JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS AND THE LIBRARY

MARVIN SPEVACK

IN an address on the Halliwell-Phillipps collection delivered before the Pennsylvania Library Club, at the Friends' Library, Philadelphia, on Monday, 14 January 1895, Albert H. Smyth, Professor of the English Language and Literature, Central High School, Philadelphia, no librarian and therefore 'rather reminiscent than doctrinaire', raised the curtain thus: For several years I have been as regular in my summer visits to the British Museum as the birds that haunt the convenient corners of its Grecian front. From the day that I first walked vv'ith Richard Garnett, wittiest and most learned of librarians, in the gallery of the great reading-room and looked down upon the scholars who had come from the corners of the earth, I was made free ofthe learned society that makes ofthe library in Bloomsbury a great literary club. Lucy Toulmin Smith, the learned and industrious editor ofthe York Plays; Dr. Brinsley Nicholson, gentle and scholarly Shakespearian, now, alas, gone from us forever; P. A. Daniel, the best Elizabethan since Dyce, and many a foreign spirit, met every afternoon in the Museum restaurant, where we ate the worst meal in the United Kingdom and released our tongues after the forenoon's enforced silence.^

Since the reference must be to Richard Garnett, the younger, who became Reading Room Superintendent in 1875, and the scholars mentioned were generally active in the last quarter ofthe nineteenth century, it is perhaps not surprising for Smyth to say a little later on that 'no one ever saw Halliwell-Phillipps at the British Museum'. Halliwell- Phillipps's wife, Henrietta, suffered a riding accident in 1872, began losing her senses in 1874, and died in 1879. ^^ this period the normally prolific Halliwell-Phillipps produced very little: he even aborted his Illustrations ofthe Life of Shakespeare. In 1877-8 he built what he was fond of referring to as the ' quaint wigwam' at Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, where shortly thereafter he moved himself and his collection. It is, however, quite amazing for Smyth, in the very next sentence, to somehow connect Halliwell- Phillipps's absence with 'an order... issued [on 10 February 1845] by Sir then chief librarian, forbidding [him] access to the library, and this order was never rescinded.' There is little point in going to lengths to correct this error or to attempt to dispute his assertion about the cuisine of the Museum restaurant. Memory illuminates but - we must not forget - it may also dazzle. We know relatively little about how many

237 hours Halliwell-Phillipps spent in the library or, if at all, in the restaurant. We know only a little about what books he may have asked for or read. (Indeed, is it not a catastrophe for scholarship that book application slips have not been preserved?) But that, for some fifty years, he did 'enter' the British Museum Library - that is, made use of it as reader and author, as library critic, and as bookman - is beyond question.

I. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS AS AUTHOR AND READER We may not know exactly how much use - how often and to what extent - Halliwell- Phillipps made of the library as reader. But we do have some specific information about his relevant activities in the library. They began early. In 1837-8, at the age of seventeen, he produced a manuscript entitled 'Collections on the history of the Mathematics. Principally from Books and Manuscripts in the British Museum' - a handwritten work of 142 leaves, 26 cm. high and written on both sides, in which he transcribed bibliographical and other information, added comments, and closed with an index of names (see fig. 2). This work, of course, presupposes not merely the presence in the library of a minor (eighteen was the customary minimum age for admission) but also permission from official sources: in this case Sir Frederic Madden himself. Keeper ofthe Department of Manuscripts, was referee. An entry in the commonplace book he kept while at Trinity College, Cambridge, reflects his pride: ' In the spring of 1837 I obtained admission into the library of Sion-College and was a regular attendant there until I got a ticket for the reading-room of the Museum-library which far exceeds the former both in the quantity and quantity [sic] of its volumes.'^ Halliwell-Phillipps's activities were as intense as they were precocious. In a later report (and in another context) to the Standing Committee ofthe Museum on 6 March 1845 Madden declared that 'in the course of a twelvemonth', in 1840, Halliwell-Phillipps 'came to the Reading Room 756 days and consulted no less than i6js MSS., having had on the ioth of June J7 MSS. in one day!'^ In another instance, the Standing Committee was informed by Antonio Panizzi, then Keeper ofthe Department of Printed Books, on 25 July 1840 'respecting the number of Books required by Mr. Halliwell and the manner in which they were left in the Reading Room.'"* The matter was referred to Sir Henry Ellis, the Principal Librarian, who, on 10 October 1840, 'stated in a letter to the Secretary dated 8th October that he had seen Mr. Halliwell in the Reading Room, and believed that no more cause of difference would arise respecting the return of his books.'^ And, of course, in the tradition of readers before and after him, Halliwell-Phillipps was active for others who were not able to visit the library themselves. No lesser than Sir Thomas Phillipps, his father-in-law-to-be, asked him on 31 March 1842 to 'spare me a day at the Brit. Museum'^ and thanked him promptly on 3 April 1842 for what must have been Halliwell-Phillipps's speedy response.^ By the time the library was presented with and acknowledged receipt of his 'Collections', now Add. MS. 14061, on 8 April 1843, he was well known in other ways as well to the highest officers ofthe library. Like Ellis and Madden, the young Halliwell- 238 Drav/a fro i on STOti"; by VV I,

Fig. I. A lithograph 'drawn from life' of Halliwell-Phiilipps in his early twenties. His publisher, John Russell Smith, had ioo printed on India paper and in his catalogue of 1843 offered them for 2s 6d each.

239 Phillipps was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, among others. In the early 1840s he corresponded with them fairly regularly on professional matters. For by that time - when he was between twenty and twenty-three (fig. i) - he was busily productive and apparently knowledgeable in at least one of the ways of scholarly interaction: he was a keen distributor of his works. From Ellis he received 'many thanks' for a copy of his 'interesting little Volume of Old Letters illustrative of Science', with the comment 'You work very hard' (29 January 1841);^ for the 'obliging Present' ofthe romance. Torrent of Portugal (1842), with the florid comment: 'You are one ofthe most industrious labourers in the Vineyard of Archaeology whom I know' (2 September 1842);^ for the 'kind Present' of The Manuscript Rarities ofthe University of Cambridge (1841), with the flattering comment: 'I find much that is new to me in the work, and am going carefully through it. The bookish world is under many obligations to you, as well as Your sincere friend Henry Ellis' (25 September 1841);^^ and for numerous other works received between 1839 and 1844. Eflis also congratulated Halliwell-Phillipps on his marriage in 1842 and added, with a flourish, 'Should any thing occur in which I can feel at liberty to aid your wishes, at any time, you may always rest assured of my kindness' (24 August 1842).^^ Egerton MSS. 2842 and 2843 contain ten letters from Halliwell-Phillipps to Madden between 24 April 1839 and 8 April 1843 which cover a range of scholarly concerns of special interest to Madden: in a note from the Reading Room, comments on a translation in St John's College, Cambridge, of Harley MS. 694, which might be Wyclifl^s (24 April 1839);^^ a request for 'further particulars' about Latin translations of Welsh romances and whether Madden intended to edit them (2 August 1839);^^ thanks for information and 'valuable advice' on various projects Halliwell-Phillipps was engaged in and even the loan of a transcription of Torrent of Portugal', as well as the customary requests for permissions and copying, exchanges of opinion, offers of assistance ('I shall feel proud of being of any service...in the libraries here [in Oxford] ifl can' (11 August 1841)),^* and, de rigueur, the presentation to the library of recently published works. Not completely customary perhaps - and however the motivation may be interpreted - was Halliwell-Phillipps's adding to his assertion that 'every one knows that you are better acquainted with the early romances than any one in the world' a request for permission to pubhsh Torrent of Portugal with the dedication 'To Sir Frederic Madden, K. H. Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, etc. etc. etc. this volume is, with his kind permission, most respectfully inscribed' (16 July 1842)/^ Madden did not object. And in addition to the dedication, the preface concludes with Halliwell-Phillipps's 'best thanks' to Madden, ' who most liberally lent me his own transcription of the romance, made in the autumn of 1835', not failing to mention, 'I ought to add that when I made my transcript, I was not aware that a copy had previously been made by a gentleman, whose very superior knowledge both of the language and the subject would have produced an edition of this romance much more satisfactory than the present one. '^ For his part, in a dozen letters in the Edinburgh collection to Halliwell-Phillipps in the early 1840s, Madden gave advice, exchanged information, and addressed all matters promptly

