and more. Books are our relaxation. We make it a rule not to buy what we cannot read. Some of us indulge the vain hope that time will bring us leisure to acquaint ourselves fully with the contents of all our books. We want books written in our own tongue, and most of us have some pet author or group of authors, or period, it may be, in which we love to lose ourselves and forget the cares of the present. One man may have a collection of Pope, another of Goldsmith, another of Lamb, and so on. The drama has its votaries who are never seen in a theatre; but look into their libraries and you will find everything, from “Ralph Roister Doister” to the “Importance of Being Earnest.” And note that these collections are formed by men who are not students in the accepted sense of the word, but who, in the course of years, have accumulated an immense amount of learning. Clarence S. Bement is a fine example of the collector of to-day, a man of large affairs with the tastes and learning of a scholar. It has always seemed to me that professors of literature and collectors do not intermingle as they should. They might learn much from each other. I yield to no professor in my passion for English literature. My knowledge is deficient and inexact, but what I lack in learning I make up in love.

But we are neglecting the Quaritch catalogue. Let us open it at random, as old people used to open their Bibles, and govern their conduct by the first text which met their eyes. Here we are: “Grammatica Graeca,” Milan, 1476; the first edition of the first book printed in Greek; one of six known copies. So it is possible for only six busy men to recreate themselves after a hard day’s work with a first Greek Grammar. Too bad! Here is another: Macrobius, “The Saturnalia”—“a miscellany of criticism and antiquities, full of erudition and very useful, similar in their plan to the ‘Noctes Atticæ’ of Aulus Gellius.” No doubt, but as dead as counterfeit money. Here is another: Boethius, “De Consolatione Philosophiæ.” Boethius! I seem to have heard of him. Who was he? Not in “Who’s Who,” obviously. Let us look elsewhere. Ah! “Famous philosopher and official in the Court of Theodoric, born about 475 A.D., put to death without trial about 524.” They had a short way with philosophers in those days. If William the Second to None in Germany had adopted this method with his philosophers, the world might not now be in such a plight.

Note: A college professor to whom I was in confidence showing these notes the other day, remarked, “I suggest that you soft-pedal that Boethius business, my boy.” (How we middle-aged men love to call each other boys; very much as young boys flatter themselves with the phrase, “old man.”) “The ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ was the best seller for a thousand years or so. Boethius’s reputation is not in the making, as yours is, and when yours is made, it will in all probability not last as long.” I thought I detected a slight note of sarcasm in this, but I may have been mistaken.