Bookhunting as a Sport
By James Westfall Thompson
A paper read to the Caxton Club of Chicago at the annual
meeting, February 16, 1907.
Upon the first appearance in 1809, of that delight of every booklover, Bibliomania;
or, Book Madness, a bibliographical romance, Sir Walter Scott wrote to Thomas
F Dibdin, its author:
You have contrived to strew flowers over a path which,
in other hands, would have proved a very dull one, and all bibliomanes
must remember you long as he who first united their antiquarian details with
good-humoured raillery and cheerfulness.
��� We will forgive the Sage of Abbotsford the slip of the pen that made him mix his metaphors for the sake of the book he praised, even as the present writer hopes to be forgiven for his inability to endow this essay in bibliomania with Dibdin�s charm, for the sake of the gentle and noble pastime of which he writes.���
To the devotee of rod and gun, bookhunting as a sport may seem to be a tame sort of
recreation. Indeed, it may seem to him to be a misnomer to call it a sport at
all. How can the bracing air of a crisp October morning in the woods or fields
or along the banks of a trout stream be compared with
the atmosphere of a library? What thrill can be derived from inert pages
comparable to the leap of the pulse when a trout �strikes,� or when the whirr
of a woodcock�s wing comes to the ear? To lie hidden behind a willow screen in
Chesapeake Bay, hour after hour, watching the panorama of the clouds or the
wind dimpling the face of the waters, and then to have the circling flock
settle within the compass of your water world,�that is sport�to some who seek
their recreation out-of-doors.
���
Yet, after all, the question is one, not of processes, but of results.
The essence of the subject is a moral one. If the end of the true sport is to
refresh jaded brain and tired heart, if generous rivalry strengthens the fiber
of character, if the will to accomplish gives stimulus, and achievement the
sense of power, then whatsoever brings these things to pass, if it be free from
sordid lust of gain, is sport. William Smith, the founder of British geology,
once said that �the search for a fossil may be considered at least as rational
as the pursuit of a hare:� and the recently published book of Professor E. Ray Lankester, upon Extinct Animals, is a veritable
romance of fossil-hunting.
��� Bookhunting as a sport seems, in the main, to be a
masculine interest, although a racy unpublished letter of De Quincey�s daughter Florence to Canon Pinder,
about some books which her father and the Canon were seeking, indicates that
even great authors do not always stalk their game adroitly. She says:
I write on Papa�s account, to tell you that if you
write and send your address to one Mr. John Mudie,
Port of Liverpool, you will get the books. And on my own account I beg to offer
my congratulations upon the exquisite greenness which you and Papa have shewn in this matter. You left no address and Papa sent
none. I think it needed the united genius of the white man to grow such a piece
of refreshing verdure.
���
Judging from the past, bookhunting, like the
noble art of falconry, has appealed peculiarly to men of high birth and
station. An analysis of Mr. William Young Fletcher�s English Book Collectors� discloses the interesting fact
that out of about a hundred of the best-known English collectors there were
nine bishops and archbishops, five dukes, one marquis, twelve earls, two
barons, seven baronets, five knights, five civil
servants, seven clergymen, five lawyers, four physicians, eight or ten men of
letters, five merchants, two heralds, two poets, one architect, one astrologer
(Dr. Dee), one shoemaker (Bagford), and one chandler
(Radcliffe). The bishops are well to the front in the first two centuries,
including Fisher, Cranmer, Parker, Ussher, Stillingfleet,
Williams, Laud, and Moore, but the members of the nobility are scattered
impartially over the period since 1500.
The fate of these episcopal libraries is
interesting. Fisher�s was scattered to the winds; Cranmer�s found lodgment in
the British Museum; Parker�s went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge;
Williams� was bequeathed to St. John�s College, Cambridge; Stillingfleet�s
is in the Marsh Library in Dublin; King George I bought Bishop Moore�s library
and gave it to Cambridge University; and Ussher�s, curiously enough, was
purchased by Cromwell�s Irish Brigade, and rests in Trinity College, Dublin.
��� It
is a truism that a man is known by his friends. Show me a man�s library, and I
will tell you what kind of man he is. In his hours of leisure a man comes out
of an imposed or acquired environment to which he has become habituated for
eight or more hours each day, and his real nature finds expression. His
personality ceases to be cramped or conditioned by the artificialities of
business or the harassing exigencies of a profession. The banker whose hobby is
the collection of Americana or first editions exhibits as true a side of his
character after three o�clock as he does in banking hours�perhaps a truer one.
The merchant who is interested in Napoleonana or the
story of Arctic exploration is as keenly alive to the literature of these
subjects as he is to the fluctuations of the market. A man�s literary interests
are often the antithesis of his daily pursuits, and may be a closer index to
his character. Sometimes the contrast between the two interests is very great.
