Part 8 (1/2)
Take, for example, Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, 1621; the first folio Shakespeare, 1623; Milton's _Lycidas_, _Poems_, _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, in the _editiones principes_; the works of the minor poets, Suckling, Carew, s.h.i.+rley, Davenant; Walton's _Angler_, 1653; Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, 1678; the Kilmarnock Burns, 1786; and many first editions of Wordsworth, Lamb, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Tennyson.
Every season swells the roll of existing copies. On the contrary, Spenser's _Faery Queen_, Books i.-iii., 1590, and Milton's _Comus_, 1634, are authentically scarce, the former especially so in fine state; and the same may be predicated of Lovelace's _Lucasta_ (the two parts complete). But the real meaning of the rarity of the other books above specified--and the list might be readily enlarged--is that, although the copies are numerous enough, the taste for capital productions has increased within a few years out of proportion to the recovery of new or unknown examples.
We are finding frequent occasion to cite works of foreign origin, which are more or less habitually taken up into our own collections by miscellaneous or general buyers; and there is among these one which forms a signal ill.u.s.tration of the fallacy of uniqueness. It is the Gutenberg or Mazarin Bible. Scarcely a library of the first rank occurs here or elsewhere without offering a copy; and we are persuaded that at least forty must exist, either on paper or on vellum, throughout the world. The book occupies the same bibliographical position as the first folio Shakespeare, the first edition of Walton's _Angler_, and the first Burns; it tends to grow commoner, yet, so far, not cheaper.
There are other books which, as it may be more readily understood, are rare without being valuable, and of which such of the commercial world as has it not in its power to expend large amounts on individual purchases, naturally seeks to make the most. It was almost amusing, some time since, to note the entries in some of the booksellers' lists under ”Black Letter,” ”Gothic Letter,” ”Rare Law,” ”Curious Early English,” and so forth; and the names of Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, and other ancient printers were freely introduced to help off a rather lame foreigner, who was alleged to have been professionally a.s.sociated with one or the other of them. If the bookseller knows the book-buyer, it is highly requisite that the latter should study what he is going to buy.
Ill.u.s.trations are not wanting of the loss of untold treasure through a medium more fatal than any other--through exhaustive popular demand.
Entire and large impressions of books, pamphlets, and broadsides have succ.u.mbed, not to the sacrilegious hand of the spoiler, but to the too affectionate, and not too cleanly, fingering of the mult.i.tude of men and women who read and then cast the sources of entertainment away. If we remember that certain of the Bibles ordered to be kept in churches for general use chiefly survive in crumbling fragments, or at best woefully dilapidated copies, we cease to be surprised at the easy prey which more fugitive compositions have formed to a succession of careless and indifferent owners. The illiterate inscriptions on many books, which have thus become valuable, point to the hands through which they have pa.s.sed, and tell a story of prolonged neglect, too often culminating in appropriation to domestic requirements.
It is, anyhow, perfectly undeniable that of the miscellaneous early literature of all countries, the proportion which exists is in very numerous instances no more than a simple voucher for the work having pa.s.sed the press. A single copy has formerly occurred or occurs fortuitously, and no duplicate can be cited. This is the position of thousands of volumes, and of many it is the chief merit.
Infinitely numerous are the strange tales, sometimes drawing up the moisture into the mouth, sometimes sufficient to make one's hair rigid, of books of price hung up for use at country railway stations, or employed by a tobacconist to wrap up his pennyworths of snuff, or converted by a lady of quality into curl-papers. What has become of the Caxtons sent over to the Netherlands in the last century by a confiding English gentleman their owner, for the inspection of a nameless Mynheer his friend, who, when he was invited to restore them, lamented their disappearance in a fire?
There was beyond a question an epoch, and a prolonged one, when the mill shared with household demands an immense quota of the cast-off literature of these islands. One of our early collectors of Caxtons, Ratcliff, whose books were sold in 1776, acquired his taste (one in a thousand) through his vocation as a chandler or storekeeper in the Borough. We may surmise how his Caxtons came to him, and at what rates!
