The Book-Hunter
copies. The difference is fundamental, large-paper copies being created
by system, while tall copies are merely the creatures of accident; and
Dibdin bestows due castigation in a celebrated instance in which a mere
tall copy had, whether from ignorance or design, been spoken of as a
large-paper copy. This high development of the desirable book is the
result of an arrangement to print so many copies of a volume on paper of
larger size than that of the bulk of the impression. The tall copy is
the result of careful cutting by the binder, or of no cutting at all. In
this primitive shape a book has separate charms for a distinct class of
collectors who esteem rough edges, and are willing, for the sake of this
excellence, to endure the martyrdom of consulting books in that
condition.[33]
[Footnote 33:
"But devious oft, from ev'ry classic muse,
The keen collector meaner paths will choose:
And first the margin's breadth his soul employs,
Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys.
In vain might Homer roll the tide of song,
Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng;
If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade,
Or too oblique, or near the edge, invade,
The Bibliomane exclaims, with haggard eye,
'No margin!'--turns in haste, and scorns to buy."
--Ferriar's Bibliomania, v. 34-43.]
The historian of the private libraries of New York makes us acquainted
with a sect well known in the actually sporting world, but not
heretofore familiar in the bibliological. Here is a description of the
Waltonian library of the Reverend Dr Bethune. In the sunshine he is a
practical angler, and--
"During the darker seasons of the year, when forbidden the actual use of
his rod, our friend has occupied himself with excursions through sale
catalogues, fishing out from their dingy pages whatever tends to honour
his favourite author or favourite art, so that his spoils now number
nearly five hundred volumes, of all sizes and dates. Pains have been
taken to have not only copies of the works included in the list, but
also the several editions; and when it is of a work mentioned by Walton,
an edition which the good old man himself may have seen. Thus the
collection has all the editions of Walton, Cotton, and Venables in
existence, and, with few exceptions, all the works referred to by
Walton, or which tend to illustrate his favourite rambles by the Lea or
the Dove. Every scrap of Walton's writing, and every compliment paid to
him, have been carefully gathered and garnered up, with prints and
autographs and some precious manuscripts. Nor does the department end
here, but embraces most of the older and many of the modern writers on
ichthyology and angling."
The Prowler and the Auction-Haunter.
These incidental divisions are too numerous and complex for a proper
classification of book-hunters, and I am inclined to go back to the idea
that their most effective and comprehensive division is into the private
prowler and the auction-haunter. The difference between these is
something like, in the sporting world, that between the stalker and the
hunter proper. Each function has its merits, and calls for its special
qualities and sacrifices. The one demands placidity, patience, caution,
plausibility, and unwearied industry--such attributes as those which
have been already set forth in the words of the Antiquary. The
auction-room, on the other hand, calls forth courage, promptness, and
the spirit of adventure. There is wild work sometimes there, and men
find themselves carried off by enthusiasm and competition towards
pecuniary sacrifices which at the threshold of the temple they had
solemnly vowed to themselves to eschew. But such sacrifices are the
tribute paid to the absorbing interest of the pursuit, and are looked
upon in their own peculiar circle as tending to the immortal honour of
those who make them. This field of prowess has, it is said, undergone a
prejudicial change in these days, the biddings being nearly all by
dealers, while gentlemen-collectors are gradually moving out of the
field. In old days one might have reaped for himself, by bold and
emphatic biddings at a few auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of
which the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin--a name familiarly
abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin. His descriptions of auction
contests are perhaps the best and most readable portions of his
tremendously overdone books.
Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the sale of the Roxburghe
library, perhaps the most eminent contest of that kind on record. There
were of it some ten thousand separate "lots," as auctioneers call them,
and almost every one of them was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of
the collecting community, and had been, with special pains and care and
anxious exertion, drawn into the vortex of that collection. Although it
was created by a Duke, yet it has been rumoured that most of the books
had been bargains, and that the noble collector drew largely on the
spirit of patient perseverance and enlightened sagacity for which
Monkbarns claims credit. The great passion and pursuit of his life
having been of so peculiar a character--he was almost as zealous a
hunter of deer and wild swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not
considered in the least peculiar--it was necessary to find some strange
influencing motive for his conduct; so it has been said that it arose
from his having been crossed in love in his early youth. Such crosses,
in general, arise from the beloved one dying, or proving faithless and
becoming the wife of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the
Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the illustrious marriage of the
sister of his elected. She was the eldest daughter of the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal rank, yet
there would be many countervailing advantages in the position of an
affluent British Duchess which might reconcile a young lady, even of so
illustrious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not happened that Lord
Bute and the Princess of Wales selected her younger sister to be the
wife of George III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as the
good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it seems, the necessity, as a
matter of state and political etiquette, that the elder sister should
abandon the alliance with a British subject.
