Part 17 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVI
Foundations of bibliography--Commencement of advertising books through catalogues and lists at end of other publications--Cla.s.ses of literature princ.i.p.ally in demand--Origin of sales by public compet.i.tion--A book-lottery in 1661--The book-auction in London makes a beginning--The practice extends to the provinces and Scotland (1680-95)--First sale-catalogue where Caxtons were separately lotted (1682)--Catalogue of a private library appended to a posthumous publication (1704)--Mystery surrounding the sources whence the Harleian Library was supplied with its early English rarities--An explanation--Indebtedness of the Heber Collection to private purchasers on a large scale--Vast additions to our knowledge since Heber's time--The modern auction-marts--Penny and other biddings at auctions--An average auction-room--Watching the Ashburnham sale--The collector behind the scenes--Key to certain prices--The Frost and the Boom--Difficulty of gauging quotations without practical experience--The _Court of Appeal_--The Duke of Wellington pays 105 for a s.h.i.+lling pamphlet--A few more words about the Frere sale in ill.u.s.tration of the Boom and something else--The Rig.
THE earliest method of communication between holders and vendors of books and probable buyers of them related to the issue of new works, or, at most, to such as were not out of date. Maunsell's celebrated folio, of which he was not apparently encouraged to proceed with more than certain sections, and which did not comprise the subjects most interesting to us, came out in 1595 in two parts, and was, notwithstanding its imperfect fulfilment, the most comprehensive enterprise of the kind in our language down to comparatively recent times. These matters usually took the form of notices, accompanying a published volume, of others already in print or in preparation by the same firm. No possessor or observer of old English books can fail to have met with such advertis.e.m.e.nts; but, as we have said, they limit themselves, as a rule, to current literature and the ventures of the immediate stationer or printer. To some copies of Marmion's _Antiquary_, 1641, we find attached a slip containing an announcement by Thomas Dring of old plays on sale by him at the White Lion in Chancery Lane, and inserted posterior to the issue of this particular drama, which does not bear Dring's name; and we all know the list of dramatic performances appended to _Tom Tyler and his Wife_, 1661, and probably emanating from Kirkman the bookseller, where we discern items belonging to an earlier period--of some of which we know nothing further. This catalogue, the material for which Kirkman had personally brought together by the expenditure of considerable time and labour, was re-issued in 1671, and from about that time Clavell and other members of the trade circulated periodical accounts of all the novelties of the season, but almost entirely in those cla.s.ses which seem to have then appealed to the public: Law, Science, and Divinity--just the sections with which Maunsell in 1595 began and ended.
The absence of the machinery supplied by the auction long necessitated a practice which not only survived sales by inch of candle and under the hammer, but which still prevails, of disposing of libraries and small collections _en bloc_ to the trade, and the dedication by the particular buyer of a serial catalogue to his purchase. Executors and others long possessed no other means of realisation; the Harleian printed books were thus dispersed; and even those of Heber, almost within our own memory, engrossed the resources of two or three firms of salesmen. The conditions under which a library was acc.u.mulated in former days were not less different than those under which it pa.s.sed into other hands; the possibilities of profit were infinitesimal; a heavy loss was almost a certainty. But then men bought more generally for the mere love of the objects or for purposes of study. The speculative element had yet to arise.
Evelyn, in his famous letter to Pepys, August 12, 1689, speaks of Lord Maitland's library as certainly the n.o.blest, most substantial, and accomplished, that ever pa.s.sed _under the spear_. This was within two decades or so of the commencement of the system of selling literary effects by auction. We are aware that in the Bristol records of the fourteenth century the trumpet, introduced from France, is mentioned as a medium for the realisation of property in the same way; and there was the much later _inch-of-candle_ principle--a perhaps unconscious loan from King Alfred's alleged time-candles, which are referred to by his biographer a.s.ser--a work suspected of being unauthentic, yet on that account may have none the less suggested the idea to some one.
