r-t^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES » I THE BOOK FANCIER OR THE iRomance of JSooft Collecting BY PERCY FITZGERALD LONDON SAMPSON LOW MARSTON & CO., LTD. PRINTED BY THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED LONDON AND NORWICH TO GEORGE A UGUSTUS SALA, CRITIC AMD CONNOISSSUR, Sbt6 IDolume, ON A SUBJECT CONGENIAL TO HIS TASTES, IS INSCRIBED BY HIS FRIEND THE AUTHOR 662851 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bookfancierorromOOfitziala PREFACE Within the last few years there has been a revival of the old and elegant taste of the book-fancier, as well as of that passion or faith which is described with such amiable enthusiasm in the little tract of the worthy Bishop Richard of Bury. The history and pedigree of books, of printers, &c., has always been a favourite study with the learned, attested by the profound and scholarly treatises of the Panzers, Hains, de Bures, Brunets, and our own Lowndes. But this subject has its popular graces also, and there is a sort of romantic interest attached to all that is associated with books—the rare old edition, the old printer, the blear-eyed collector, the binder, the sale, and the stray survivor of a whole edition, by some miracle preserved to our time. These topics seemed to kindle such writers as the late Dr. Hill Burton—perhaps the first in our time to deal popularly with such matters ; Mr. Andrew Lang being the latest to illustrate this subject from his abundant stores of knowledge. Having from the earliest date had a taste for this fascinating pursuit —and when a boy I formed a very respectable collection of Elzevirs, and looked on auction days as festivals—I have ventured to add my contribution to the rest. This little volume will be found to contain many curious and interesting things not readily accessible, and deals in some fashion with almost everything that is connected with " book." vi PREFACE Due allowance must be made for the enthusiasm of the collector, who from the days of the excellent Dr. Frognall Dibdin has been good-naturedly allowed ever to see gold and silver and jewels in his mouldy treasures. For some curious information concerning book- binding I am indebted to the papers of the late Mr. Sanders of Oxford. Other obligations I have acknowledged in the notes. Athenaeum Club. CONTENTS PAG9 BOOK COLLECTORS AND DEALERS I THB MAZARIN BIBLE 17 THE INCUNABLES . 32 ELZEVIRS AND OLD PRINTERS . 47 CAXTONS AND ENGLISH PRINTERS 67 OF THE LIBRARY . 82 BINDING AND ITS CURIOSITIES 99 CURIOSITIES OF PRINTING 136 GRANGERISING AND DICKENSIANA 168 " " LUXURIOUS EDITIONS 193 OF THE AUCTION-ROOM . 222 SHAKESPEARE FOLIOS AND QUARTOS 253 L'ENVOI .... 307 INDEX 309 THE BOOK FANCIER Booft Collectors ant> dealers " O MY darling books 1 " exclaims an enthusiastic collector, Silvestre de Sacy ; "a day will come when you will be laid out on the saleroom table, and others will buy and possess you—persons, perhaps, less worthy of you than your old master. Yet how dear to me are they all ! for have I not chosen them one by one, gathered them in with the sweat of my brow ? I do love you all ! It seems as if, by long and sweet companionship, you had become part of myself. But in this world nothing is secure." Some such pang or foreboding as this has often wrung the collector's heart as he surveys his treasures ranged within their glass-bound tene- ments ; for he knows that, whatever securities he may contrive, their dispersion is almost inevitable. The more precious the collection, the more certain the temptation ; and there is even a grim legend of one library carried to the saleroom, " by order B — 2 THE BOOK FANCIER of the relatives," on the very day after the interment of the owner. Yet here there is a righteous Nemesis ; for too often, indeed, the " hobby " has been ridden at the sacrifice of family comforts, and even family embarrassment, —Whence the pressing temptation to recover what is thought to have been unrighteously abstracted. Yet a cloud of pleasant romantic associations still envelops the amiable collector, often a man of simple manners and tastes, whose holiday is a prowl among the " old bookshops," and whose triumph is his return home with some mouldy but precious little duodecimo. He will exhibit to you with trembling glee his Elzevir Rabelais, secured out of a book-box at the door, " all at a shilling," or his rare Jenson in folio, purchased from a " country dealer " for the vast price of £io, but which " he knows is worth five times the money,"—as indeed it is. But alas ! behind all this is the grim tragic idea of, as it were, " writing in water," of gathering for