These episodes appertain to the romantic and speculative aspect of book-collecting; but they really have another side. Here, at a time when the first-fruits of the English press were unregarded, we find a man of Ratcliff's status acquiring thirty Caxtons. He lived just to see a rise in their value, yet a very slight and fluctuating one; for at last he went into the open market and purchased a few lots at West's auction in 1773, and the Caxtons thus obtained re-sold after Ratcliff's death in one or two cases at a lower rate. He had inflated the market; the compet.i.tors were not more than two or three. But the time was soon to come when such persons could no longer afford to hold this kind of property--when it became fas.h.i.+onable for dukes and earls and men of large property to make our early typography an object of research; and so it continued down to the present time, till the agricultural depression arrived to create another organic change, and to direct these, as well as other costly luxuries, into new channels.
Not the chandler, or the Government official, or the private gentleman of modest means, but the great manufacturer or the merchant-prince entered on the scene, and wrested from the landowner his long-cherished possessions. The West and Ratcliff sales (1773-76) were the two golden opportunities, however, of which the advisers of George III. wisely availed themselves to purchase volumes at what we have been taught to consider nominal prices; and there they are in the British Museum to-day, a recollection of one of the better traits in the character of that prince. When we say that the market for Caxtons in 1776 was beginning to expand, we mean that the day for getting such things for a few pence or a s.h.i.+lling or two had gone by. Here, for example, are some of the quotations from the Ratcliff auction:--
s. d.
Chronicles of Englande, fine copy, 1480 5 5 0 Doctrinal of Sapyence, 1489 8 8 0 The Boke called Cathon, 1483 5 5 0 Tullius de Senectute, in Englyshe, 1481 14 0 0 The Game and Playe of Chesse 16 0 0 The Boke of Jason 5 10 0 Legenda Aurea; or, the Golden Legend, 1483 9 15 0
These figures make even some of those in the West auction, 1773, appear by comparison rather extravagant. For his Majesty's agent at the latter gave as much as 14 for the romance of _Paris and Vienne_, from the Caxton press, 1485. True, it seems to be unique, and might to-day require its purchaser, if it were for sale, to have 500 in his pocket or at his bank to secure it. Yet strange events still continue to happen from time to time. Not Caxtons nor Shakespeares, but excellent books which command prices in the open market, are yet occasionally given away.
A case occurred in Lincolns.h.i.+re about a year ago, when a library of some 2500 volumes was sold by an intelligent provincial auctioneer _al fresco_ in the dogdays, and put up in bundles, nearly all of which were knocked down at the first bid--_threepence_. Say, 150 lots at 3d.
per lot = 1 17s. 6d. for the whole. There must have been an _entente cordiale_ among those in attendance, the gentleman in the rostrum inclusive.
These instances of misdirection, which have been in times past more numerous than now, although two of the most recent and most signal have occurred in the same county (Lincolns.h.i.+re), inevitably tend to the destruction of copies, and so far ill.u.s.trate our remarks on the causes of the gradual disappearance of books during former periods.
There are, however, circ.u.mstances under which prices are depressed by collusion, as where a first folio Shakespeare was knocked done for 20 in an auction-room not five hundred miles from Fleet Street; or by an accident, as when the original _Somers Tracts_, in thirty folio volumes, comprising unique _Americana_, fetched _bona fide_ under the hammer only 61. A single item was re-sold for sixty guineas, and would now bring thrice that amount. What a game of chance this book traffic is!
Imperfect Books, as distinguished from Fragments, const.i.tute a rather complex and troublesome portion and aspect of collecting. They are susceptible of cla.s.sification into books--(1) Of which no perfect copy is known; (2) Of which none is known outside one or two great libraries; (3) Of which even imperfect examples, as of a specimen of early typography or of engraving, are valuable and interesting; (4) Of which copies are more or less easily procurable. It is only the last division at which an amateur of any pretensions and resources draws the line. With the other contingencies our keenest and richest book-hunters and our most important public collections have been and are obliged to be satisfied. When it is a question of a unique, or almost unique, Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, or Pynson, or quite as much of a volume from the London, St. Albans, Tavistock, York, or Edinburgh presses, what is to be done? The object, no doubt, _laisse a desirer_; but where is another? This sentiment and spirit operated twice, as we have elsewhere noted, within three months in 1896 in the case of two incomplete copies of the first edition by Caxton of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. But for the defective copy of a common book some find an apology and a home: they cannot afford a better, or they require it for a special purpose. The upshot is, that for every old volume there is a customer, who is pleased with his acquisition according to his light; and we have met with such as seemed disposed to view the missing of damaged leaves as negative evidence of antiquity and genuineness.