The very limitations that bind a man may lead him to be interested in a subject
which he might, save for them, actually enjoy, and not
be forced to experience through the imagination merely. I know an invalid
person whose keenest delight is to read Alpine and other mountaineering
literature. One of the poorest sailors it is my pleasure to know, one who �goes
down to the sea in ships� with fear and trembling, and who is seasick most of
the time he is aboard, has a rare collection of works upon shipwrecks. One
whose daily life may be the dullest of routines finds a fascination in works of
adventure and exploration.
��� Book
collecting is both an aspect of culture and a study in personal psychology.
Almost every conceivable sort of subject has its votaries�Waltoniana,
Cromwelliana, Jacobite
history, English fiction of the eighteenth century, folklore, Arctic
explorations the prose or poetry of certain epochs, the literature of men of
fame, painting, architecture tobacco, travel, memoirs, biography. Every
scientific, historical, and literary subject of great magnitude
is a province in the realm of books. How familiar are the rubrics of an
old-book catalogue to the book collector! He can recite them as glibly as the
multiplication table�Africa, America, Angling, Archery, Archaeology,
Beekeeping, Bibliography, Byroniana, clear through to
Shakespeareana, Shelley, Shipwreck, and the residue
of the alphabet. Age cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite variety.
Every man of fame is a cult. I have an acquaintance who
is a bookkeeper and has been one for thirty-five years. He has but one
intellectual interest, but that saves him from commonplaceness. His hobby is
the life and death of Marshal Ney, �the bravest of the brave:� He is not a
broad man nor a deep man save in that single subject,
but attainment in that one subject brings his nature into relief.
�The bouquineur�s thrill when he discovers some rare volume he
prizes is akin to the sensation of the astronomer �when a new planet swims into
his ken:� Then ensues that delicious time of expectation until its arrival, the
impatience of delay, a fine quality of fear lest another has been before him in
securing the coveted treasure, the indulgence of the imagination in fancied
possession,�ah! who that knows such feelings would not
be the poorer for their loss?
���
The element of chance in bookhunting invests
the subject with double interest. The wondrous tale of him who found Montaigne�s
own copy of Plutarch�s Lives, its pages and
fly leaves scribbled over by this prince of essayists, in a bookstall along the
Seine, and purchased it for a few sous, has lifted up
the enthusiasm of many another less fortunate bookhunter
along those quays in Paris. So likewise was found Napoleon�s own copy of
Caesar�s Commentaries, studied by him in the military school at
Brienne.* When Alfred de Musset became a cult, one of his worshipers had the
rare fortune to discover one of his youthful productions which even he himself
had forgotten, and which none of his friends knew,�a translation of De Quincey�s Opium Eater, made by De Musset when
eighteen years of age.� Like the first edition of Poe�s Tamerlane, this
thin little brochure is worth its weight in gold. A few years ago the late
Camille Couderc, an attach� of the D�partement des Manuscrits of the
Biblioth�que Nationale, who
spent his leisure hours along the quays of the Seine, found an example of the
fifth and last book of Rabelais�s Pantagruel
(1571). His library was made up of pickups of this kind.
��� A
similar piece of luck befell Dr. John Taylor Brown, who picked up a �Kilmarnock
Burns� for is. 6d. Be it known to the uninitiated that
one associates a Kilmarnock Burns and the First Folio of Shakespeare together.
It was found in a North-of-England bookshop, and was without the title page and
the first three pages. Some years later, in a batch of old papers, the missing
pages were found, and the whole was so perfectly bound that only the eye of the
expert could discern the suture. The book thus so strangely remade was sold at
Sotheby�s in April, 1903, for �350.
��� For
further illustration of �collector�s luck:� imagine
the delight of the finding of an Irish guidebook with Shelley�s signature on
the flyleaf.**
��� The European bookhunter
has a great advantage over his American con fr�re, for he receives the
catalogues of London, Paris, and Leipzig houses from eight to ten days in
advance of him. Sometimes this difference in time makes all the difference between
getting and missing a desideratum. Let me give an illustration, which also
indicates another element in the adventures of a bookhunter,
namely, the rare occasion when a provincial bookseller has treasure- trove and
is unaware of it.
��� During the Thirty Years� War, when Gustavus Adoiphus� short and
brilliant career was in progress, the eyes of Europe were fixed upon Germany.
At this time an enterprising English printer conceived the thought of
publishing bulletins of events happening abroad as from time to time news from
Germany reached England. This he did during the years 2632�1635, issuing
fourteen pamphlet parts of
The Swedish Intelligencer, wherein, out
of the truest and choysest Informations, are the famous Actions of that warlike Prince historically led
along; from his Majesties first entring into the
Empire.