240 in th u:uA, > o o' . . Mathematics. Principally from Books and Manuscripts n the British ^us^^nj j;837 8. AS the comments indicate, the young Halliwell-Phillipps had strong opinions. BL, Add. MS. 14061, f. 2ov ^^

241 and courteously, even at one point writing to the twenty-one-year-old, 'I am sorry I should have been so much engaged during the last week or more that I was unable to see you on the subject of your letter, until you left town', and offering, 'any afternoon after two o'clock that you are at the Museum I shall be happy to give you any assistance in my power' (13 July 1841).^^ In short, these were apparently fruitful scholarly exchanges: a young reader's and author's dream. But young Halliwell-Phillipps was not only productive, he was ambitious. By 1840, when he was twenty, he was already, as has been pointed out, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. He was also Secretary and Treasurer of the Historical Society of Science, a member of the , of the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture, of the Ashmolean Society, to mention but a few of the dozen or so organizations, as well as founding and council member of the Percy and Shakespeare Societies. It is little wonder that Alexander Dyce, with grumpy but benevolent humour, addressed one letter to Halliwell 'F.R.S.A.B.C.D.E.F.G.H.LJ.K.L.M.N.O.P.' (16 November i84[?])'' and in another taunted him: 'Tell me if you have yet demolished the Camden. & how many new Literary Societies you have established during the last six weeks' (i July 1840).^^ Such a reader is not necessarily a cause of delight for a library, much less for such formidable personalities as Madden and Panizzi. Madden's diary^° reveals an unambiguous subtext. In regard to Halliwell-Phillipps's membership in societies, Madden's entry on 25 February 1841 records: 'It is really too bad that this conceited young man should be allowed to figure in the Council of every Society, & be so utterly incapable of editing any work properly.' On 5 January 1843 it reads: 'Sir Henry Ellis informed me today, that [Henry] Hallam had seriously proposed to Hudson Gurney, to elect Halliwell Director of the Society of Antiquaries!!! What next? If so absurd a step had been taken, I would at once have resigned. But to Mr Hallam, a man of no research, no doubt Mr Halliwell appears a man of great research.' Practically all of Halliwell- Phillipps's early works were savaged. Halliwell-Phillipps's A Few Hints to Novices in Manuscript Literature {IST,()), a' flimsy tract', elicited from Madden a revealingly personal response: 'He professes that this is only the prelude to a larger treatise on the subject, which I hope is not the case, as I have always had the design of writing myself a work on the subject. Mr. HaUiwell is certainly not qualified at present to do it' (17 March 1840). On 9 August 1841 at [Thomas] Rodd's (the bookseller) Madden met Dyce, who spoke of Halliwell-Phillipps's editions ofthe Ludus Coventriae (1841) and ofthe minor poems of John Lydgate (1840), 'both of which he condemned in no very measured terms. In fact Mr Halliwell ought to go to school again, before he puts his name on the title page of a book.' On 25 August 1841 Madden introduced further charges against Halliwell- Phillipps. Referring to the latter's The Manuscript Rarities ofthe University of Cambridge, which he termed a 'miserable volume', and 'done in a very jejune & meagre manner', he expanded his distaste: 'I am thoroughly sick of the Halliwelliana. He is a puerile blockhead aiming at everything and able to do nothing.' And to incompetence and

242 impertinence. Madden added a strong hint of Halliwell-Phillipps's penchant for deception: 'But it really is too vexatious for this meddler to occupy ground hke this procure a list of subscribers to carry so desirable an object into effect... and then to find that he has deceived us all in this pitiful manner, and by way of crowning his folly, calhng his volume "The Manuscript Rarities of Cambridge"!' The hint became an accusation - not the first and not the last. Of a meeting ofthe Percy Society Council on 8 December 1842 Madden reported: Above an hour was occupied in a very stormy discussion respecting Mr Halliwell, whose shameful (not to say swindling conduct) as Treasurer, ended by his quitting the Society altogether, and who now retains in his hands some transcripts paid for and belonging to the Society, & which he refuses to give up - saying in a letter to Mr [William] Chappel [sic], 'he would see the Society damned first.' One of these transcripts he had sent to the printer, without the authority of the Council, & the Secretary having taking [sic] the transcript out of the printer's hands, this proceeding is now complained of by Mr [Thomas] Wright (on the part of Mr Halliwell) as an affront. A part of the members present wished to defer the consideration of the whole question till Mr Wright's return, but the majority (with whom I voted) declared that the Society had acted perfectly right. The private details I afterwards received from Mr Chappel (the present Treasurer) of Halliwell's conduct about money are really most disgraceful to the latter. He can have no right to be recognized or treated as a gentleman, and I sincerely pity little Miss Phillipps at having fallen into such hands. Among other of Mr H's proceedings, it appears that without leave ofthe Council, he actually printed a transcript ^a/i/or by the Society (ofthe tract intitled Westward for Smelts) for the Shakespeare Society! Is such conduct to be endured.^ I am sick of the very name of Halliwell. He is as much scoundrel as he is coxcomb !^^

It may not come as a surprise that even Halliwell-Phillipps's tribute to Madden in the dedication and preface of Torrent of Portugal could only be regarded as fawning bordering on mockery. A number of forces converge in Madden's intemperate reaction: Halliwell-Phillipps's youth and ambition, his ubiquitousness and self-seeking, his wheeling and dealing. These traits are, of course, contrasted with Madden's own long-enduring and painstaking scholarship and also reinforced by his obvious envy of the young man's vitality and perhaps his own disappointment at not having achieved important goals, goals which in fact may have been usurped. It must not be overlooked, moreover, that much of the conflict was played out not overtly (as yet) in the library itself but in the various literary societies. In the entry of 9 February 1843 Madden's diary describes another dramatic scene. At a meeting of the Council of the Percy Society, supposing that the affair of Halliwell discussed on the 8 Deer, could be again brought forward but to my very great surprise, I found that there has been a meeting on the 12 Jany last, to which I received no summons, at which the Council stultified themselves by passing a resolution to request Mr Halliwell to edit for them Hobson's Jests! the work which they had previously, on account of his ill-conduct, taken out of his hands!!! I was perfectly disgusted, and soon left the Council, and in the morning wrote a letter to the Secretary, to resign my seat in it.

