Part 11 (1/2)

Editions of the New Testament.

Editions of the Prayer-Book.

Royal Books:-- (i) With autograph notes by the owner.

(ii) With inscription by the giver.

(iii) With both.

(iv) In binding identifiable with a royal personage.

Books which possess the signatures of n.o.ble or ill.u.s.trious individuals, politicians, statesmen, soldiers.

The same categories apply.

Books with literary inscriptions:-- (i) Presentation copies with author's inscription.

(ii) With his inscription and additional matter by him.

(iii) With inscription by recipient.

(iv) With autographs and MSS. notes by both.

Foreign books:-- Monastic and mediaeval.

With MS. matter of historical or genealogical interest.

Books from royal or n.o.ble libraries.

Books of literary interest.

Monastic inscriptions are generally limited in their interest to casual light shed by them on personages connected with the inst.i.tution or on some local circ.u.mstance.

Of royal books, genuine and otherwise, the number has had a tendency to increase through the successive dispersion of old libraries everywhere, combined with the additional facilities for gaining access to those which still remain intact. The Henry VIII. _Prayer-Book_ on vellum is the only copy known in any state of the edition of 1544, and may not have been publicly issued with this date.

Some of the royal memoranda are of signal interest and curiosity. On the back of the t.i.tle, under the royal arms, the king himself says: ”Remember thys wrighter wen you doo pray for he ys yours noon can saye naye. Henry R.” At the pa.s.sage: ”I have not done penance for my malice,” the same hand inserts in the margin: ”trewe repentance is the best penance;” and farther on he makes a second marginal note on the sentence: ”thou hast promysed forgyveness,” . . . ”repentance beste penance.” This was a sort of family common-place book. Inside the cover Prince Edward (afterward Edward VI.) writes: ”I will yf you will.” The volume, which contains other matter of great historical value, appears to have been given by Henry VIII. shortly before his death to his daughter Mary; for on a small piece of vellum inside the cover he has written: ”Myne owne good daughter I pray you remember me most hartely when you in your prayere do shew for grace to be attayned a.s.surydly to yr lovyng fader Henry R.” The Princess subsequently gave it to her stepmother, Catherine Parr, and it has a motto and signature of that lady's second husband, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Admiral.

The old king, we observe, grew rather nervous about the future just at the last, and he at all events admitted that there was room for contrition.

A companion volume and monument was the copy of the Sarum _Horae_ of 1520, printed on vellum, in the second portion of the Ashburnham sale.

This precious book belonged to the Parr family, including the mother of Queen Katherine Parr, and at any rate contained an inscription in the hand of the Queen's brother, and of those of members of the Carew, Vaux, Tailboys, Nevill, and other families, besides being in beautiful condition; and the same library yielded a second copy of _Hours_, 1512, which had pa.s.sed through the hands of Henry VIII. himself, as attested in one place by his autograph memorandum: ”Pray yow pray for me your loving cousin Henry Rex.” Such relics appear to bring back before us the dead players on the human stage, divested of all but their more redeeming characteristics.

In the British Museum we have the _Great Bible_ of 1540 on vellum, which enters into the present category by reason of its a.s.sociation with the same prince, though in a different way. On the reverse of the fly-leaf occurs: ”This Booke is presented vnto your most excellent highnesse by youre loving, faithfull, and obedient subiect and daylye Oratour, Anthonye Marler, of London, Haberda.s.sher.” Truly a gift worthy of a king; and there it remains, a precious link with the past and a splendid memorial of the citizen of London who laid it at his sovereign's feet.

Propriety and sympathy of costume go very far indeed to establish and augment the estimation of printed volumes with ma.n.u.script tokens of former proprietors.h.i.+p. The collector who chooses this field of activity has to weigh the correlation and harmony between the volume itself and the individual or individuals to whom it once appertained.

We have usually to content ourselves with the interest resident in an autograph, with or without further particulars; it is a book, perhaps, which formed part of the library of a distinguished Elizabethan or Jacobean writer or public character; but, if it were not, its worth might be nominal. Again, the book is possibly one of great value, and exhibits an early autograph and MSS. notes; it would be better without them. Find the copy of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593, given by Shakespeare to Lord Southampton, the poet's copy of the _Faery Queen_, 1590-96, Sir Fulke Greville's copy of Sydney's _Arcadia_, 1590, or a book of Voyages belonging to Drake or Raleigh, and it is worth a library, and a good one too. The nearest approach we have yet made to this kind of combination is the first folio Montaigne and the original edition of Lord Brooke's works, 1633, with the signature of Jonson, and the Spenser of 1679 with the notes of Dryden, unless the _Paradise Lost_, 1667, with Milton's presentation to a bookbinder at Worcester be authentic.

We must not omit in the present connection the copy of the prose story-book of _Howleglas_, given in 1578 with others by Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey. But an almost equally covetable possession was the copy just referred to of Milton's _Paradise Lost_, 1667, which occurred only the other day at a sale, where it was, as too often happens, mis-described, and brought 70. It bore on a small slip inlaid in a fly-leaf: ”For my loving ffreind, Mr. Francis Rea, Booke binder in Worcester these,” and on another piece of paper: ”Presented me by the Author to whom I gave two doubl sovereigns” = 4, nearly as much as the poet had for the copyright. The story of the book is unknown to us; it seems eminently likely that the first memorandum was written by Milton; but whether it belonged to a wrapper forwarding the gift, or to a letter accompanying it, is problematical.

Rea of Worcester must be the same individual who is described as having re-bound in June 1660 the Jolley and Ashburnham copy of Higden's _Polychronicon_, printed by Caxton, 1482; but there an earlier owner, Richard Furney, calls him ”one Rede of Worcester.”

At Trinity, Cambridge, there is the edition of Spenser, 1679, with a memorandum on the fly-leaf by Jacob Tonson, testifying to the MSS.

notes in the book being by Dryden, and at Wootton formerly was the _Faery Queen_, 1596, John Evelyn's cypher in gold down the back of the cover and seventeen lines in his autograph on the fly-leaf.

Among our dramatists, Ben Jonson is conspicuous by the number of copies of his own performances which he presented to royal and n.o.ble personages or to private friends. Of three gift-copies of his _Volpone_, 1607, one has an inscription to John Florio, the other to Henry Lambton of Lambton. The almost unique large-paper one of _Seja.n.u.s_, 1605, in the Huth Collection, was given to the poet's ”perfect friend,” Francis Crane. In the Museum are the _Masque of Queens_ and the _Masque of Blackness and Beauty_ offered to the queen of James I. But of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and many others, we have not a single memorial of this kind. Of Ma.s.singer there is one: the copy of his _Duke of Milan_, 1623, received from him by Sir F. Foljambe. In the case of Taylor the water-poet, the nearest approach to anything of the sort is the MS. note of the recipient of a copy of his Works, 1630.

Of two equally prominent poets of the same epoch, Daniel and Drayton, the latter seems to have had a partiality for inscribing his autograph in presentation copies of his books, while of Daniel in this way we do not recollect to have met with a single example.

Very engaging, on account of its manly and cordial tone, is the autograph epistle by Sir Richard Fanshawe accompanying an extant copy of his translation of Guarini's _Faithful Shepherd_, 1648. The whole production may be seen in the Huth Catalogue (p. 633), where we inserted it as a favourable sample of this kind of poetry or verse.