Some years ago a complete copy of this exceedingly rare work, bound in two
stout volumes, was offered for sale by a Dutch bookseller for 300 forms ($120).
Last spring, in running down the columns of the catalogue of a provincial
English bookseller, I came upon a copy of the Swedish
Intelligencer advertised for fifteen shillings. My fears belied my hopes.
Long before my cablegram reached its destination, the treasure
had been spied by a vigilant book house on the Strand�for these great concerns
are not less earnest than the private collector in winnowing the hedge-
rows for bargains. I afterward had the poor satisfaction of receiving a
catalogue of the house on the Strand in which that identical copy of the Swedish
Intelligencer was priced at twenty-one guineas. The law of treasure-trove
is liberal in instances like this, but Fortune is a capricious goddess.
��� Another illustration: A well-known London
bookseller had in his shop an original copy of Lady Anne Hamilton�s Secret
History of the Court of England, published in 1832. The book was an altogether too salacious account of
court life when George IV and William IV were kings for the government to
tolerate its circulation. It was suppressed, and very few copies are known to
exist. Through the carelessness of a clerk this rare work�so rare that its
value is problematic�got among the common stock of secondhand books, and some
lucky person purchased it for six- pence. What makes this incident all the more
provoking is that it is uncertain whether the fortunate possessor yet knows the
value of the book so curiously acquired.
��� Sometimes a book, not rare and yet not
common, is given new dignity by a discovery pertaining to it. This is true, for
example, of Edward Grimeston�s
A generall
Historic of France, written by John de Serres Unto the year 1598. Much augmented and continued to this
present. London, 1611,
which has new value since Mr. Sidney Lee�s discovery of Chapman�s large
indebtedness to this work for his play upon the conspiracy of Marshal Biron.
��� The pleasure derived from an old-book
catalogue is as varied as the books themselves. Therein every man may ride his
hobby; for fortunately there are many more species of hobbyhorses than are
found in the natural equine world.
��� If you are interested in the quaint and
curious, your eye will be attracted by such titles as these:
Tooke (Giles): The Map of Misery and the
Sinner�s Plea, a Poem of o Stanzas of 6 lines each. Lond. R. Harper, 1650.
Said to be unique, and is unknown to all bibliographers.
A Nosegay of Rank-smelling Flowers, such
as grow in Mr. John Goodwin�s Garden; gathered upon occasion of his late lying Libell against Thos. Edwards, which he himself fitly stiled Cretensis for the foule lies therein contained, etc.
This singular work contains a fine portrait of the author, with a ship in full
sail, and a coat of arms. The author was a London merchant of the Puritan
period.
��� The merchants of the Middle
Ages, no matter how wealthy they might have become, were forbidden to wear
heraldic insignia, thereby demeaning the gentry. Accordingly, it was a common
practice for them to adopt symbolic devices to distinguish their business and
add dignity to their position.*** The attentive tourist, especially in England,
must sometimes have found himself puzzled by the ingenious tracery he observed
upon some old tomb or in the decoration of a church window
��� The Martin Mar-prelate tracts, �printed far from the bouncing priests:� are every one of them singular and rare.
The reply to them was
Priest�s Marriages�Defence
of Priestes Marriages, stablysched
by the Imperiall Lawes of
the Realme of England, agaynst
a Civilian namyng himselfe
Thomas Martin, doctour of the Civile
Lawes, goyng about to
disprove the saide marriages, is lawfull
by the eternall worde of
God, and by the High Court of Parliament, etc. 4to, black letter, Richard Jugge, 1555.
This book, dedicated to Philip II and Bloody Mary, is believed
to have been written by John Ponet, Bishop of
Rochester, and is even rarer than the Martin Mar-prelate tracts which I have
just mentioned.
��� If Nicotiniana�the literature of tobacco�interests you, this
item will have a certain appeal:
An Oration upon Tobacco, by Mynheer Van Reckhard, Professor
of the University of Smokeburgh, 1732.
Of course if you are a devotee of the weed, you must know or at
least have read of
A Covnter Blaste to Tobacco, Imprinted at London by R.B., Anno. 1604,
that famous monograph from the pen of the royal pedant, James I.
Therein this philosopher upon a throne expatiates in thirty-two pages of
diatribe upon �this filthie noveltie�
concluding with this thunderclap:
A custome
loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine,
dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking
fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigean smoke of the pit that is bottomeless.
The original edition of this ponderous diatribe of the first Stuart is an
exceedingly rare pamphlet
��� The
pamphlet�how much more expressive is the German word Flugschrift�is
a peculiar and most interesting form of literature. Its fugitive nature
gives it a quality not possessed by the printed and bound book. As Miles Davies
observed in the Icon libellorum (1715):
From Pamphlets may be learned
the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, follies of the ignorant, the
b�vues of government, and the mistakes of
courtiers. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen�s toilets as to
gentlemen�s pockets, they carry their reputation of wit and learning to all that
make them their companions.