243 Within the societies there were, of course, factions and, as is inevitably the case, they were fractious. The personal rivalry between Thomas Wright and Frederic Madden extended to alliances: Halliwell and Thomas Pettigrew, for example, were ofthe party of Wright; Joseph Hunter and Thomas Phillipps that of Madden. The company one kept was a source of tension and, as it so happens, opportunities presented themselves for an increasing animosity based on distrust, deception, even paranoia. This may all seem quite distant from the idyllic Reading Room ambience described by Albert H. Smyth of Philadelphia. But it does require mentioning, for it highlights a continuing situation, if not dilemma, for the library. Then, as now, the library was not simply a service organization like the Post Office, nor a caring institution like the Royal Infirmary. True, it does supply and support scholarship, it does accommodate and nurture scholars. But it also produces scholarship, which in turn produces professional rivalry. At the level under discussion its staff are scholars who are expected and driven to engage in professional activities within and without the library. The business ofthe library cannot be disentangled from the business of the staff, the institution from its members, as this episode demonstrates. In modern parlance an internet of roles is prescribed. That this internet can be internecine is undeniable.

II. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS AS LIBRARY CRITIC There were relatively few readers in the library in the 1840s: the Secretary's report notes that in 1846, for example, there was an average of 238 readers per day,^^ especially given the fact that the Reading Room could not accommodate many more. And it was not unusual for valuable material to be brought to the readers personally by the superintendent himself. The genuine scholars were an even smaller and doubtless privileged group. Halliwell-Phillipps felt himself to be one of them - indeed, to be one of an inner circle within the library. He may have been, to some, a pushy young fry who was interested in the library only for the advancement of his own career. And he may not have been librarian of Jesus College, Cambridge, while a student, as some hold. But even as an assistant there and, at the same time, with the support of Thomas Wright apparently a favoured reader at Trinity College, he doubtless gained valuable knowledge not only ofthe collections but also ofthe organization of libraries. At any rate, there can be little doubt that Halliwell-Phillipps was interested in libraries: as his oeuvre testifies, abounding in catalogues and inventories and collections, as well as editions of little- known manuscripts and historical records; as his munificence exemplifies, with generous donations - hundreds and even thousands of items - to libraries in Plymouth, Penzance (more than 2,000 titles), the Chetham Library in Manchester (3,100 items), Edinburgh, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Smithsonian Institution, the British Museum Library; as his career as bookman illustrates. It should not therefore be surprising that Halliwell- Phillipps, the constant user, should be interested in the structure, functioning, and aims of libraries and, naturally and especially, as a Londoner, of those of one of his 'local' hbraries, the great national library in Bloomsbury.

244 His early career coincided with a national discussion and debate about the future of the library: the Parliamentary Enquiries of 1835-6, the Royal Commission of 1847-9, and not least the power struggle from which Antonio Panizzi emerged as Principal Librarian. Halliwell-Phillipps played no official role in any of these, as did his friend and competitor , who was secretary of the Commission. And it is to be doubted that he played much, if any, of a backroom role. But one thing is certain about the young man: he did have opinions and he was not shy about uttering them. And what better place than The Times} In the second of a lifetime of contributions to The Times - the first, two months earlier, was on the Corn Laws of 1800 - Hafliwell-Phillipps wrote, on 18 October 1841, an almost full-column-length Letter to the Editor on the Library of the British Museum.^^ In response to a letter from 'J. H.' advocating the opening ofthe library to the education of the 'rising and unformed minds of the metropolis', the twenty-one- year-old Halliwell-Phillipps countered, unequivocably, that the 'legitimate object ofthe library ofthe British Museum is the promotion of literature, and it accomplishes this by affording scholars the facihty of referring to books, manuscripts, and records, that would not otherwise be accessible to them, or at any rate not easily procured elsewhere.' Admission of unqualified readers, he continued, is 'really detrimental to the best interests of literature', illustrating the point with an episode in which such a person ordered a valuable 'membranacean' copy of an early edition of Homer which he then 'rejected with the remark that he had transcribed the first entry he found in the catalogue; that the copy before him was useless because he did not understand the contractions and that a modern school edition with a translation was the "kind of thing he wanted".' As if the point were not clear enough, Halliwell-Phiflipps adds: 'The reading room is already filled, I am sorry to say, with too many persons of this class, and the constant whispering which is kept up almost entirely by them, is often a source of very great annoyance to those who frequent it for the purposes of real learning and research.' Plus 9a change. Political fireworks from a Cambridge man, even if he moved from Trinity to Jesus College for financial reasons. He enforces his message by referring to the stellar position in the world of the Bodleian Library, which, ' with not more than a dozen readers daily', was founded for 'research, and not education', and which its delegates 'do not convert... into a lecture-room for the undergraduates'. Halliwell- Phillipps goes on to dismiss the charge that the 'chief frequenters of the library of the British Museum are a coterie of professed litterateurs - men whose devotions are more paid to Mammon than to Minerva', perorating with political passion:

The only privilege that the historian possesses - a privilege shared in common with the most humble of his kind - is to be invaded by the deceptive outcry of 'rights to the million', and universal suffrage as well as ballot permeate the ranks of literature. It was said long since that literature was a republic only because authors had not a sovereign amongst them; and I sincerely hope and trust that, under the present Government, this the only feasible reason for so styling it will be removed, and pestilential Radicalism no longer suffered to affect the exertions of a class of men, many of whom unquestionably confer so much honour on their country.

