The Book-Hunter
to take the measure of a rival,--as Monkbarns magnanimously takes that
of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate
addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for
searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had
the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would
detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper,
and find an _editio princeps_ under the mask of a school Corderius.'"
In pursuing the chase in this spirit, the sportsman is by no means
precluded from indulgence in the adventitious specialties that delight
the commonest bibliomaniac. There is a good deal more in many of them
than the first thought discloses. An _editio princeps_ is not a mere
toy--it has something in it that may purchase the attention even of a
thinking man. In the first place, it is a very old commodity--about four
hundred years of age. If you look around you in the world you will see
very few movables coeval with it. No doubt there are wonderfully ancient
things shown to travellers,--as in Glammis Castle you may see the
identical four-posted bedstead--a very creditable piece of
cabinet-makery--in which King Malcolm was murdered a thousand years ago.
But genuine articles of furniture so old as the _editio princeps_ are
very rare. If we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a drinking-can,
of that age, is there not something worthy of observance, as indicating
the social condition of the age, in those venerable pages, made to look
as like the handwriting of their day as possible, with their decorated
capitals, all squeezed between two solid planks of oak, covered with
richly embossed hog-skin, which can be clasped together by means of
massive decorated clasps? And shall we not admit it to a higher place in
our reverence than some mere item of household furnishing, when we
reflect that it is the very form in which some great ruling intellect,
resuscitated from long interment, burst upon the dazzled eyes of Europe
and displayed the fulness of its face?
His Achievements in the Creation of Libraries.
So much, then, for the benefit which the class to whom these pages are
devoted derive to themselves from their peculiar pursuit. Let us now
turn to the far more remarkable phenomena, in which these separate and
perhaps selfish pursuers of their own instincts and objects are found to
concur in bringing out a great influence upon the intellectual destinies
of mankind. It is said of Brindley, the great canal engineer,
that,--when a member of a committee, where he was under examination, a
little provoked or amused by his entire devotion to canals, asked him if
he thought there was any use of rivers,--he promptly answered, "Yes, to
feed navigable canals." So, if there be no other respectable function in
life fulfilled by the book-hunter, I would stand up for the proposition
that he is the feeder, provided by nature, for the preservation of
literature from age to age, by the accumulation and preservation of
libraries, public or private. It will require perhaps a little
circumlocutory exposition to show this, but here it is.
A great library cannot be constructed--it is the growth of ages. You may
buy books at any time with money, but you cannot make a library like one
that has been a century or two a-growing, though you had the whole
national debt to do it with. I remember once how an extensive publisher,
speaking of the rapid strides which literature had made of late years,
and referring to a certain old public library, celebrated for its
affluence in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers,
stated how he had himself freighted for exportation, within the past
month, as many books as that whole library consisted of. This was likely
enough to be true, but the two collections were very different from each
other. The cargoes of books were probably thousands of copies of some
few popular selling works. They might be a powerful illustration of the
diffusion of knowledge, but what they were compared with was its
concentration. Had all the paper of which these cargoes consisted been
bank-notes, they would not have enabled their owner to create a
duplicate of the old library, rich in the fathers, the civilians, and
the medieval chroniclers.
This impossibility of improvising libraries is really an important and
curious thing; and since it is apt to be overlooked, owing to the
facility of buying books, in quantities generally far beyond the
available means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy of some special
consideration. A man who sets to to form a library will go on
swimmingly for a short way. He will easily get Tennyson's
Poems--Macaulay's and Alison's Histories--the Encyclopaedia
Britannica--Buckle on Civilisation--all the books "in print," as it is
termed. Nay, he will find no difficulty in procuring copies of others
which may not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or of the
retailer of new books. Of Voltaire's works--a little library in
itself--he will get a copy at his call in London, if he has not set his
mind on some special edition. So of Scott's edition of Swift or Dryden,
Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, and the like. One can scarcely
suppose a juncture in which any of these cannot be found through the
electric chain of communication established by the book-trade. Of
Gibbon's and Hume's Histories--Jeremy Taylor's works--Bossuet's
Universal History, and the like, copies abound everywhere. Go back a
little, and ask for Kennet's Collection of the Historians--Echard's
History, Bayle, Moreri, or Father Daniel's History of France, you cannot
be so certain of immediately obtaining your object, but you will get the
book in the end--no doubt about that.