Pamphlets upon isolated or recondite subjects are continually making their
appearance. But any epoch-making age, like the Reformation or the Puritan
movement or the French Revolution, is always rich in pamphlet literature.
Carlyle compared the pamphlets of the Revolutionary epoch to the mines of PotosI. One of Dr. Johnson�s most interesting writings is On
the Origin and Importance of Fugitive Pieces, in which he says:
Pamphlets and small Tracts [are] a very
important part of an English library, nor are there any pieces upon which those
who aspire to the reputation of judicious Collectors of Books, bestow more
attention or greater expense; because many advantages may be expected from the
perusal of these small productions, which are scarcely to be found in that of
larger works
�� If
you happen to be interested in the literature of travel, there is a fascinating
world open before you. First of all, there is that rarest poem of imaginary
travel:
Poems by a Young Nobleman of Distinguished
Abilities, lately deceased, particularly the State of England, and the once
flourishing City of London, in a Letter from an American Traveller,
dated from the Ruinous Portico of St. Paul�s, in the year 2199, to a friend settled in
Boston, the Metropolis of the Western Empire.
This poem, which
was the original creation of Macaulay�s celebrated New Zealander, was written
by the second Lord Lyttleton, that famous rou� of
the Georgian period, in 1771. It is a poem of fifty-five pages, wherein
he seems to catch a foregleam of the French
Revolution and the Spanish loss of America (the French in his own time had lost
India and America), and he describes the visit of a New Zealand nobleman to
look upon the ruins of the once great city of London in the year 2199.
��� Every cultivated person has read the
adventures of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. The Hakluyt Society some
years ago published the logbooks and journals of those hardy pioneers, �with
empires in their brains;� of the Elizabethan period. But one does not need to
penetrate the heart of Asia with Marco Polo, or cross the Atlantic to follow
the footsteps of Captain John Smith or the brave Marquette or the ill-starred
La Salle. Europe itself in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a fascinating
continent. Germany was in the throes of religious and political strife; Austria
was being beset by the Turk, who barely succeeded in capturing Vienna; Spain�s
light of empire was waning; Italy was the theater of decadent renaissance,
commercial, and religious forces.
��� Fynnes Moryson�s Itinerary is a view of Shakespeare�s
Europe, in which the reader will be delighted to meet with Chancellor Rosencranz in Denmark, and find the Prince of Denmark a
fellow student of Moryson�s at Wittenberg. Moryson was a Cambridge scholar who for five years, between
1591 and 1596, traveled
through the Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Italy, and France,
recording everything that he saw in sonorous Cambridge Latin (subsequently
translated into seventeenth-century English), although as a cultured Englishman
of those days he spoke fluently French, German, and Italian. This rare work has
been for more than three hundred years the delight of the curious booklover.
Who can fail to be interested in this description of winter sport in Holland,
from which it is evident that Moryson knew not the art of skating nor even the name of that article of
sport:
Upon the broadest waters [they] slyde
together upon the yce.To which purpose they putt upon theire shooes Pattens of wood, with a
long sharpe Iron in the bottoms to Cutt the yce, Continually mooving and frigging theire feete VP and downe, forwardes, or in Circle, which motion mee
thought was not very modest for wemen.
��� Quite as interesting is Coryat�s
Crudities, the original edition (1611)
of which is one of the rarest and most sought- for books of travel
known. Starting from London in May 1,16o8,
Coryat traveled through France and Italy, by way of
Paris, Lyon, Milan, and Padua, to Venice, and returned by way of Switzerland
and the Rhine.
��� Another work of travel with as perennial an
interest is Montaigne�s Journal of Travels in Italy by way of Switzerland
and Germany in 1581. The precious manuscript of this book was unknown until
a learned historian of Pengord, the Canon Prunis, in the second half of the eighteenth century,
discovered it in a chest in the Ch�teau de Montaigne, then in possession of the
Comte de Segur, a descendant of the brilliant
essayist�s daughter.
��� The lore of the traveler and the fisherman
meet in the restless George Sandys�s adventurous
wanderings,
A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. i6io, Foure Bookes containing a
Description of the Thrkish Empire, of Aegypt, of the Holy Land. of the
remote parts of Italy, and Islands adjoyning. London, 1627.
In this work the
author gives an account of the pigeon carrier-service between Aleppo and Babyion,�a service with which the Crusaders became familiar
in the twelfth century,�which so excited the interest of Izaak
Walton that he made allusion to the subject in the curious lore to be found in
the pages of The Compleat Angler (Pt. I, ch. i).