245 In a not uncharacteristic (and, in terms of what is to happen in a few years, eerily prophetic) coda he concludes: I am induced, contrary to my general custom in such communications, to add my name to these brief observations - not that it is of any value, but because anonymous vindications of any large institutions are often vulgarly attributed to persons connected with the particular establishment, and I am desirous of giving the present one the weight at least of a disinterested advocacy. Halliwell-Phillipps's 'disinterested advocacy' was not likely to ingratiate him with a Panizzi whose often-quoted creed was 'I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate enquiry, as the richest man in the kingdom.' Other of Halliwell-Phillipps's opinions were less 'disinterested'-more routine perhaps but not less urgent. Readers then as now complained about long waits for books to be delivered. The annals and anecdotes thereto are legion. Although there do not seem to be direct references to the matter in Halliwell-Phiflipps's own utterances, the letters he received reveal at least a tacit understanding if not agreement, as with Collier's writing that working in Oxford was more agreeable than in the British Museum library, where he 'sometimes waited for an hour for a book, and then came away without seeing it' (5 July 1863).^* As far as the coflection was concerned, the minutes of the Standing Committee of 8 June 1844 record that Halliwell-Phillipps recommended the 'purchase of a MS. at Mr. Bright's sale',^^ having already written on 4 June 1844 directly to the Secretary of State for the Home Department advising the government that the Manuscript' wd probably be secured for ^^250 or ;£3oo. '^^ In 1852 Panizzi thanked him for the 'friendly interest which you take in the growth ofthe collection and for the high place which you are pleased to assign to it among European collections of printed books' (9 November 1852),^' and a few years later for what Halliwell-Phillipps was 'pleased to say about the Catalogue of pamphlets in the King's Library: [which] had never been catalogued at all before' (30 March [1855]).^^ Other matters were even more pressing. Copyright, for example, was a constant source of irritation throughout Halliwell-Phillipps's career, be it in connection with the 'piracy' of his name in the editions of Shakespeare published by John Tallis in the 1850s, or John Payne Collier's insistence that the 'new' readings in the Perkins folio belonged to him alone, or Halhwell-Phillipps's own refusal to make available to Furnivall certain of Norden's maps of London which he owned. Of more immediate interest in the context ofthe British Museum library was the issue of copyright deposit. Crucial, of course, for the development of the library's resources, it was reasserted in the Copyright Act of 1842. From 1850 onwards, Panizzi expended a great deal of his energy attempting to enforce it, against the strenuous opposition of publishers. As author, Halliwell-Phillipps seems to have complied: numerous of his privately printed works were issued in twenty- six copies, twenty-five for subscribers and one copy designated for the library as obligation or donation. Not that he was always happy with the situation. But by the time

246 he made a statement, in 1861, the opposition had pretty much dissolved or, as Arundell Esdaile put it, 'In time it was realized that the Copyright Act did not differ from other Acts of Parliament in being optional.''** Halliwell-Phillipps's position may therefore be described as retrospectively serio-comic. In her diary entry for 30 January 1861, his wife reported: 'James returned to dinner at 3. He finds on looking at the Act of Parliament that he must send the books to the different libraries. He was thinking it wd be a good plan to print only 2 copies of a book & write to them all to know what is to be done[,] as to print a book will cost 6 guineas & not send it, & let them fine him £s which is the highest fine.' And in a letter of 5 January 1864 to Winter Jones, Keeper of Printed Books (and from 1866 Principal Librarian), he made a serious case:

Personally, as I think you are aware, I wish everything I print to be in the Museum; but if I go to great expense for particular books of very small impression, such as any consisting exclusively of numerous plates of facsimiles, the plain truth is I cannot afford to give such works & I would ask you if in such cases you would not purchase if you had the opportunity of doing so. Indeed, I am convinced that if it were known the Museum would buy in cases when the impression of a book does not bona fide exceed, say fourty [sic] copies, a great service would be rendered the library without intruding upon the privileges of the Copyright ^*^

Surprisingly or not. Winter Jones immediately agreed: 'the presumption is that nothing of interest would be declined' (8 January 1864).^^ Halliwell-Phillipps was also, naturally, interested and to a certain extent involved in the long-enduring and tangled debate about the catalogue.^^ As a teenager he had already irritated the establishment by characterizing Samuel Ayscough's catalogue of the Additional Manuscripts (1782) as 'an absurd attempt at a classed catalogue, and without exception... the very worst failure at a classification that has ever come within the notice ofthe learned world.'^^ On 9 November 1841, the twenty-one-year-old, in a letter^^ accompanying a gift to Madden of two little tracts which the Percy Society had cancelled as being too 'gross for publication' and as an 'acknowledgement of the politeness you have shown to me in answering my queries about the Museum manuscripts', did not hesitate to mention a 'defect' in the Department of Manuscripts: 'the slow progress which is being made in giving the pubhc an account ofthe MSS. which annually come into the Museum. As a reader I only know ofthe MSS. which have been purchased or presented up to 1836, nearly six years ago.' 'I beg leave', he went on, 'respectfully to suggest the great convenience of a hand catalogue of the annual donations.' Madden answered on the very same day in a note headed 'B. M. 9 Nov. 1841.':

With regard to the defect in the Department of MSS. you suppose, it is easily answered. The additions for the year 1837 as well as those for the years 1838-9. 1840. are all printed off, and are only waiting for the completion of a general Index (which will comprise also 1836. and which was undertaken at my express recommendation to the Trustees) to render the volume useful to the Public. I also beg to say that when the Trustees thought proper at the beginning of this year to put a stop altogether to the printing of the Annual Lists of Additions the Department of MSS.

247 was the only one subsequently exempted from this resolution, in consequence of my representations on the j^^

That Halliwell-Phillipps had an active and abiding interest in the printed catalogue may be easily deduced from the following letter to him of 22 May 1847 from Henry George Davis:

For many long months & years I have complained of & sought redress for the villainous catalogues that destroy our time & patience at the Museum; and I verily entertain a hope, that now is the accepted time for a change for the better. You have heard from Mr Wright of our requisition, to which, as instructed by him, I have appended your name. I now write by request of Sir Harris Nicolas to request from you a brief statement of the inconveniences that you have experienced, - whether from the imperfection of the catalogues, - the tiresome necessity of always furnishing press-marks, - the absence of foreign works, - the late arrival of modern publications, Parl. reports, newsprs &c. I may add that these inquiries are made to you, in common with all who have signed the requisition, with the view of making them the groundwork of a document to be very soon presented to the Prime Minister ofthe Crown & and the Right Hon'ble the Trustees.^^

Halliwell-Phillipps's response is not available, but there can be little doubt where his sympathies lay, especially since he was so closely allied to Thomas Wright. In this context it may not be irrelevant to mention one concrete instance of the influence of personality and individual scholarship on catalogue policy. In 1838 Madden's pamphlet Observations on an Autograph ofShakspere and the Orthography of His Name^~ advocated 'Shakspere' as the proper spelling ofthe poet's name. From the beginning of his career (in An Introduction to Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', 1841) to the end (in Which Shall It Be} New Lamps or Old} Shaxpere or Shakespeare}, 1879), Halliwell- Phillipps championed 'Shakespeare'. In response to receiving a copy ofthe latter, W. B. Rye, formerly Keeper of Printed Books, wrote to Halliwell-Phillipps: 'The B. Mus. authorities, out of compliment, as I suppose, to one of their principal officers adopted "Shakspere" for the great catalogue' (12 December 1879).^^ Years later, in a letter of 14 March 1856, Halliwell-Phillipps added to his congratulating Panizzi on his 'important appointment to the chief office ofthe Museum', his admiration of Panizzi's 'untiring energy', and not neglecting to make known his agreement 'on many points' with his 'system'.^^ Like Madden earlier, Panizzi replied on the same day, with tantalizing ambiguity: 'That you do not indiscriminately agree in all my views renders your praise more valuable as it may be hoped to be the result of critical judgement and not of mere personal regard."**' Halliwell-Phillipps was of eourse known to Panizzi, who as early as 1840 had reported his peccadilloes in the Reading Room to the Trustees. In the 1850s Panizzi congratulated him on the appearance ofthe first volume of the folio Shakespeare - ' I have seen and admired your first vol. of Shakspere which I expect to see very soon spoiled & thumbed by readers who will more look at it than read it' (6 June [1853])*^ - and offered 'any assistance... as wefl as any facility required' in the 'prosecution' of his work. He also responded to the receipt of