The bystander who has had the benefit of as long an innings as the present writer, witnesses perpetual changes and vicissitudes of sentiment; and from one point of view, at all events, the minute details, into which the too generally despised bibliographer enters, are valuable, because they present to us, in lists of editions of authors and books published from age to age, the astonis.h.i.+ng evidence of mutable popularity or acceptability. There is a feature, which is almost amusing, in the ideas and estimates expressed of many works by our earlier antiquaries, when we look to-day at their position and rank. If we turn over the pages of Hearne's _Diary_, for instance, we constantly meet with accounts of literary curiosities and rarities, which we regard with different eyes by virtue of our enlarged information, while thousands of really valuable items--valuable on some score or other--go there unnoted, although copies of them must have pa.s.sed through the sales, even more frequently than at present.
The close of the nineteenth century has brought these matters to a truer level. We are better able to gauge the survival of books and editions.
Even in the sometimes tedious enumeration of editions of early books bibliography confers a sort of benefit, for it demonstrates the longevity in public estimation and demand of a host of books now neglected, yet objects of interest and utility to many successive ages.
We have seen so many cranks and fancies successively take possession of the public. Early typography; early poetry and romances; books of hours; books of emblems; Roman Catholic literature; liturgies; Bewick; Bartolozzi; the first edition (which was sometimes equally the last); books on vellum, on India-paper, or on yellow or some other bizarre colour or material, debarring perusal of the publication; copies with remarkable blunders or with some of the text inadvertently omitted--all these and a legion of others have had their day; and to some of them it happens that they drop out of view for a season, and then reappear for a second or third brief term of life and favour; and therefore, it being so, who can have the heart to blame the parties that in the exercise of their vocation make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes?
There is one personage, and one alone, who makes it whether or no, summer and winter, to wit, the auctioneer; his commission is a.s.sured; on what or from whom he gets it he cares not. He cheerfully leaves the adjustment of accounts to gentlemen outside.
The circ.u.mstances under which a new departure takes place, often without much previous warning, in the book-market, and disturbs the calculations of holders of certain cla.s.ses of stock, are infinitely varied. The bibliographical barometer is surprisingly sensitive, and the slightest change of fas.h.i.+on in the older literature, and even in those sections of the more recent which embrace acknowledged rarities, is instantaneously felt. In some branches of collecting, and where the prices of commodities are such as to exclude all but a knot of wealthy amateurs, the entrance of a new-comer on the ground makes a vital difference, especially if the market is in need of support from existing wants having been supplied; and if one goes about a little, one hears men whispering in corners and questioning who the stranger is, and for what he is likely to prove good. Should he be a strong man, that is, in purse, you will soon perceive, if you keep your eye on the auction-room, another strong man buying at all costs against all comers just the articles which commend themselves to the first _dramatis persona_. He buys nearly everything; they are for him alone, unless there are two in the field concurrently, and then one may be conveniently played off against the other. A small field it is!
And this interesting commercial strategy is always going on, while the objects of pursuit continually vary. The dealer looks after, not his own desiderata--for he has none--but those of his immediate clients.
In a large business a man is likely to have many; but the cla.s.s which repays study, which turns sovereigns into bank-notes for him, is not a numerous one. Half-a-dozen first-rate customers keep a shop open even in the most fas.h.i.+onable and expensive thoroughfare. The late Joseph Lilly leant during his last years mainly on one. A collector of the stamp of Mr. Hartley was almost sufficient to support such an establishment as Newman's in Holborn or Toovey's in Piccadilly. You might pa.s.s the latter, or both, day after day and week after week, and not see a soul enter or leave the premises; all was done by correspondence and flukes and a few real good buyers in the background. Mr. Quaritch in London or M. Fontaine in Paris will clear more in an afternoon by the change of hands of two or three heavy items than a small dealer, even if he is unusually lucky, will do in a twelvemonth out of thousands of petty and troublesome transactions. It is not particularly unusual for a big firm to sell at one sitting four or five thousand pounds worth of property. There are others which have not sold as much during the entire term of their career, and never will.