��� George Sandys was
a sort of seventeenth-century George Borrow, combining the habits and
inclinations of a student with a passion for travel and adventure. After returning
from the East he settled down for some years at his desk, and began a
translation of Ovid�s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz�d and Represented in Figures. But before it
was finished, the wanderlust overcame him again. In April, 1621, he took ship
for America, and finished the translation while in Virginia. This probably
gives Virginia a claim to classical honors in advance of any other spot in
America. Sandys�s fame as a man of letters chiefly
rests upon this work. While the Latin poet suffers somewhat from undue
compression, because the translator was determined to accomplish his task
within the same number of lines as the original, Sandys�s
Ovid, nevertheless, is something of a landmark in the history of English
versification. Sandys�s metrical and rhyming ability
was considerable, and he undoubtedly influenced the structure and development
of the heroic couplet. Dryden and Pope both acknowledged their indebtedness to
him in the use of this measure. In his later years, Sandys
directed his rhyming abi li
ties upon the Psalms, and in 1638 issued A
Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems, with musical notations. The first edition
was accompanied by a commendatory poem by Wailer. Besides being one of the
parent books of English psalmody,�as long ago as 1854 the first edition sold
for �4 4s.,�this rare work enjoys the distinction of being one of three books
which comforted Charles I when he was confined in Carisbrooke Castle.
��� Speaking of Shakespeare and Montaigne, whom
one inevitably associates together, both as contemporaries and in intellectual
kinship, reminds one of the latter�s English translator, John Florio. Some time
ago, I clipped this alluring item from a London catalogue:
Florio G.): A
Worlde of Wordes: or Most
Copious and exact Dictionarie in Italian and English,
First Edition, Sm. 4to, old calf, original binding; London, A. Hatfield, for
Edw. Blount, 1598.
What a mine for
a student of Shakespeare�s English! A copy of the dictionary undoubtedly
familiar to the Bard of Avon! A fellow of the same sort, a rare and curious
volume written by a soldier who had served in the Low Countries, named John Wodroethe, is:
The Marrow of the French Tongue,
containing Rules for the True Pronunciation of every Letter written or spoken,
an exact Grammar, Dialogues fitted to all kinds of Discourse for Courtiers,
Citizens, or Countrymen, Phrases, Letters, Missive Sentences, Proverbs, Theames, etc., in both Languages. 1652.
Of even greater
interest than these is Mery Tayls, the earliest English jest book, printed by Rastell in 1526, a unique copy of which is in the library
at Gottingen.
��� The accomplished sometime
ambassador of France to the United States, �Jules Jusserand, was the author of
a valuable contribution to the literature pertaining to Shakespeare, entitled Shakespeare
in France. But he did not discover, in his researches, the
remarkable similarity between Scudery�s La Mort de C�sar, published at
Toulouse in 1636, and dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, and Shakespeare�s tragedy.
It is a historical tragedy of exactly the same kind as Shakespeare�s Julius
Caesar, employing almost the same set of characters, even to the small part
of Artemidorus, the soothsayer. There is the same
plot leading up to the assassination of Caesar, but instead of the dying
reproach, �Et tu, Brute!� of Caesar, in Shakespeare�s
play, we have �Et toy, mon fils aussi:� In each play the
great feature is the funeral oration of Antony over the body of Caesar. It will
be remembered that in Shakespeare�s play the rhetorical method used to alienate
the sympathy of the people from the conspirators is the repetition of the
phrase �honourable men� until it has an ironical significance.The same effect is aimed at in this play by
the reiteration of the line, �C�est le sang de C�sar,
Romains, qui pane a vous�
��� Many exemplary people revel in the
literature of piracy and thieves. The life of the thief is being idealized
today. Such persons may covet Fran�ois de Galvi�s
Histoire Generale
des Larrons, contenant les cruantez et meschancez des Voll��ir: Ruses et subtiliez des Couppeure de Pourses; Finesses,Tromp
��� The following title is of a rare and
curious work which appeared in Shakespeare�s last days, and which probably in
its time had more readers than Shakespeare�s plays. Like Milton�s dragon, it swinges an awful tail:
Lives, Apprehensions, Arraignements and Executions of the 19 late Pyrates, namely, Capts. Harris,Jennings, Longcastle, Downes, Haulsey, and their companies, as they were severally indited on St. Margaret�s Hill, in Southwarke,
on the 22nd of December last, and executed the Friday following. Black letter. John the Elder, about 16o6.
This tract, of
which only three copies are known, one in the possession of a private
collector, one in the British Museum, the other in the Huth
Collection, belongs to a period when the buccaneer was rampant, when
Shakespeare makes Shylock speak of �land thieves and water thieves:�
��� The worst penny dreadful, however, and one
which is true and not fiction, is the
Bloody Journal, kept by William
Davidson, on board a Russian Pirate, in the year 1789, 8vo, calf, 21 leaves.