248 Halliwell-Phillipps's attack on Collier, Curiosities of Modern Shaksperian Criticism (1853): 'I have read your remarks with pleasure and they seem to me just... I ^m sorry Lord Ellesmere is abroad: otherwise I should have run to see the Bridgewater MSS to satisfy myself they are, partly at least, forgeries, as you lead me to suppose (6 August 1853).*' He was anxious to compare the library's copy of Caxton's Diets or Sayings of the Philosophers with Halliwell-Phillipps's (5 June 1855).'' And on receiving Brief Notices of Bibliographical Rarities in the Library of James Orchard Halliwell (1855), he could not deny that 'one is tempted to break the commandments as well as into your house by such publications privately printed. (What a bulk!!)' (15 November 1855).^' But Halliwell-Phillipps was best known to Panizzi and all the officers ofthe Museum and all the readers and a good deal ofthe general public in the most critical of his relations with the library-the affair involving manuscripts purportedly stolen from Trinity College, Cambridge, which found their way into the possession of the library of the British Museum, where they remain today.^^ If the debate over the catalogue was complicated, the matter of the Trinity College manuscripts was Byzantine. Launched in early 1845 and spent by mid-1846, what Mrs Halliwell-Phillipps's diary entry of 2 February 1845 described as the 'scandalous MS. affair got up by the British Museum People' against her husband became one ofthe most explosive events of the time. The minutes of the General Meeting of the Trustees of 8 February 1845 ordered 'that the Principal Librarian repeat to Mr. Halliwell in the name of the Trustees the suggestion conveyed in the Principal Librarian's letter of the 29th January, namely that until the case of the Manuscripts improperly abstracted from Trinity College Library has been thoroughly investigated, he would probably think it proper to abstain from consulting the Museum Collections."*^ On 15 February 1845 in the minutes ofthe Standing Committee the Principal Librarian reported to the Trustees that 'Sir Henry Ellis, Sir Frederic Madden, and Mr. Panizzi join in expressing their humble opinion to the Trustees, that Mr. Halliwell, under all the circumstances of his case as it at present stands, is not a fit person to have admission to the Reading Room.'^' Individuals, factions, societies, and institutions were mobilized: sides were taken. Reports were written, statements were circulated, leading articles appeared. Letters flooded The Times and other newspapers and journals from correspondents who signed themselves 'An Historian', 'A Lover of Justice', 'A Reader at the Museum', 'A Poor Student', 'A Hater of Oppression', 'Philo Justitiae', 'Presbyter', 'Juvenis'. In addition to a steady flow of letters of support from intimates, much of Volumes 25 and 26 ofthe letters in the Edinburgh collection is devoted to statements of encouragement from outsiders. Appeals were made to Parliament; Disraeli was approached. Two letters from Halliwell-Phillipps to the Archbishop of Canterbury were by His Grace's 'desire' read to the Board of the Museum.^^ The media were thought to be attempting to embarrass the government and the person of Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister and Trustee of the Museum.'*^ Rumours were swirling in a Kafkaesque environment: Halliwell-Phillipps protesting his innocence and demanding a public hearing, the British Museum and 249 Trinity College stonewalling. Lawyers were engaged; a trial was scheduled for Tuesday, 23 June, and then postponed until the following Thursday. It never took place; the case of trover, with Trinity College as plaintiff and the British Museum as defendant, was suddenly dropped. Halliwell-Phillipps was issued a new reader's ticket. The question of Halliwell-Phillipps's guilt or innocence, victory or defeat, is not answered easily or confidently, although there is considerable evidence, and opinion, against him.^** Whatever the final verdict, it is clear that the dispute was intense and bitter, and not one arising from a simple case of theft. On the surface it ranged from cold to icy. And it is difficult not to have the impression of the pushy young man of questionable talent and ethics being ambushed, an impression reinforced and amplified by the refusal of the officials of the British Museum to provide Halliwell-Philhpps (if not the public) with details of its charges against him, even to indicate how long the investigation would last, much less to give him a hearing. William Whewell, Master of Trinity College (who had previously corresponded with Halliwell-Phillipps on matters connected with the history of science and had recommended him for membership in the Royal Society), even asserted at one point, as Halliwell-Phillipps wrote to Thomas Pettigrew, 19 December 1845, that he was not 'authorized^ to 'answer the question as to what the particular MSS. were', the recovery of which was the reason for the proceedings against the British Museum.^^ Whewell's immediate, single sentence reply to Halliwell-Phillipps's request of 14 January 1846 was, drastically, 'I have to say that I cannot furnish you with such a list'.^^ And behind the scenes, the old personal and professional rivalries were bristling. In one of numerous utterances, Thomas Wright, no admirer of Madden as person or scholar, advised Halliwell-Phillipps: ' I think I would take no further notice of Madden - he is only a clown at best. '^^ For his part, in a small but telling incident in 1846, Madden, sensing that one Charles Hook had been engaged by Halliwell-Phillipps to transcribe a manuscript of Heywood's plays, exerted such pressure that Hook wrote: 'The unexpected and unnecessary enquiries of Sir F. Madden, relative to Heywood's MS., and the bad feeling between you and the Museum Trustees, induced me (for Sir F. knew it was for you) to decline,y^r the present,^ by Note to make the transcription. This feeling of mine arose partly from shyness, partly perhaps from fear. '^'* For his part, Halliwell-Phillipps wrote on 24 August 1845 to the publisher William Shoberl concerning their plans to issue a series of historical letters: 'I see Bentley has advertised another series of Sir H. Ellis's letters. I cannot help thinking we can make a far more interesting collection ... Don't you think it would be just as well to get our book out first? Sir H. Ellis has treated me so ungenerously in the recent MS. affair, that I owe him no courtesy in anything. '^^ Other instances, petty and considerable, abound. And it must be remembered that it was Madden himself who had bought the manuscripts, and to him fell the embarrassing and bitter task of exposing them.^^ What is undeniable in the whole affair is that what was under way for sixteen months was not so much an investigation - Ellis, Madden, and Panizzi were convinced enough of Halliwell-Phillipps's guilt for him to be banned from the Reading Room - as an attempt by the Museum and Trinity College to figure out what to do.