Abroad the _trumpet_ or the _cry_ appear among the commercial states of the Middle Ages to have been the usual forms. In the particulars of a sale of galleys by auction at Venice in 1332,[6] the property was cried beforehand on behalf of the Government, and the buyer, till he paid the price reached, furnished a surety. This process was known as the _incanto_; and it is curious enough that in the sale-catalogue of Francis Hawes, Esq., a South Sea Company director, in 1722, the goods are said to be on sale _by cant_ or auction. But the modern Italian still speaks of an auction as an _asta_ (the Roman _hasta_). Some of these types are ill.u.s.trated by Lacroix in his _Moeurs et Usages_. In France they anciently had the bell and the crier (the Roman _praeco_).
In London, firms of commercial brokers long continued to hold their sales of goods by inch of candle; but the Roman practice seems to have survived down to comparatively modern days in Spain and Portugal, if not in France and Italy. In 1554, Junius Rabirius, a French jurist, published at Paris, with a metrical inscription to Henry II. of France, a Latin treatise on the origin of _Hastae and Auctions_, in which he enters at some length into the system pursued by the ancients, and still retained in the sixteenth century by the Latin communities of Europe. This is probably the earliest monograph which we possess on the present branch of the subject. It is a tolerably dull and uninforming one.
Some of us are aware by practical experience how deplorably tedious a normal modern auction under the hammer is, although it extends only at the utmost from one to five or six in the afternoon. But, like some of the Continental sales of to-day, the old-fas.h.i.+oned affair spread, with a break for refreshment, over twice the s.p.a.ce of time, and was conducted, previous to the introduction of the hammer, by _inch of candle_. This system was somewhat less inconvenient than it at first sight strikes us as being, since the property was lotted to a much larger extent in parcels and bundles, and the biddings were apt to be comparatively fewer. Another way of saying that the early auction appealed less to private than to professional buyers, and not merely in that, but in every aspect. The same remark still applies to the dispersion of all miscellaneous collections of secondary importance, unless an amateur chooses to compete for a dozen articles, which he does not want, for the sake of one, which he does.
The steadily acc.u.mulating volume of literary production in the seventeenth century inspired two successive movements, which we regard to-day as peremptory necessities and matters of course, but which, so long as books were scarcer, and the demand for them correspondingly restricted, failed to strike any one as likely to prove popular and advantageous. These movements were the second-hand department and the auction-room. It is a sufficiently familiar fact that during the reign of Charles II. both sprang into existence, although among the Hollanders the usage of putting up books to public compet.i.tion had commenced three-quarters of a century prior; but in 1661 there do not appear to have been any facilities for disposing of libraries or collections, as in that year John Ogilby, the historian, arranged to sell his books--the remainder of his own publications--through the medium of a lottery. It was within a very brief interval, however, that the sale by auction is shown to have become an accomplished fact.
The earliest of which an actual catalogue has come down to us is that of Dr. Lazarus Seaman, sold by Cooper in 1676; but there were in all probability anterior experiments, and side by side with the auctioneer grew up the professional ancestor of the Thorpes and the Rodds--the men who supplied Burton, Drummond, Evelyn, Pepys, Selden, and many more, with the rarities which are yet a.s.sociated with their names. The system of selling under the hammer in its various stages of development and different ramifications is not an unimportant factor in our modern social and commercial life; it did not require many years from its introduction into the metropolis to recommend it to the provinces and to Scotland; and we possess catalogues of libraries or properties dispersed in this manner at Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and elsewhere in the last quarter of the last but one century; and in one case at least of this kind of property being offered at a fair.[7] Occasionally, as in the case of Secondary Smith, 1682, a precocious feeling for the early English school reveals itself; but, for the most part, the articles accentuated by the old-fas.h.i.+oned auctioneer are foreign cla.s.sics, history, and theology--the literary wares, in fact, in vogue. Annexed to the _Memoirs of Thomas_ (or _Tom_) _Brown_, 1704, is a very unusual feature--a catalogue of his library.
