Part 16 (2/2)
(i.) The earliest examples of printing, at all events in book-form; _Missae Speciales_, and other smaller books executed by Gutenberg previous to 1455, or at all events to the Bible ascribed to that date; Gutenberg's Bible, otherwise known as the Mazarin Bible, 1455, re-issued by Fust and Schoeffer in 1456; the Psalters of 1457 and 1459, designed for the Cathedral and Benedictine monastery of Mainz respectively; the _Chronicles_ of Monstrelet on vellum; _Lancelot du Lac_ on vellum, 1488; the Sarum _Missal_, 1492, 1497, 1504; Caxton's two _Troy-Books_, two _Jasons_, _Arthur_, _Speculum Vitae Christi_ and _Doctrinal of Sapience_ on vellum, _Canterbury Tales_ and other separate works of Chaucer, _Paris and Vienne_, &c.; _Book of St.
Albans_, 1486, and other works printed there, 1480-1534; Tyndale's _New Testament_, 1526; Coverdale's _Bible_, 1535; Boece's _Chronicles of Scotland_ on vellum, 1536; the Huth Ballads; Montaigne's _Essais_, 1580; the same in English, 1603, 1613; Spenser's _Faery Queen_, 1590-96; Constable's _Diana_, 1592; Bacon's _Essays_, 1597, 1598; Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, 1st quartos, _Sonnets_, and the collected _Plays_, 1593-1623. (ii.) Shelton's _Don Quixote_, 1612-20; first editions of Daniel, Drayton, Lodge, Watson, Barnfield, Breton, &c.; Milton's _Comus_, 1637, _Lycidas_, 1638, _Paradise Lost_, 1667; Walton's _Complete Angler_, 1653, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, 1678, and any other capital or standard authors of the seventeenth century, particularly Lovelace, Carew, Suckling, down to Locke's _Essay on the Human Understanding_, which, though a common book, has lately grown a dear one by sheer force of companions.h.i.+p.
There seems a disposition to look more indifferently on volumes which have no certificate or pa.s.sport. Secondarily, as in the case of Florio's version of Montaigne, items are admitted as hangers-on and interpreters of great authors.
The last copy of the _Faery Queen_, 1590-96, offered for sale, an extraordinarily fine one, brought 84, of _Robinson Crusoe_, 75. The British Museum paid for the _Book of Common Prayer_, 1603, a year earlier than any edition so far described, 175. It was obtained by the vendor from a sale at Sotheby's, where its liturgical interest was overlooked.
The question of prices in all these cases is involved in equal uncertainty and difficulty. The second Psalter of 1459 brought at the Syston Park sale 4950. Mr. Quaritch still holds it (1897), and asks 5250. The British Museum possesses both impressions. This was the highest figure ever reached by a single lot in this country.
Gutenberg's Bible follows, copies on vellum and paper having produced from 1500 to 4000; the vellum copies are deemed more valuable, but of those issued by Gutenberg himself we seem to have only examples on paper. The Huth copy of the latter type, from the Sykes and H. Perkins libraries cost its late owner 3650. Mr. Grenville for his gave 500.
As we have already remarked, the book has a tendency to become commoner. The Ashburnham Fust and Schoeffer Bible of 1462 brought 1500; at the Comte de Brienne's sale in 1724, where Hearne refers to the ”vast prices,” the Earl of Oxford gave for the same book 112.
The _History of King Arthur_, printed by Caxton, 1485, for which Lord Jersey's ancestor gave 2, 12s. 6d. about 1750 to Osborne, was carried at the Osterley Park sale in 1885 to 1950, the British Museum underbidding; while the _Troy-Book_ in English from the same press fetched 1820; and at the dispersion of a curious lot of miscellanies, apparently derived from Darlaston Hall, near Stone, Staffords.h.i.+re, an imperfect, but very large and clean, copy of the first edition of the _Canterbury Tales_, by Caxton, was adjudged to Mr. Quaritch at 1020, a second one, by an unparalleled coincidence presenting itself at the same place of sale a few months later, only four leaves wanting, but not so fine, and being knocked down at 1800 to the same buyer. The Asburnham Chaucers and other works from the same press were (with one or two exceptions) so poor, that it was surprising that they sold even so well as they did.