250 And the conclusion of the afifair can only be described as painful and ugly. A letter from Henry Ellis - a grudging verbatim repetition of the terse entry in the minutes of the Standing Committee" - is dated 27 June 1846; 'Dear Sir, - I am instructed by our trustees to communicate to you, that if an application in the usual form for admission to the reading-room shall be made by you, the same will be granted in the usual manner.' The reply by Halliwell-PhiUipps is dated 29 June 1846: Dear Sir Henry, - I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note of Saturday's date, acquainting me that by the instruction of the trustees of the British Museum you had to communicate to me, that if an application were made by me for admission to the reading-room, it would be granted in the usual manner. I can only assure you that my readmission will be a source of great satisfaction to me, since my literary engagements have been most seriously obstructed by my exclusion, not to mention the distress of mind I have experienced for a period of a year and a half I therefore request you have the goodness to send me a ticket of admission to the reading-room. I am not aware that any other form of application is necessary, but, if such be the case, you will perhaps be kind enough to inform me of it.

This exchange was followed by the terse note: 'Sir H. Ellis at once forwarded a ticket of admission to the reading-room to Mr. Halliwell, unaccompanied by any further communication.' The British Museum's frost was matched by the publication by Halliwell-Phillipps of both letters in The Times of 3 July 1846 (p. 5). Ellis's seemingly matter-of-fact 'in the usual manner' was thus echoed in another key by Halhwell-Phillipps. But can there be something like a status quo ante? The British Museum Library and Halliwell-Phillipps were to interrelate for another four decades. The question is how.

III. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS AS BOOKMAN How else but under the banner of'business as usual'? For Halliwell-Phillipps was not only a reader and author, and a critic of the hbrary, he was also - and seriously - in the book business as collector, adviser, publisher, and above all dealer. On 25 June 1840-he had just turned twenty - Sotheby's announced the sale by auction of a 'Selected Portion of the Scientific, Historical, and Miscellaneous Library of James Orchard Halliwell, Esq. F.R.S. F.S.A. and English Correspondent of the French Historical Committee of Sciences': 624 lots which fetched ^£130.0.6. Two days later another 162 lots were put up for auction. Further auctions at Sotheby's during the lifetime of Halliwell-Phillipps totalled 4,383 lots; three posthumous sales, 1,363 lots. Together, they fetched £7,285.9.8. If his mighty bequests to various libraries, his unending issuing of catalogues, handhsts, inventories, calendars, and the like, and his massive correspondence with buyers and sellers, agents, and those seeking advice are taken into account, even a cautious estimate would be that many thousands of books had been within his ken and indeed passed through his hands. The British Museum was part of his business, as customer and competitor and 251 recipient of donations. Invoices from Halliwell-Phillipps total 3£i,58i.3.o. For a set of eighteen early quartos of Shakespearean plays the library paid him £i,ooo in November 1858. Six years later, on 6 November 1862, it purchased a collection of seventy (corrected to sixty-eight) sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works for £450. Even the Department of Manuscripts, while Madden was still Keeper, purchased his 'Medulla Grammatica' (Add. MS. 24640). As might be expected, the transactions were not without the 'heartache and the thousand natural shocks' that bookdeahng is heir to. This is clear from the seventeen letters of'interest' and other matters in the Edinburgh collection to Halliwell-Phillipps from J. Winter Jones, Panizzi's successor as Keeper of Printed Books. It is also evident in the actions of Halliwell-Philhpps's nemesis and competitor, his father-in-law. Sir Thomas Phillipps, who, among many moves against his hated son- in-law, attempted to block an important sale. As reported by his daughter, Mrs Halliwell-Phillipps, in her diary entry of 23 October 1862:

James told me that to his great surprise when he saw Mr Panizzi at the Museum this morning, he told J. that Papa had lately written to the Lords of the Treasury suggesting that the B. Museum shd not pay James the £450 for the books he sold them last spring & which he bought of Mr. Collier - Papa said that James had affixed fictitious prices to them which were higher than he gave for them - James was thunderstruck...He saw Mr. Winter Jones about it & said he wd take his ledger tomorrow to show he was correct & mentioned the prices he had given Mr C. & told Mr Jones that he had bought them of Collier which he did not know before.

On the next day, 24 October 1862, the diary continues: * James went the first thing to B. Mus. with his ledger & showed it to Mr W. Jones who looked the prices carefully over. James had not made a single mistake.' Since the library itself was in the business of book-buying, it had to compete in what was an intense market. Mrs. Halliwell-Phillipps reported having heard, for example, that 'Papa has been buying MSS. at Sir W[illiam] Betham's sale, against the Museum & that he spent £900'.^^ William Chaffers bought for Halliwell-Phillipps, she wrote on 28 February 1855, the 'celebrated Boar's Head...at Windus' Sale yesterday against the British Museum for £25.4.0. James is very anxious to have it.' The Museum, she wrote on 17 May 1864, 'is up in arms about James's purchase of the Shakespeare portrait [the Droeshout] (proof before shading) & beg him as a great favor to allow them to buy it at 100 guineas the price he gave - He says he does not intend to sell it at present.' Not surprisingly, the dealer was at the same time a passionate collector. Characteristically, he wrote to his longtime friend and publisher, the bookseller John Russell Smith, that he 'dreams' of Smith's finding a copy of the 1602 Hamlet, of which there is no known copy, adding,' I would go down on my knees for it as well as give two hundred guineas for it if necessary' (3 October 1867).^^ To James Coleman he declared, 'I want Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare SHAKESPEARE' (26 February 1880).'*^ Proud of his collection - a personal library of considerable importance - he rejected a proposal for a memorial statue of Shakespeare, suggesting instead a central Shakespeare library and museum at, say, the Kensington Museum or Exhibition. What was wanted 252 in literature, he wrote to William Hepworth Dixon on 17 June 1863, were 'special hbraries & collections to supply the place of that impossibility, a classed catalogue of the British Museum', as well as duplicate copies and facsimiles of various copies, 'which they would of course never have at the British Museum'. Although his experience made him only too aware of the difficulties, he nevertheless concluded: ' I do not think I am much given to brag, but give me ample means & I would engage even now to bring together a Shakespeare Library that should beat the B. Museum collections into fits.' Halliwell-Phillipps did not found such a hbrary, although it is easy to surmise that his generous donations to various libraries, as well as his energetic efforts in the establishment and organization of the Shakespeare library and museum in Stratford- upon-Avon and his support of efforts to 'increase the libraries of reference at the west- end of London' (as in his letter to The Times of 11 January 1868, p. 9), were not solely instances of self-celebration. A telling gesture, illustrating his passion for dealing and collecting and yet contradicting his reputation as unethical that some have pinned on him, concerns his purchase for a hundred guineas of what he considered Droeshout's engraved portrait of Shakespeare in the original state. It was one of his 'choicest treasures'. 'It is worth immensely more than I gave for it', he wrote to William Henry Wills: I cannot afford to keep expensive rarities, & I could not bring myself to take a profit out of Shakespeare's face to put into my own pocket. This rarity is so unique, & its genuineness so unassailable, that I am convinced it is reasonable at 400 gs., & if Miss B[urdett] C[outts] purchased it at that sum, I should place the excess £315 to the credit of the Shakespeare Library at Stratford, a sum that would enable me to do wonders there in a few months - I believe I could with that sum pretty well complete all the Shaksperiana of the last & present centuries worth having. This is an object I have very much at