Within about five-and-twenty years of the supposed starting-point of the auction, the modern practice of the London auctioneer being engaged to conduct sales in the country, even in important provincial towns, seems to have fairly commenced, for in 1700 Edward Millington of Little Britain sold at Cambridge the library of Dr. Cornwall of Clapton in Northamptons.h.i.+re. In the preliminary matter attached to the catalogue, Millington remarks that ”he always esteems it a privilege to exercise his lungs amongst his friends.”
A glimpse of the method of collecting by the Hon. John North, one of the sons of Lord North of Kirtling, and born in 1645, is afforded by his brother and biographer, Roger North, who says that he gradually acc.u.mulated, commencing about 1666, a large collection of books, princ.i.p.ally Greek, and generally bought them himself, spending much time in company with his relation in booksellers' shops, and not objecting to possess duplicates, if other copies in better condition were found or were presented to him by friends. Mr. North flourished during the halcyon days of the cla.s.sics. The literature of his own country probably interested him little. North, however, was so far a true book-lover, inasmuch as he sought what pleased himself.
It affords a pleasanter impression of the pursuit when one perceives individuals of all ranks and callings buying themselves personally, either at the book-shop or the saleroom, in the selection of their periodical acquisitions. The marked copies of the older auction catalogues are distinguished by the names of some of our most eminent collectors, but at present gentlemen prefer to give their commissions to their booksellers from want of leisure or other motives.
I have alluded to the sale by auction of Dr. Seaman's library in 1676, which took place at his house in Warwick Court, Warwick Lane. The address to the reader, presumably by Cooper, commences:--
”It hath not been usual here in England to make sale of Books by way of Auction, or who will give most for them: But it having been practised in other Countreys to the Advantage both of Buyers and Sellers; It was therefore conceived (for the Encouragement of Learning) to publish the Sale of these Books this manner of way.”
The Catalogue is not divided into days, but the fifth condition says, ”That the Auction will begin the 31st of October, punctually at Nine of the Clock in the Morning, and Two in the afternoon, and this to continue daily until all the Books be Sold; Wherefore it is desired, that the Gentlemen, or those deputed by them, may be there precisely the Hours appointed, lest they should miss the opportunity of Buying those Books, which either themselves or their Friends desire.”
In 1682 Thomas Parkhurst, in offering for sale the libraries of several eminent men, announces that the catalogues might be had _gratis_ at the Bible on London Bridge (his place of business as a bookseller), and he takes occasion to introduce (perhaps for the first time) that courageous form of statement so popular to this day among the fraternity as to the collection being the finest ever sold or to be sold, and the opportunity by consequence being one which would never probably recur.
But the present writer does not enter minutely into this branch of the subject, which Mr. Lawler has made his own.
It has always been, and must always remain, a mystery whence the Harleian exemplars of a large number of unique or almost unique volumes belonging to the early vernacular literature of Great Britain were obtained. In some cases they are traceable to anterior owners and catalogues; but a considerable residue first come to the front here, and the explanation seems to be that the practice of registering unregarded trifles, as they were then deemed to be, in large parcels was necessarily fatal to individuality and to the survival of clues.
To a certain extent the same disappointment awaits us in more recent days, till, in fact, the demand for old poetry, romances, and plays made the few extant copies objects of interest to the trade sufficient to ent.i.tle them to prominence in their lists and in those published by the auctioneers. It may have been the catalogue of Joseph Ames, 1760, which was among the earliest to raise such items to the dignity of separate lots, thought by the purchasers at the time worth a s.h.i.+lling or two; but the noted sale of Mr. West in 1773 is ent.i.tled to rank as the foremost in those days, where the books and tracts, long since discovered to be represented by one or two accidental survivors, and grown dearer than gold a hundredfold, began to draw figures indicative of increased curiosity and appreciation.
