Part 9 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[100:A] Cooper's hammer was of boxwood. Millington applies to his own the Homeric line, +deine de klange genet' argnreoio bioio+, which anyone is quite at liberty to believe. James Christie's original hammer is still in the possession of the firm; Samuel Baker's belongs to Mr. H. B.

Wheatley.

[101:A] In 1686 Millington was selling the library of the deceased Lord Anglesey. Putting up a copy of 'Eikon Basilike,' there were but few bidders, and those very low in their biddings. Casually turning over the pages before bringing the hammer on the rostrum, he read, with evident surprise, the following note in Lord Anglesey's own handwriting: 'King Charles the Second and the Duke of York did both (in the last session of parliament, 1675, when I showed them, in the Lords' House, the written copy of this book, wherein are some corrections, written with the late King Charles the First's own hand) a.s.sure me that this was none of the said king's compiling, but made by Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter; which I here insert for the understanding of others on this point, by attesting so much under my own hand.--ANGLESEY.'

[121:A] There were 4,313 lots in this sale, the total of which was 4,001. The catalogue has a very curious engraved frontispiece of an oak-tree felled, and persons bearing away branches, with a Greek motto signifying that, the oak being felled, every man gets wood.

[129:A] This particular copy is regarded as the finest ever sold at auction; it is bound in blue morocco by Derome, and cost Mr. Wodhull 15 guineas in August, 1770.

[132:A] John Ratcliffe, who died in 1776, lived in East Lane, Bermondsey, and followed the prosaic calling of a chandler. He collected Caxtons and the works of other early English printers with great diligence and judgment for nearly thirty years. Many of these appear to have been brought to him as wastepaper, to be purchased at so much per pound. An interesting account of this very remarkable man is given in Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes,' iii., 621, 622.

[133:A] The original or Caxton's price for this book was about 5s. or 6s. per copy.

[136:A] The t.i.tle-page of the catalogue contained the following whimsical motto from Ebulus:

+Kai gar o taos dia to spanion thaumazetai.+

(The peac.o.c.k is admired on account of its rarity.)

Hearne speaks of Richard Rawlinson as 'vir antiquis moribus ornatus, perque eam viam euns, quae ad immortalem gloriam ducit.'

[143:A] The first edition of this play, 1597, sold in 1864 for 341 5s.; it is the only copy known.

[143:B] Thomas Jolley picked up a volume which contained a first edition of both 'Venus and Adonis' and the 'Sonnets,' for less than 3s. 6d. in Lancas.h.i.+re! The former alone realised 116 in 1844, and is now in the Grenville collection, British Museum. The copy of the former in the above list was purchased at Baron Bolland's sale in 1840 for 91; at Bright's sale for 91 10s., when it became Daniel's. The 'Sonnets,' also Daniel's copy, had belonged to Narcissus Luttrell, who gave 1s. for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

BOOKSTALLS AND BOOKSTALLING.

OF the numerous ways and means of acquiring books open to the book-hunter in London, there is none more pleasant or popular than that of BOOKSTALLING. To the man with small means, and to the man with no means at all, the pastime is a very fascinating one. East, west, north, and south, there is, at all times and in all seasons, plenty of good hunting-ground for the sportsman, although the inveterate hunter will encounter a surfeit of Barmecides' feasts. Nearly every book-hunter has been more or less of a bookstaller, and the custom is more than tinctured with the odour of respectability by the fact that Roxburghe's famous Duke, Lord Macaulay the historian, and Mr. Gladstone the omnivorous, have been inveterate grubbers among the bookstalls. Macaulay was not very communicative to booksellers, and when any of them would hold up a book, although at the other end of the shop, he could tell by the cover, or by intuition, what it was all about, and would say 'No,'

or 'I have it already.' Leigh Hunt was a bookstaller, for he says: 'Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair.

”Take a chair, sir; you must be tired.”' The first Lord Lytton had a fancy for these plebeian book-marts; whilst Southey had a mania for them almost: he could not pa.s.s one without 'just running his eye over for _one_ minute, even if the coach which was to take him to see Coleridge at Hampstead was within the time of starting.'

