Part 18 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Hazlitt's _Venice_, 1860, iv. 431.

[7] The library of James Chamberlain, sold at Stourbridge Fair in 1686.

[8] See _Catalogue of Early English Miscellanies formerly in the Harleian Library_, by W. C. Hazlitt, 1862.

[9] See besides, _Hazlitt's Memoirs_, 1896, chaps. vii, viii, ix; and Hazlitt's _Confessions of a Collector_, 1897, p. 150 _et seq._

ADDITIONAL NOTES

P. 5. Of the public collections in England, those of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, at Oxford, of which very little remains, and of Sir John Gyllarde, Prior of the Calendaries' Gild in Bristol (founded before 1451), appear to be the pioneers. For the latter the Bishop of Worcester is said to have provided, in 1464, a receptacle or building; but the collection was destroyed by fire in 1466.

P. 5. _Illuminated MSS._--A great store of information is capable of being collected on the subject of the embellis.h.i.+ng and finis.h.i.+ng processes which MSS. underwent when the scribe had done his part.

Among the Paston Letters occurs a bill from Thomas (the) Limner of Bury St. Edmunds to Sir John Howard, afterward Duke of Norfolk, in 1467, for illuminating several books, and we have also one of Antoine Verard of Paris, ”Enlumineur du Roy,” in 1493 for similar work executed for the Comte d'Angouleme by artists in the printer's employment.

P. 7. _Circulating Libraries._--There was a library of this cla.s.s at Dunfermline in 1711 and at Edinburgh in 1725. When Benjamin Franklin came to London, there was nothing of the kind. A bookseller named Wright established one about 1740, and it was kept up by his successors. Sion College was limited in its lending range to the London clergy.

P. 9. Add the Le Stranges of Hunstanton to the East Anglian collectors.

P. 9. _Kent as a Hunting-ground for Books in Old Days._--Flockton of Canterbury it was who once sold Marlowe's _Dido_, 1594, for 2s. He was a contemporary of William Hutton, the Birmingham bookseller. This may have been the very copy which formerly belonged to Henry Oxinden of Barham, near Canterbury, and pa.s.sed in succession into the hands of Isaac Reed, George Steevens, the Duke of Roxburghe, Sir Egerton Brydges, and Mr. Heber. The price charged by Flockton, however, was fairly extravagant in comparison with that given by John Henderson, the actor, for the copy which subsequently belonged to J. P. Kemble and the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re--fourpence--probably the original published price.

P. 10. _Bristol Houses._--Add _Strong_. Strong's catalogues for 1827-1828 are now before me, and describe 10,000 items. No such stock has been kept at Bristol since. Jefferies had in former days some very remarkable books on sale--Caxtons included; and Kerslake and George could shew you volumes worth your notice and money, whoever you might be. Now, alas! you have to leave the city as empty as you entered it.

P. 18. _Loss of Old Books._--The fate of a heavy percentage of our earlier books--of the earlier books of every people--is curiously and mournfully readable in the illiterate bucolic scrawls, doing duty for autographs and inscriptions, which tell, only too plainly, how such property slowly but surely pa.s.sed out of sight and existence.

P. 19. _Old Libraries._--Add Fraser of Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, and Fountaine of Narford.

P. 25. _Rolls of Book-Collectors._--Rather say 5000 names.

P. 29. _Spoliation of Libraries._--A precious volume of early English tracts was not very long since offered at an auction, which had been stolen from Peterborough Cathedral, and another, which const.i.tuted one of the chief treasures of Sion College.

P. 32. The bulk of the books of Mr. Samuel Sandars were left to the University Library, Cambridge, which has since acquired those of the late Lord Acton.

P. 33. _Lincoln Cathedral Library._--Besides the Honeywood books sold to Dibdin, the Dean and Chapter have suffered others to stray from their homes. A notice is before me of one, a large folio on vellum, containing tracts of a theological complexion, chiefly by an Oxford doctor, Robert of Leicester, which was presented, as a coeval inscription apprises us, by Thomas Driffield, formerly Chancellor of the Diocese, in 1422 to the new library of the cathedral.

P. 34. _Provincial Libraries._--Of the books at Bamborough Castle, a catalogue was printed at Durham in 1799. Some of the books at York Minster appear to have been gifts from Archbishop Mathews. At Colchester they are fortunate in possessing the library of Archbishop Harsnet.

P. 35. Marlowe's _Edward II._, 1594.--Possibly obtained by the Landgraf of Hesse during his visit to London in 1611. This is mentioned by me in my _Shakespear Monograph_, 1903.

P. 37. _Private Libraries._--In the case of private collections, we have to distinguish between those of an ancestral character, insensibly acc.u.mulated from generation to generation without any fixed or preconcerted plan, and such as have been formed by or for wealthy individuals in the course of a single life, if not of a few years, on some general principle, with or without an eye to cost. Under either of these conditions the motive is usually personal, and the ultimate transfer in some instances to a public inst.i.tution an accident or afterthought.

P. 38. _Harleian Library._--The taste of the Harley family for books dated from the time of Charles I. Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Castle, is credited with the possession of ”an extraordinary library of ma.n.u.script and printed books, which had been collected from one descent to another.” The house was besieged and burned in 1643, and these literary and bibliographical treasures probably perished with it. But his grandson, the first Earl of Oxford, restored the library; and we all know that the second earl, who survived till 1741, elevated it to the rank of the first private collection in England, while he unconsciously sacrificed it to the incidence of a languid and falling market.

P. 42. Mr. William Henry Miller of Craigentinny was originally a solicitor in Edinburgh.

P. 65. _Books of Emblems._--Besides those described is the translation executed by Thomas Combe, and licensed in 1593, of the _Theatre des Bons Engins_ of Guillaume de la Perriere, of which no perfect copy of any edition had been seen till the writer met with one of 1614 among the Burton-Constable books.

P. 103. _Books Appreciable on Special Grounds._--Among these are--Pennant's _Tour in Scotland_, 1769, and White's _Selborne_, 1785.