We descend to relatively moderate quotations when we come to the Daniel (now Huth) Ballads in 1864 (750); the 670 and 810 bidden for the Caxton's _Gower_ at the Selsey sale in 1871 and the Osterley Park sale in 1885 respectively; the 600 paid for the _Book of St. Albans_, 1486, wanting two leaves, in 1882; and the 420 at which Mr. Quaritch estimated the _Troy-Book_ of 1503. The price asked for the original MS. of the _Towneley Mysteries_ in 1892, 820, strikes one as reasonable by comparison.
But amounts which we venture to think unduly extravagant have of late years been obtained at Christies's rooms for certain books, such as Lady Elizabeth Tirrwhyt's _Prayers_, 1574, bound in gold, and said to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth (1220 guineas);[4] Henry VIII.'s _Prayers_, 1544, printed on vellum,[5] and enriched with notes by the King, the Queen, Prince Edward, and Princess Mary (610 guineas, as above mentioned); and a third folio Shakespeare, 1663-64, with both t.i.tles, but represented as being almost unique in that state, 435.
What a contrast to the old prices! Even in our time and memory, the first folio could be had in fine state for 50 or 60, the second for 5, 5s., the third for 50, and the fourth for 5, 5s. George Daniel, we are informed by his representatives, gave about 220 for his first Shakespeare to William Pickering, and Mr. Corser kept his 1632 book in his dining-room at Stand Rectory among the commoner volumes, although it was a fine copy. A middling set now fetches 600 or thereabout.
The earlier standard both for English and foreign rarities was undoubtedly much lower. In Osborne's Catalogue for 1751, the _Toledo Missal_, described as the scarcest volume in the world, was valued only at 35. In the Heber, and even in the Bright sale, from 10 to 25 secured some of the greatest gems in ancient English literature.
At the Frere auction at Sotheby's, 1896, however, the realisation of the Fenn books beat every record, considering that the copies were generally so poor; and it was hard indeed to see where the value was in a Herbert's Ames accompanied by an extra volume of typographical fragments, of which many were mutilated and many were worthless (255).
The _Book of St. Albans_, 1486, as it is usually designated, has descended a little from its original rank as a first-cla.s.s rarity owing to the successive discovery of unknown copies. The romance connected with the acquisition of the Grenville one has been more than once printed; but the _Chronicles of England_, from the same press, especially on vellum, maintains its reputation for the utmost rarity, although there were two impressions; and the same may be said of the issues by William of Mecklin, Caxton, and Gerard de Leeu, all and any of which could not, if complete, fail to command very high prices even on paper.
4900 for the second edition of the Mainz Psalter, 1459, appears (as we have observed) to be the largest sum ever paid in this country for a single work; and the vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible follows, 900 behind; at least at the price of 4000 it fell to Mr. Quaritch at the Ashburnham sale in 1897. But for the _Manesse Liederbuch_, a thirteenth-century MS. of national ballads, carried away by the French from Heidelberg in 1656, and found among the Ashburnham MSS., the German Government practically paid in 1887 18,000. What may be termed a bad second was the Duke of Hamilton's Missal, sold to the German Government in 1887 for 10,000; but that also belongs to the ma.n.u.script cla.s.s.
It must be an absolute truism to state that at the present moment the American is a material factor in influencing the book-market. He is less so, perhaps, in the sort of way in which he a.s.sisted the booksellers of a bygone generation in reducing or realising their stocks; but he has come to the front more than ever as a compet.i.tor for the prizes. There was a day when countless Transatlantic libraries were in course of formation; but they are now fairly complete, and, moreover, they have the means at hand, not formerly available, of filling up the gaps at home.
Our American kinsfolk have undoubtedly become masters of an almost countless number of bibliographical gems, and have been content to pay handsomely for them. We do not hear of any sensible reflux of old books from the States, but that might happen hereafter under the influence of financial depression. At the same time, there is perhaps nothing on the other side of the Atlantic which is not represented in duplicate here, unless it be in an instance or two, as, for example, the perfect Caxton _Morte Arthur_, 1485; and even those volumes, which are of signal rarity, are almost without exception in repositories accessible to all.
Returning for a moment to the commercial aspect of our present topic, the Transatlantic acquirer at any cost makes the fixture of high, even ridiculous, prices for certain books impossible. Beyond the _maximum_ there is a higher _maximum_ still. Who would have dreamed of a first edition of Burns, although uncut, bringing, as it did just lately (February 1898) in an Edinburgh auction-room, 572, or a sixpenny volume on Ploughs by one Small, 30, because it bore on the t.i.tle, _Rob^t. Burns, Poet_, in the great man's own hand, as well as a holograph memorandum attached to flyleaf? In the case of the Kilmarnock Burns of 1786 the sole excuse of the purchaser was its uncut state, for it is a comparatively common book. It was acquired by Mr. Lamb of Dundee, a hotel-keeper, of one Mr. Braidwood for 60. A second copy in paper covers, also uncut, exists; but the general condition is not so good.