Unavoidable is the impression that the bookdealer in him was subordinate to the book- lover or even, as he styled himself in a letter to Charles Roach Smith, ' a hardworking library student', a 'mere bookworm' (12 April 1872):^^ that he would have preferred to have his cherished collection as a permanent institution somewhere. At the end of the 1860s, in fact, he had offered lending his collection of contemporary editions of Shakespeare to the South Kensington Museum, which in response suggested that 'as it would appear to be more suitable for the British Museum, it would be better to offer it to the authorities of the Museum' (7 January 1861).^^ In donating the Shakespearean part of his collection to the University of Edinburgh in 1872, he was concerned, he wrote to John Small, the librarian, that it be 'kept, like the Dyce Library at the South Kensington Museum, along with [a] case exhibiting the rarities, absolutely in every way by itself and displayed as the H. P. collection' (15 March 1880).^^ To David Laing, who was instrumental in the bequest coming to Edinburgh, he described the hbrary as 'small all of it being contained in two large & two small bookcases, but it is choice & select no rubbish, & every book nicely bound, many by Bedford, 29 quarto Shakespeares &c. The engravings & drawings are the largest collection of the kind ever formed, & these latter

253 with my own MS. collection are contained in about two hundred shallow drawers' (19 November 1869).®^ The reasons for the choice of Edinburgh, although not the whole story, may shed some light on the disposition of Halliwell-Phillipps's library thereafter. For one, there was his cordial relationship with David Laing, which began in the 1840s, and his exceptional response to the loan of a quarto of Titus Andronicus, which ' I shall remember most gratefully as long as I live' (15 December 1865)^' and which is 'almost the greatest literary favour I have ever received from any one, & which will as long as I have a Shaksperian memory be recollected by me with the warmest gratitude'' (18 April 1866).^^ For another, there was his admission to Laing: 'I have anxiously considered the best locality, & after much deliberation have nearly decided on Scotland, several important & readily accessible Shakespeare collections existing in this country, while I do not know of a single one in Scotland' (19 November 1869).^^ The connection between the bequest to Edinburgh and the disposition of the even more remarkable collection which Halliwell-Phillipps retained and enlarged from 1872 to his death in 1889 can only be surmised. After the paralyzing trauma of his wife's accident in the autumn of 1872, her subsequent mental decay in the years that followed, and death in 1879, HaUiwell- Phillipps moved to Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, remarried, and estabhshed a 'home' for his collection which was widely admired by many visitors from England and abroad. Much time was spent enlarging the 'quaint wigwam', as it was affectionately termed; catalogues of his collection were produced. A permanent home for it did not appear pressing or even desirable. To this situation may be added the fact that for all the visitors there was no intimate contact with an individual connected in some way with an institution: the kind of personal contact and trust that had motivated Halliwell-Phillipps in his major bequests - like Laing in Edinburgh and William Oakes Hunt in Stratford- upon-Avon - and indeed in his numerous efforts to help old friends in need and even their survivors. It is perhaps inescapably ironic that the three main stations of Halliwell-Phillipps's life - Cambridge, London, and Stratford - should not benefit from his ultimate largesse. Cambridge was, of course, out of the question; he broke with Stratford in the 1880s after a conflict with the city fathers. Halliwell-Phillipps was born and bred a Londoner, dreamily vowing to F. G. Fleay, 8 December 1876, to maintain his London 'Town- house' even after moving to Hollingbury Copse: 'so for the rest of my life I shall be a kind of pendulum between London & Brighton - a pretty long swing. ^^^ The British Museum would, of course, have been the natural place for his collection. Business as usual, however, seems not to have been enough of a motivation for a primary bequest. Scattered in various shelves of the British Library are almost all the more than five hundred works produced by HaUiwell-Phillipps, many signed presentations, but none of his remaining treasures, the 805 objects he described in his privately printed Calendar of the Shakespearian Rarities, Drawings and Engravings, Preserved at Hollingbury Copse, Near Brighton in 1887, two years before his death, consisting of early engraved portraits of Shakespeare, including the famous original state Droeshout portrait; authentic

254 Fig. J. Halliwell-Phillipps in later years. By kind permission of his great-grandson, Lt.-Col. William Walcot Stewart

personal relics, including title-deeds to Shakespeare's house at Black Friars and his home at New Place; documentary evidences respecting Shakespeare's estates and individuals connected with his biography, including legal documents and rare signatures; artistic illustrations connected with Shakespeare's personal history, including pictorial representations of Stratford, London, and Windsor, as well as engravings by Visscher and Norden, and many printed books, some 'very remarkable and nearly unique'.'^ The collection, which Halliwell-Phillipps described in his will as ' unrivalled and of national interest' and which he was 'desirous of its being kept in this country', was offered for £7,000 to the Corporation of Birmingham, which could not afford it. Parts of his library began to be sold ofTat auction by his heir in the year of Halliwell-Phillipps's death: the first sale of 1,291 lots in July 1889 brought in £2,298.10.6. As in the years before, so in the years that followed, the collection, so cunningly and lovingly put together, was dispersed, most of it to the United States.^^ There is Httle mention of the British Museum library in the correspondence of his later years. Still, it is difficult to deny that the British Museum library did not occupv a spot in his heart, if not in his mind. His wife reported in her diary entry of 9 June i8s7 that he had visited and was 'delighted with the new reading room.' In a wryly amusinff 255 'apology' for his Notes of Family Excursions in North Wales (i860), he cautioned against the 'sin' of writing, for It is fearful to imagine what will be the extent of the British Museum library two or three centuries hence, if book-making continues at its present rate. The catalogue, instead of as now being comprised within the moderate compass of two thousand folio volumes, will take about a mile of shelf The reading room will, in proportion, require something like a length of way often miles, with a double line of rail for the convenience of readers passing to the various literary stations, conducted by a system of cheap return-tickets. Taking up The Times in 2060, one may read an account of a fearful accident to a party of students proceeding to the Divinity Station on the Reading Room railway, arising from a collision with a book-train. To imagine that anything short of an apparatus of this extent for the literature of that day, always supposing that the present productive rate is maintained, appears to be visionary. Further, Halliwell-Phillipps continued to present the library with copies of his works as late as 1888 and was aware of its activities, as in his recommendation that interesting Stratford papers be autotyped after the practice of the British Museum." For all that has been said, it must be admitted that Halliwell-Phillipps occupies a very small space, perhaps not more than a medium-length footnote, in the grand history of the British Museum library. Like most readers and critics, however, he was aware that he owed more to it than it to him. In a last gesture, to be interpreted as you wish, he bequeathed to the University of Edinburgh his literary correspondence, the three hundred volumes of the 'Letters of Authors', and his wife's four-volume diary, from which I have been quoting, as well as other manuscripts and books - with the proviso that if they were declined: ' I give them, unconditionally, to the trustees of the British Museum. ''"*