So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of the Duke's
bibliomania; and it is supposed to have been in the thoughts of Sir
Walter Scott, when he said of him that "youthful misfortunes, of a kind
against which neither wealth nor rank possess a talisman, cast an early
shade of gloom over his prospects, and gave to one splendidly endowed
with the means of enjoying society that degree of reserved melancholy
which prefers retirement to the splendid scenes of gaiety." Dibdin, with
more specific precision, after rambling over the house where the great
auction sale occurred, as inquisitive people are apt to do, tells us of
the solitary room occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which
he slept and died: "all his migrations," says the bibliographer, "were
confined to these two rooms. When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed on
which this bibliomaniacal Duke had expired, I felt--as I trust I ought
to have felt on the occasion." Scott attributed to an incidental
occurrence at his father's table the direction given to the great
pursuit of his life. "Lord Oxford and Lord Sunderland, both famous
collectors of the time, dined one day with the second Duke of Roxburghe,
when their conversation happened to turn upon the _editio princeps_ of
Boccaccio, printed in Venice in 1474, and so rare that its very
existence was doubted of." It so happened that the Duke remembered this
volume having been offered to him for L100, and he believed he could
still trace and secure it: he did so, and laid it before his admiring
friends at a subsequent sitting. "His son, then Marquess of Bowmont,
never forgot the little scene upon this occasion, and used to ascribe to
it the strong passion which he ever afterwards felt for rare books and
editions, and which rendered him one of the most assiduous and judicious
collectors that ever formed a sumptuous library."[34] And this same
Boccaccio was the point of attack which formed the climax in the great
contest of the Roxburghe roup, as the Duke's fellow-countrymen called
it. I am not aware that any of the English bibliographers have alluded
to any special cause for this volume's extreme rarity. Peignot
attributes it to a sermon preached by the Italian pulpit orator
Savonarola, on the 8th of February 1497, against indecorous books, in
consequence of which the inhabitants of Florence made a bonfire of their
Boccaccios,--an explanation which every one who pleases is at liberty to
believe.[35]
[Footnote 34: Article on Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, in the 21st vol. of
Miscellaneous Prose Works.]
[Footnote 35: Predicatoriana, p. 23]
The historian of the contest terms it "the Waterloo among book-battles,"
whereto "many a knight came far and wide from his retirement, and many
an unfledged combatant left his father's castle to partake of the glory
of such a contest." He also tells us that the honour of the first
effective shot was due to a house in the trade--Messrs Payne and
Foss--by whom "the Aldine Greek Bible was killed off the first in the
contest. It produced the sum of L4, 14s. 6d. Thus measuredly, and
guardedly, and even fearfully, did this tremendous battle begin." The
earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off when Lord Spencer
bought two Caxtons for L245, a feat of which the closing scene is
recorded, with a touching simplicity, in these terms:--"His Lordship put
each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush
of victory and consciousness of triumph." As every one does not possess
a copy of the three costly volumes of which the Bibliographical
Decameron consists--and, further, as many a one so fortunate as to
possess them has not had patience and perseverance enough to penetrate
to the middle of the third volume, where the most readable part is to be
found--a characteristic extract, describing the heat of the contest, may
not be unwelcome:--
"For two-and-forty successive days--with the exception only of
Sundays--were the voice and hammer of Mr Evans heard with equal efficacy
in the dining-room of the late Duke, which had been appropriated to the
vendition of the books; and within that same space (some thirty-five
feet by twenty) were such deeds of valour performed, and such feats of
book-heroism achieved, as had never been previously beheld, and of which
the like will probably never be seen again. The shouts of the victors
and the groans of the vanquished stunned and appalled you as you
entered. The striving and press, both of idle spectators and determined
bidders, was unprecedented. A sprinkling of Caxtons and De Wordes marked
the first day, and these were obtained at high, but, comparatively with
the subsequent sums given, moderate prices. Theology, jurisprudence,
philosophy, and philology chiefly marked the earlier days of this
tremendous contest; and occasionally during these days, there was much
stirring up of courage, and many hard and heavy blows were interchanged;
and the combatants may be said to have completely wallowed themselves in
the conflict. At length came poetry, Latin, Italian, and French: a
steady fight yet continued to be fought; victory seemed to hang in
doubtful scales--sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other side of Mr
Evans, who preserved throughout (as it was his bounden duty to preserve)
a uniform, impartial, and steady course; and who may be said on that
occasion, if not 'to have rode the whirlwind,' at least to have
'directed the storm.'"