Mediterranean, printed on board His Majesty�s Ship Caledonia, 1812.
Were it not for the circumstantial account of the way in which this
Journal was procured, and the details given concerning the writer, it would be
impossible to give credence to the facts narrated therein. Davidson was a
seaman on board the Saint Dinnan, a Russian Privateer, which sailed from
Leghorn on 3rd of December, 1788, and more barbarous proceedings I should think
have never been recorded as taking place on board Ship before or since. The
Pirates (they cannot be called by any other name) made prize of all the Thrkish and Greek Vessels they came across, plundering the
valuables, sometimes murdering the entire crews and sinking or burning the vessells, but that was not always done, for it is
constantly narrated that after taking out of the captured vessells
the best of everything, they were sunk �prisoners and all together:� The following
extract will give some idea of the callousness of the Ship�s proceedings:�.
�The 20th it blew fresh; no sail seen that day. Next
day we anchored in Theano, where they were very glad
for to see us come, as there was a Turkish galley on the other side of the
Island going to plunder them. In the night at one o�clock we sent the tender
after her, and at three in the morning she took her without the least defence; she had on board 85 hands, which we took on board
with us and confined them in the hold until the next day, then they were called
up one by one, and had their heads cut off in the same manner as we cut off
Duck�s heads at home, and then we threw them overboard; and this being the
first time, we were obliged to take it by turns to put them to death. The
Englishmen when they were called for at first refused it, but as the Captain
told them they were cowards, or people that were afraid of their enemies, he
could not believe that they were Englishmen; then they went and did the same as
the rest, and afterwards was worse than themselves, for they [i.e., the writer and his
fellow-Countrymen), would always be first when such work was going on, and at
last got quite used to it; for some time we had three or four of a day to put
to death for one man�s share:�
��� The writer was on board from 1st
December, 1788, to 6th September, 1789, and says that besides his wages he
received �230 as his share of the plunder.
This work is of the utmost rarity, there being but one other copy recorded, and
that in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Davidson was also a
seaman on board the Niger, commanded
by Sir Richard Keats. Having on two occasions incurred punishment for assault
and insubordination, he attempted suicide, and whilst confined in prison this
journal was discovered. He acknowledged it to be an authentic account of the
cruise of the privateer, and a narration of the enormities committed by the
crew, Davidson and his fellow-countrymen being the most active leaders. The
Admiralty were informed, but took no steps in the matter, and the journal
became famous with British seamen, amongst whom manuscript copies were
circulated. Sir Walter Scott heard of its existence, and, thinking it might
form the subject of a poem, procured a copy, in 1811. On perusal, however, he
pronounced it too horrible for versification, and contented himself with
publishing portions of it in the �Edinburgh Annual Register:� The �Dictionary
of National Biography� speaks of the book as �extremely rare:� and an account
of it is to be found in �Martin�s Privately Printed Books� and �Cotton�s
Typographical Gazetteer� all those authorities knowing of no other copy beyond
the one in Corpus Christi College. In all probability only a very small edition
was printed, for presentation to naval officers. Sir Edward Pellew,
whose name is on the fly-leaf, is, of course, the heroic admiral who took the
first frigate in the French war, destroyed the Dutch fleet in the East Indies,
18o7, and at the time this book was printed was commander-in-chief in the
Mediterranean, being subsequently created Viscount Exmouth.
��� From the invention of printing, books have
been made or unmade by the favor or frown of Government or the Church. One of
Milton�s lesser writings,
The History of Britain, that Part especially now
called England; from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman
Conquest; in six books. London, 1670,
if of interest to the bibliomaniac because the fate of
the little work was singularly connected with the vicissitudes of the poet
himself, and the changing fortunes of Charles II. Milton wrote this work in
early life, probably in the first half of the reign of Charles I. It is
somewhat crude writing�for John Milton. He did not publish it for many years,
and perhaps never would have published it if it had not been for the
misfortunes of his later life. The great fire of London, in i666, seriously
reduced Milton�s circumstances, and this, united with his blindness, at last
induced him to draw forth the History of Britain from a pigeonhole and
give it to the world. He was then famous as the author of Paradise Lost, and
undoubtedly hoped to mend his circumstances by this publication. But times had
changed since Milton wrote it. It was the period of the Restoration in England,
when press censorship returned with Charles II. ��Of this history:� says Lowndes, �the first. . . copies were mutilated,. . . several passages. . .
were understood as a concealed satire upon the bishops in the reign of Charles
II
Francis Quarles: The Loyall
Convert. Oxford. Printed by Herman Lichileld, Printer
to the University, 1643,
is an exceedingly rare work, thanks to the suppressive
measures of the Protector�s government. The pronounced loyalist views expressed
in this tract brought on the author the animosity of the Parliamentarians, who
had his library searched and his manuscripts destroyed. This �stuck him so to
the heart� that he never recovered.