The extreme variety of the bookstall is its great attraction, and the chances of netting a rare or interesting book lie, perhaps, not so much in the variety of books displayed as in their general shabbiness. Ten years ago an English journalist picked up a copy of the first edition of Mrs. Gla.s.se's 'Art of Cookery,' in the New Kent Road, for a few pence.

It is no longer a shabby folio, but, superbly bound, it was sold with Mr. Sala's books, July 23, 1895, for 10. A not too respectable copy of Charles Lamb's privately-printed volume, 'The Beauty and the Beast,' was secured for a few pence, its market-value being something like 20. A copy of Sir Walter Scott's 'Vision of Don Roderick,' 1816, first edition, in the original boards, was purchased, by Mr. J. H. Slater, in Farringdon Road, in January, 1895, for 2d.--not a great catch, perhaps, but it is one of the rarest of Scott's works; and as the originals of this prolific author are rapidly rising in the market, there is no knowing what it may be worth in the immediate future.

Here is a curious ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which a 'find' is literally picked up. A man who sells books from a barrow in the streets was wheeling it on the way to open for the day, and pa.s.sed close to a bookseller's a.s.sistant who was on his way to work. As the man pa.s.sed, a small volume fell off into the road, which the a.s.sistant kindly picked up, with the intention of replacing it on the barrow. Before doing so, however, he looked at the volume. One glance was enough. 'Here, what do you want for this?' he asked. The dealer, taking a casual glance at the volume, said: 'Oh, thruppence, I suppose, will do.' The money was paid, and the a.s.sistant departed with the prize, which was a rare volume by Increase Mather, printed in 1698 at Boston, U.S.A., and worth from 8 to 12. A copy of Fuller's first work, and the only volume of poetry published by that quaint writer, the excessively rare 'David's Hainous Sinne,' 1631, was bought a few years ago for eighteenpence, probably worth half as many pounds.

The coincidences of the bookstall are sometimes very remarkable. Mr. G.

L. Gomme relates one which is well worth recording, and we give it in his own words: 'My friend, Mr. James Britten, the well-known plant-lore scholar, has been collecting for some years the set of twenty-four volumes of that curious annual, _Time's Telescope_. He had two duplicates for 1825 and 1826, and these he gave to me. One day last January I was engaged to dine with him, and in the middle of the _same_ day I pa.s.sed a second-hand bookshop, and picked out from the sixpenny box a volume of _Time's Telescope_ for 1816. In the evening I showed my treasure with great contentment to my friend, expecting congratulations.

But, to my surprise and discomfiture, a mysterious look pa.s.sed over his face, then followed a quick migration to his bookshelves, then a loud hurrah, and an explanation that this very ”find” of mine was the _one_ volume he wanted to complete his set, the one volume he had been in search of for some time.' Another book-collector picked out of a rubbish-heap on a country bookseller's floor a little old book of poetry with the signature of 'A. Pope.' Subsequently he found a ma.n.u.script note in a book on the shelves of a public library referring to this very copy, which, the writer of the note stated, had been given him by the poet Pope.

The late Cornelius Walford related an interesting incident, the 'only one of any special significance which has occurred to me during thirty-five years of industrious book-hunting': 'When living at Enfield, I used generally to walk to the Temple by way of Finsbury, Moorgate, Cheapside, and Fleet Street. Every bookshop on the way I was familiar with. On one occasion I thought I would vary the route by way of Long Lane and Smithfield (as, indeed, I had occasionally done before). I was at the time sadly in want of a copy of ”Weskett on Insurances,” 1781, a folio work of some 600 pages. I had searched and inquired for it for years; no bookseller had ever seen it. I had visited every bookshop in Dublin, in the hope of finding a copy of the pirated (octavo) edition printed there; and but for having seen a copy in a public library, should have come to the conclusion that the book never existed. Some temporary sheds had been erected over the Metropolitan Railway in Long Lane. One, devoted to a meagre stock of old books, _was opened that morning_. The first book I saw on the rough shelves was Weskett, original edition, price a few s.h.i.+llings. I need hardly say I carried it away... . I have never seen or heard of another of the original edition exposed or reported for sale.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cornelius Walford, Book-collector._]

Mr. Shandy _pere_ was a bookstaller also, and if Bruscambille's 'Prologue upon Long Noses,' even when obtainable 'almost for nothing,'