dispersion, of heaping up only for scattering, of that final, fatal day when all shall be sold and others buy again ! He is but a bibhophihst Danaid, vainly filling his pitcher—the water run- ning out at bottom ! The book-collecting passion was alluded to long " ago in Lucian, who asks : Why do you buy so many books ? You are blind, and you buy a grand mirror ; you are deaf, and you purchase fine musical instruments you have no hair, and you get yourself ; a comb." This is perhaps the most bitter stroke yet given to the bibhomaniac. More pleasantly sarcastic, too, are the lines of old Brandt in his " Ship of Fools," where our maniac is ever a con- spicuous passenger : — BOOK COLLECTORS AND DEALERS 3 " Still am I busy bookes assembling, For to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thing In my conceyt, to have them ay at hand, But what they meane do I not understande," One might weep over the mad folly of old Maglia- — " becchi " the Glutton of Books —who covered 'floor, bed, and every portion of his house with books. When he wished to sleep, he would throw an old rug over any books that were on the floor, and stretch himself upon them, or he would cast himself, completely dressed, into his unmade bed, which was filled full of books, taking a basin of coals with him. Often he thus, quite unintentionally, set himself and his bed on fire. Notwithstanding this confusion, he could lay his hand on any book at any moment, though buried under a load of disorderly volumes. But most " untidy " literary men and scholars can do this, to a great extent, in the case of their papers as well as of books. To the housemaid eye there is a hopeless confusion. No " hobby " is so old, so enduring, or respectable as this. Almost from the first days of writing it declared itself, and down to this hour it has flour- ished. The very literature of the subject is enor- mous, and would fill a small library. There is a dictionary on the subject of books that deals with books—that is, things of paper and print. About printers and printing alone, its various styles and forms, there are treatises without end ; grand encyclopaedic dictionaries written by the pundits Hain, Panzer, De Bure, the greater Brunet, and many more. There can be no doubt, indeed, that a book falls within the domain of art, for it is a thing of arrangement and disposition, and with such elements it is obvious there must be one sort of 4 THE BOOK FANCIER arrangement or disposition that is more pleasing than another. The ordinary book-hunter, stall-ranger, or " prow- ler " has a store of joys and delight, even in anticipat- ing their fruition, which he can gratify to the full in this London of ours, as well as did old Monkbams in the " W5mds " and purlieus of Edinburgh. He becomes a character. "Of the old bookstall hunters," writes Mr, Sanders in his MS., penes me, " Richard Smyth, one of the Secondaries of the City of London from 1644 to 1655, was said to be so devoted to the pleasant toils of book collecting, that he resigned his office (and emoluments of £700 a year) expressly that he might take his rounds among the booksellers' shops, especially in Little Britain. Dr. John North delighted in the small editions of the * classics by Seb. Gryphius. His biographer says : I have borne him company at a bookstall for many hours together, and minding him of the time he hath made a dozen offers before he would quit.' Sterne was fond of looking over bookstalls, and writes exultingly of a bargain made by Mr. Shandy, who had the good fortune to get Bruscambille's Prologue on Noses [i2mo, Paris, 1612] almost for nothing, that is, for three half-crowns. ' There are not three Brus- cambilles in Christendom [said the stall-man] except what are chained up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning, took Bruscambille into his bosom, hyed home from Piccadilly to Coleman Street with it, as he would have hyed home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.' The Rev. Richard Farmer, D.D., was a great lover of bookstalls. His library sold in 1798 for £2,210, his pictures for £500, aU of which, it is believed, were purchased by BOOK COLLECTORS AND DEALERS 5 the Doctor for much under £500. The Rev. J. Brand, F.A.S., whose compact Hbrary of ' unique, scarce, rare, and curious works ' was sold at the beginning of the century for upwards of £6000, ahnost daily visited the bookstalls between Piccadilly and Mile End—a rather extensive range—and generally returned from these excursions with his deep and wide pockets well laden, and it is said his volumes were chiefly collected in this way, and for compara- tively small sums.