��� Sometimes
accident, as fire, confers the collector�s crown upon a book. Complete copies
of Sir Henry Spelmann�s
Concilia, Decreta Leges, Constitutiones in Re Ecclesiarum Orbis Brit. annici, viz., Panabritannica, Pananglica, Scotica, Hibernica, Cambrica, etc. ab Initio Christianae ibidem Religionis ad exutum Papam, A. D. 1531,
2 vols. folio,
are very rare, the greater part of the second volume
having been destroyed in the fire of London in 1666
��� The same fate befell Nasmyth�s
edition of Bishop Tanner�s history of the English monasteries
Notitia Monastica, an Account of all the Abbeys, Priories, Houses
of Friars, etc. in England and Wales, enlarged by Nasmyth,
1787,
the greater part of this edition being destroyed by fire
at the offices of the printer.
��� First editions, as some might surmise, are
not always the ones most prized. This is true of Oliver Goldsmith�s
Life of Richard Nash, Esq., Late Master
of the Ceremonies at Bath. Printed for J. Newberry. London, 1762.
Edmund Gosse, in
his delightful Gossip in a Library, cautions the inexperienced book
collector:
There are cases, not known to every collector of
books, where it is not the first which is the really desirable edition of a
work, but the second. One of these rare examples of the exception which proves
the rule is the second edition of Goldsmith�s Life of Beau Nash. Disappointment
awaits him who possesses only the first,�it is in the sec. ond
that the best things originally appeared... . The wise
bibliophile, therefore, will eschew it (the first edition), and try to get the
second edition, issued a few weeks later in the same year.
��� Absolutely unique books, whether from
authorship or association or untoward fate, are a class apart. I have elsewhere
told the story of the copy of Montesquieu�s Grandeur
des Romains that once belonged to Frederick the Great.****
Another book which I hope but do not expect ever to find is Jean Ribaut�s Histoire de l�exp�dition
francaise en Floride, published
in 1563. Its author was a Norman sailor who commanded Admiral Coligny�s
ill-starred Huguenot expedition for the settlement of Florida in 1562. The
whole colony, it will be remembered, was wiped out by the Spaniards. No copy of
the book is known. Perhaps the bookstalls of the Latin Quarter may some day bring this livre
introuvable into light. Who knows?
��� In 1769 the Reverend James Granger, an
Anglican clergyman, published a
Biographical History of England, from
Egbert the Great, to the Revolution, consisting of Characters disposed in
different Classes and adapted to a Methodical Catalogue of engraved British
Heads.
Thenceforward
extra-illustrated books became the rage.
��� The Grangerite is
a formidable specimen of the vermis bibliothecalis. He is an Ishmaelite in the land of
books, a Vandal in literature. His hobby is extra-illustrated books, and in
order to gain possession of valuable plates, portraits, and engravings he will
tear to pieces a volume which men adore, and mayhap even the angels. His
interest has its culture value, certainly, for he who has turned the pages of
an extra-illustrated volume of the author he loves knows the rapture of those
moments; but as the aigrette of my lady�s hat costs the life of the heron, so
the deeds of the Grangerite destroy the life of a
book. I say life, for what booklover will deny that
there is a soul in books and immortality in some of them. The difference
between an immortal book and the common mass of printed and bound pages is like
the difference between man and lower animals. One �speaks a various language�;
the others are dumb and dull.
��� From of old, the world has known of the
thinker who was devoted to one book. It is a familiar fact that the English
Bible has been a great source of literary inspiration to many men. Emerson�s
one book was Montaigne�s Essays. Cotton�s translation of these�and, by
the way, Cotton was the lifelong friend of Izaak
Walton, and wrote the second part of The Compleat Angler�moulded not only Emerson�s thought, but his style as well.
His habit of beginning a paragraph with � �T is:�
instead of �It is;� was a trick derived from the seventeenth-century version of
Montaigne. So, too, Mr. William Morton Payne has recently pointed out the great
debt the late Mr. E. L. Godkin owed to Burke.*****
��� It is not to be forgotten, however, that
the quality of the reader matters more than the nature of the book. It may be
the Bible or Homer or Tacitus or Shakespeare or Bacon or Montaigne or Burke or
Emerson; but to be a man of one book, it is not enough that the book be great.
A great author will not fill a shallow mind with ideas. Inspiration depends
upon him who reads more than upon what is read. Moral vigor is an impalpable
and eternal force. Only a great soul may claim kinship with Titans.
In this connection, the sale catalogues of the private libraries of men of
eminence afford interesting evidence of the mental make-up of their possessors.