The most eminent of the earlier race of auctioneers in London, who confined their attention to properties belonging to the fine arts, were William Cooper, a man of considerable literary taste and culture, whom we have seen disposing of Dr. Seaman's books in 1676; Edward Millington, Robert Scott, and John Dunton, of whom we know more than of his predecessors and contemporaries through his publications, and especially his _Life and Errors_. Commercial rivalry and jealousy arose among the members of the fraternity before the inst.i.tution had grown at all old, and complaints were also made against gentlemen-bidders. In the preface to the catalogue of a French library, where he takes occasion to animadvert severely on his contemporary and confrere Scott, Millington refers to the third condition of sale, requiring all buyers to give in their place of abode, ”to prevent the inconveniences that have more or less. .h.i.therto attended the Undertakers, and also the Purchasers, by reason that several persons, out of Vanity and Ostentation, have appeared and bought, to the damage and disappointment of the Parties they outbid, and have not been so kind to their own Reputation, or just to the Proprietors, as to pay for and fetch them away.” This was in 1687.
It seems to have been a considerable time after the first inst.i.tution of the auction before a fixed place of business was appointed for the sale of literary and artistic properties consigned to a particular party for realisation. We find taverns and coffee-houses much in request for this purpose during the former half of the last century.
The library of printed books and MSS. belonging to Thomas Britton, ”small-coal man,” were sold about 1720 at Tom's Coffee-House, and about the same date portions of Thomas Rawlinson's stupendous collections, of which the dispersion extended over a dozen years, came to the hammer at the Paul's Head Tavern in Carter Lane.
It is improbable that any early auction catalogue of consequence has disappeared, and looking at those which we have, say, from the outset to 1700, we at once perceive the comparatively limited business transacted in this direction during a lengthened term of years, and the numerous instances where a not very considerable catalogue embraces three or four properties. Collections were, as a rule, made on a smaller scale prior to the Harley epoch.
The practice of publis.h.i.+ng booksellers' and auctioneers' catalogues, rudimentary as it was at the outset, succeeded by the more systematic descriptive accounts of public and private collections, gradually extended the knowledge of the surviving volumes of early literature, and laid the foundation of a National Bibliography. We shall probably never fully learn our amount of obliged indebtedness to Richard Heber, who in his own person, from about 1800 to 1833, consolidated and concentrated an immense preponderance of the acquisitions of anterior collectors, and with them gained innumerable treasures, which came to him through other channels. His marvellous catalogue must have proved a revelation at the time, and to-day it is a work of reference at once instructive and agreeable.
What must strike any one who has attentively considered the Heber library, even if it is not a case of having had the catalogue at his elbow, as I have, in a manner, all his life, is the presence there of so large a number of items of which no trace occurs in earlier lists, and of which no duplicates have since presented themselves. It is perfectly marvellous how Heber acc.u.mulated the vast bibliographical treasures brought to light, and of which his catalogue is the record achievement; he must have been not only indefatigable in his own person, but must have furnished encouragement to many others, who met with rare books, to afford him the first refusal.
On the other hand, hundreds of early English books and tracts which this indefatigable and munificent of collectors never succeeded in obtaining, items and authors whose t.i.tles and names were hitherto utterly unknown, have within the last two generations come piecemeal into the market, to delight alike, yet in a different way, the bibliographer and the amateur. The accidental and almost miraculous survival of literary relics of past ages is curious on account of the purely casual manner in which they present themselves from season to season, as well as from the strange hands in which many of them are found--often persons of obscure character and in humble life, who have one, two, or half-a-dozen books of which all had somehow eluded the researches of every collector. Cases are known in which a single article has come to light in this manner, a unique publication of the Plantagenet or Tudor era, maybe in sorry state, maybe just as it left the press two or three centuries ago, but anyhow a monument and a revelation.
The almost exclusive sources of intelligence on these questions are the correspondence of the period, a portion of which is printed in the volumes of 1813 devoted to Aubrey's Collections, and another in Nichols's _Anecdotes_. There we perceive that Lord Oxford was indebted for many rarities to John Bagford and other private purveyors of printed books as well as MSS. In a letter of 1731 to Hearne, his Lords.h.i.+p mentions his impression that he had forty-two Caxtons at that date. He seems to have possessed seventy-three examples of Wynkyn de Worde.[8]