Everything has its caprices, and there are some books which might be
expected to be equally shy, but in reality, by some inexplicable
fatality, are as plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are
Famianus Strada's History of the Dutch War of Independence--one of the
most brilliant works ever written, and in the very best Latin after
Buchanan's. There is Buchanan's own history, very common even in the
shape of the early Scotch edition of 1582, which is a highly favourable
specimen of Arbuthnot's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis, and
Raynal's Philosophical History of the East and West Indies, without
which no book-stall is to be considered complete, and which seem to be
possessed of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements, since,
month after month, in fair weather or foul, they are to be seen at their
posts dry or dripping.
So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects some five thousand
volumes or so of select works. If he is miscellaneous in his taste, he
may get on pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and then his
troubles will arise. He has easily got Baker's and Froissart's and
Monstrelet's Chronicles, because there are modern reprints of them in
the market. But if he want Cooper's Chronicle, he may have to wait for
it, since its latest form is still the black-letter. True, I did pick up
a copy lately, at Braidwood's, for half-a-guinea, but that was a
catch--it might have caused the search of a lifetime. Still more
hopeless it is when the collector's ambition extends to The Ladder of
Perfection of Wynkin de Worde, or to his King Rycharde Cure de Lion,
whereof it is reported in the Repertorium Bibliographicum, that "an
imperfect copy, wanting one leaf, was sold by auction at Mr Evans's, in
June 1817, to Mr Watson Taylor for L40, 19s." "Woe betide," says
Dibdin, "the young bibliomaniac who sets his heart upon Breton's
Flourish upon Fancie and Pleasant Toyes of an Idle Head, 1557, 4to; or
Workes of a Young Wyt trussed up with a Fardell of Pretty Fancies!!
Threescore guineas shall hardly fetch these black-letter rarities from
the pigeon-holes of Mr Thorpe. I lack courage to add the prices for
which these copies sold." But he has some comfort reserved for the
hungry collector, in the intimation that The Ravisht Soul and the
Blessed Weaper, by the same author, may be had for L15.[51] It creates a
thrilling interest to know, through the same distinguished authority,
that the Heber sale must have again let loose upon the world "A merry
gest and a true, howe John Flynter made his Testament," concerning which
we are told, with appropriate solemnity and pathos, that "Julian Notary
is the printer of this inestimably precious volume, and Mr Heber is the
thrice-blessed owner of the copy described in the Typographical
Antiquities."
[Footnote 51: Library Companion, p. 699.]
Such works as the Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's
Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of
Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde,
will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly
contradicting that fundamental principle of political economy, that the
supply is always equal to the demand.
He, indeed, who sets his mind on the possession of any one of these
rarities, may go to his grave a disappointed man. It will be in general
the consolation of the collector, however, that he is by no means the
"homo unius libri." There is always something or other turning up for
him, so long as he keeps within moderate bounds. If he be rich and
ravenous, however, there is nothing for it but duplicating--the most
virulent form of book-mania. We have seen that Heber, whose collection,
made during his own lifetime, was on the scale of those public libraries
which take generations to grow, had, with all his wealth, his
liberality, and his persevering energy, to invest himself with
duplicates, triplicates--often many copies of the same book.
It is rare that the private collector runs himself absolutely into this
quagmire, and has so far exhausted the market that no already
unpossessed volume turns up in any part of the world to court his eager
embraces. The limitation constitutes, however, a serious difficulty in
the way of rapidly creating great public libraries. We would obtain the
best testimony to this difficulty in America, were our brethren there in
a condition to speak or think of so peaceful a pursuit as
library-making. In the normal condition of society there--something
like that of Holland in the seventeenth century--there are powerful
elements for the promotion of art and letters, when wealth gives the
means and civilisation the desire to promote them. The very absence of
feudal institutions--the inability to found a baronial house--turns the
thoughts of the rich and liberal to other foundations calculated to
transmit their name and influence to posterity. And so we have such
bequests as John Jacob Astor's, who left four hundred thousand dollars
for a library, and the hundred and eighty thousand which were the
nucleus of the Smithsonian Institution. Yes! Their efforts in this
direction have fully earned for them their own peculiar form of
laudation as "actually equal to cash." Hence, as the book-trade and
book-buyers know very well, the "almighty dollar" has been hard at work,
trying to rear up by its sheer force duplicates of the old European
libraries, containing not only all the ordinary stock books in the
market, but also the rarities, and those individualities--solitary
remaining copies of impressions--which the initiated call uniques. It is
clear, however, that when there is but one copy, it can only be in one
place; and if it have been rooted for centuries in the Bodleian, or the
University of Tubingen, it is not to be had for Harvard or the Astorian.
Dr Cogswell, the first librarian of the Astorian, spent some time in
Europe with his princely endowment in his pocket, and showed himself a