There are in London and other English centres, however, American export and commission agents, independently of those houses which make s.h.i.+pments to the States a collateral branch of their business. It has been the cry, ever since we can recollect, that our cousins were draining the old country of its books, and yet the movement continues--continues with this difference, that the Americans have now plenty of ordinary stock, and are more anxious to limit their acquisitions to rarities. The number of public and private libraries has become very considerable; the most familiar names are Lenox, Carter-Brown, Tower, and Pope, the last the purchaser of the _King Arthur_ printed by Caxton in 1485, and formerly in the Harleian and Osterley Park collections. There is an occasional reflux of exportations, and we should like to hear one day of the _Arthur_ being among them.
One not very pleasant aspect of American and other plutocratic compet.i.tion has been to convert most of the _capital_ old English books from literature into _vertu_. What else is it, when two imperfect Chaucers bring 2900, and a Walton's _Angler_, 415, and where for the second and third folio Shakespeares persons are found willing to give a profit on 500 or 600?
The Transatlantic buyer, or indeed the buyer at a distance anywhere, has no option in employing an agent on the spot to acquire his _desiderata_, and he is practically in his hands. So long as your representative is competent it is well enough, and on the whole the American agencies in London are, we think, both that and conscientious. But the frequenter of the salerooms cannot fail to note a very unsatisfactory aspect of this business by proxy, where an inexperienced amateur with a well-lined purse employs an almost equally inexperienced person to act on his behalf--that is to say, one who is a bookseller by vocation, but who enjoys no conversance with bibliographical niceties. His princ.i.p.al consequently scores very poorly by buying _wrong_ things at the _right_ prices; but if he is satisfied, who need be otherwise? And his error, if his property is not realised in his lifetime, never comes home to him! Nevertheless, to buy with other people's eyes and judgment is not, after all, the best form; all that can be pleaded for it is, that it is the sole resource of the individual who has no time to devote to the practical side, or who, if he has, distrusts his own knowledge; and as everything has its compensation, such are the customers on whom the trade mainly leans. If the amateur expert were to be too much multiplied, the professional bookseller would inevitably be a grave sufferer.
Those are in the safest hands, perhaps, who are in their own. But in the case of books, as of all a.n.a.logous property, the next best thing to acting for oneself is to employ a high-cla.s.s dealer, or, if the line is very special, one who enjoys a reputation for conversance with the particular branch of inquiry. Where a collector who does not possess personal knowledge, and takes into his service a bookseller who is not much more informed, or who has not studied certain cla.s.ses of literature, it is bound to be an exemplification of the blind leading the blind, and one, at all events, unless he has a very long purse, falling into the ditch.
Under any circ.u.mstances, it is unquestionably beneficial to any private buyer to take some pains to arrive at at least a general knowledge of values, as well as of the bearings and extent of the field which he may choose. He should not be a puppet in the hands of his representative, if he can help it. Where he cannot, he is apt to buy in one sort of market and to sell in another. Not the worst policy is to hand a commission to one's strongest opponent, if he will or can take it. It disarms him. But some firms dislike agency, as the profit, though sure, is often so narrow, particularly where the person employed is a specialist in the line, and would have given for purposes of re-sale in the ordinary way twice or thrice as much as the item fetches, his personal opposition withdrawn. Hence it is not unusual among commission-agents at book-sales to charge, not on the price realised, but on the figure given by the client. The latter authorises his representative to bid up to 10 for this or that lot; it drops at 2; the fee for buying it is a percentage, not on the lower, but the higher amount. A commission of 6 was given by the present writer for a volume of John Leland's Tracts; it dropped at 2s.; his agent charged him 10s. brokerage.
Some hand their orders direct to the auctioneer, and this may be done within certain limits; but if the practice becomes too habitual, the dealers retaliate by bidding against the rostrum. ”All is fair in love and war.”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Now in the British Museum by the munificence of the late Sir Wollaston Franks (Department of Antiquities).
[5] Said to have been purchased for Lord Amherst.
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