My thanks are due to Philip Harris for his kind remains given to the Edinburgh University comments on the manuscript, to Christopher Date Library by Halliwell-Phillipps. La.IV.17 is the for helping me in the British Museum archives, and shelfmark of the correspondence with David to Hilton Kelliher, I. R. WilUson, and Laetitia Laing. Yeandle for providing me with some of the material 7 LOA 24: 11. quoted. 8 LOA 31: 8. 1 'The Halliwell-Phillipps Collection', Pennsyl- 9 LOA 34: 11, vania Literary Club: Occasional Papers, no. ii 10 LOA 31: 34. (March 1895), p. 3- '' h?V\]t « f r 2 Cambridge, Trinity College, O.ioa.24, f 48^. 12 BL, Eg. MS. 2842, f. 26. 3 British Museum, Central Archives [hereafter 13 Ibid., f. 66. BM, CA], SC c. 10477- ^4 Ibid f^ 349- t BS CA; SC c; 547Z. -6 J. O. Halliwell, Torrent of Portal (London, 6 LOA 14:15. LOA refers to the 'Letters of 1842), p. xii. Authors', the collection of some 15,000 letters 17 LOA 35: 21. (mainly to and some copies by him) and other 18 LOA 10: 9. items in 300 of the 404 volumes of his literary 19 LOA 3: 23. 256 20 Madden's diary is Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. 40 LOA 54: 23. hist. c. 140-182. A copy is in the British Library: 41 LOA 49: 72- MS. Facs. *ioi2. 42 LOA 50: 65. 21 On 4 February 1847 there appeared Rev. Joseph 43 LOA 54: 61. Hunter's Remarks on the Conduct of James 44 LOA 54: 17- Orchard Halliwell, in which he was charged, as a 45 For their present whereabouts, see U. A. member of the Camden Society, with attempting Winstanley, 'Halliwell Phillipps and Trinity to pass off and publish a fraudulent manuscript. College Library', The Library, 5th Series, ii Halliwell-Phillipps, incidentally, had dedicated (1947-8), p. 281. his edition of John Sherman's Historia Collegii 46 BM, CA: GM 1814. Jesu Cantabrigiensis (1840) to Hunter. 47 BM, CA: SC c. 10454. 22 As reported in The Literary Gazette (27 Mar. 48 BM, CA: Standing Committee minutes of 9 1847), P- 250. Aug. 1845, c. 6761-2, and 8 Nov. 1845, c. 23 P- 5- 6801-3. 24 LOA 95: 29. 49 See W. H. Bond, 'Henry Hallam, The Times 25 BM, CA: SCc. 6453-4. Newspaper, and the Halliwell Case', The Li- 26 LOA 17: 35. The gesture was not appreciated. A brary., 5th Series, xviii (1963), pp. 134-44. few days later Wright wrote, * In a note I have 50 For a comprehensive discussion of the affair, see just received from Sir F. Madden about an Winstanley, pp. 250-82, who is convinced of entirely other matter, he tells me you had written Halliwell-Phillipps's guilt. to Sir J[ames] Graham and that your letter had 51 Folger Y.c.i266(i3). For the Folger collection done no good to the Museum, and had rather see n. 72 below. annoyed them' (LOA 19: 10). 52 LOA 1: 2ia (15 Jan. 1846). 27 LOA 49: 7. 53 LOA 15: 81 (10 Sept. 1845). 28 LOA 56: 15. 54 LOA 27: 43 (r6 Apr. 1846). 29 The British Museum Library (London, 1946), p. 55 Yale University Library, Osborn Collection. 105. 56 Numerous ironies followed in the course of time. 30 LOA 95: 34. For one. Madden was later accused by Collier of 31 LOA 91: 48. having bought stolen manuscripts: see A. S. G. 32 The matter of the catalogue is too complex for Edwards, 'Sir Frederic Madden and George discussion here. The best account of the dispute Hillier and the Mostyn and Ellesmere Manu- involving the catalogue in the 1830s and 1840s is scripts', The Book Collector., xxvii (1978), pp. to be found in A. H. Chaplin, GK: ijo Years of 205-16. For another, Halliwell-Phillipps was the General Catalogue of Printed Books in the urged by N. E. S. A. Hamilton of the Depart- British Museum (Aldershot, 1987), pp. 1-46. ment of Manuscripts to help him expose 'those Another, from the viewpoint of John Payne modern forgeries [by Collier] from our Collier, is given by Dewey Ganzel, Fortune and Shakspearian literature, by which to the disgrace Men's Eyes: The Career of John Payne Collier of England it is now defiled' (24 May i860; (Oxford, 1982), pp. 108-32. For a wider his- LOA 73:59)- torical background, see Barbara McCrimmon, 57 BM, CA: SC c. 6913-14. Power, Politics, and Print: The Publication of the 58 Diary, 22 June 1854. British Museum Catalogue, 1881-igoo (London, 59 Folger W.a.81(51/2). 1981). 60 Folger Y.0.1206(23). 33 A Few Hints to Novices in Manuscript Literature 61 Folger Y.c.1213(15). (London, 1839), p. 8. 62 LOA 7: 83-(8 Nov. 1864). 34 Eg. MS. 2842, f. 375. 63 LOA 192: 27. 35 LOA 30; 28. 64 LOA 71: 33. 36 LOA 55:34. 65 Folger W.b.9o(3). 37 Reprinted from Archaeologia, xxvii (1838), pp. 66 La.IV.17. 113-23, with some corrections. 67 Ibid. 38 LOA 272: II. 68 Ibid. 39 BL, Add. MS. 36717, f. 395. 69 Ibid. 257 70 Folger Y.c. 1222(7). 73 LOA 271: 50 (15 Feb. 1883). 71 The description follows that given by Samuel 74 The proviso is significant. In an earlier version of Timmins, 'Copy Report of the Birmingham his will contained in a letter of 27 Nov. 1869 Free Libraries Committee upon the Halliwell- (La.IV.17), HalHwell-PhiUipps stipulated that Phillipps Collection of Rarities Made to the City should the University of Edinburgh decline the CouncilintheSummerofi88g', pp. 164-70, in bequest, it would next be offered to the the second edition (1891) of the Calendar of University of Glasgow and, if declined, then to 188- the Bodleian Library, Oxford. There is no 72 The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, mention at all of the British Museum library. D. C, has some 2,000 of his printed books, 125 large folio scrapbooks, 40 boxes of detached clippings and transcripts, and many manuscripts.

258