Daniel Webster�s library was astonishingly small, and seems to have been
indiscriminately formed. Sale catalogues, especially when someone has taken
care to enter the prices received, form interesting reading to those who like
to follow the fluctuations of literary taste, or the increasing value of the
world�s masterpieces. It drives one almost to distraction to learn in these
that King Lear (i6o8), which last year realized �900, was sold less than a century ago for �8 i8s. 6d., and Midsummer Night�s Dream (1600) for �4 14S. 6d.!******
��� A catalogue of old books is almost
inexhaustible in its possibilities. I have never especially followed the
subject of bookplates and bindings,�not for lack of sympathy with persons who
are so interested, however,�save with one exception. This was with respect to
books imprinted with the arms of the President de Thou.
��� Jacques-Auguste
de Thou was one of the most learned men of that age of erudition, the sixteenth
century. He was an intimate friend of L�H�pital,
Estienne, Theodore Beza, and King Henry IV, President
of the Parlement of Paris, a man of state and of
letters in one. When the Edict of Nantes brought tranquillity
to France after the long series of civil wars, De Thou wrote a history of his
own times (i 6�i 608) in eight monumental
Latin tomes. This work was translated into French (sixteen volumes) in 1734,
and in 1740 this version was pirated by a Dutch publisher, who issued an
eleven-volume edition, with an imposing dedication two pages long to the
Empress Anne of Russia, who was a niece of Peter the Great. This pompous bit of
homage is a curious reminiscence of Peter�s western travels, and is so fulsome
in its flattery that one turns to the immortal dedication of Tristram Shandy as
to a tonic:
Made for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate,
Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, of this or any other realm in
Christendom; nor has it yet been hawked about, or offered publicly
or privately, directly or indirectly, to any one person or personage, great or
small; but is honestly a true Virgin Dedication, untried on, upon any soul
living. ... Every author has a way of his own in bringing his points to bear;
for my own part, I hate chaffering and higgling for a
few guineas in a dark entry. . . . If, therefore, there is any one Duke,
Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron in these his Majestys
dominions, who stands in need of a tight, genteel Dedication, and whom the
above will suit (for, by the bye. unless it suits in some degree, I will not
part with it)�lt is much at his service for fifty
guineas�which, I am positive, is twenty guineas less than it ought to be
afforded for, by any man of genius.
��� Then follows a minute estimate of the
book�s worth, after the manner of judging a picture: so many �points� for
drawing, composition, color, etc.; �and besides;� says the author, �there is an
air of originality in the tout ensemble" The rest is dedicated �to the
Moon, who, by the bye, of all the Patrons or Matrons I can think of, has most
power to set my book a-going, and make the world run mad after it� The world
has been happily moonstruck, indeed.
��� Even before the appearance of the French
version of De Thou in 1729, the Reverend Bernard Wilson, vicar of
Newark-upon-Trent, had begun the translation of De Thou in English. But he
received little encouragement, and the work languished after two volumes had
appeared. Now, being the lucky possessor of the original Latin version, the two
French editions, and the English translation, and having observed that books
with De Thou�s binding and arms were sometimes
offered for sale, I conceived the thought of trying to acquire an approximate
idea of the nature and extent of De Thou�s library,
by clipping the titles of books that were advertised to have his arms or
bookplate, as I came upon them. It was a pleasant though not exciting interest,
which, however, came to a sudden termination when I discovered in the Dupuy Collection at the Biblioth�que
Nationale in Paris a manuscript catalogue of the
entire library, made in the reign of Louis XIII.
��� Such another man as De Thou, in his love of
books and the valuable collection he made of them, was Lord Harley, Earl of
Oxford, who was Queen Anne�s prime minister. Bookbindings
with his arms are not rare, and the reconstruction of his library might easily
be made a task of pleasure, as well as of advantage to the history of letters,
by some enthusiast in that period. Mr. Julian Sharman in 1889 so reconstructed
by title the library of Mary Queen of Scots, and more recently Petrarch�s
library has been similarly restored by M. Pierre de Nolhac.
��� Somewhere in central Africa are seventy-six
volumes enclosed in tin cases which Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer,
carried with him on one of his expeditions and was compelled to abandon.
They will be kept as fetiches
[said Stanley on his return] until some African antiquarian will pick them up,
a century hence, and wonder how on earth Jane
Eyre, printed in 1870, came to be at Iturn,
or Thackeray�s Esmond came to be preserved among the Lubari of Gamabararga.
��� Certainly one of the greatest �association�
books is that historic tome with which Dr. Johnson indignantly felled Osborne
when he was rude to him. Osborne had employed Johnson to catalogue the famous
library of Edward Harley, the second Earl of Oxford. The volume was a Septuagint
of �594 and was exhibited at a bookseller�s in 1812. Years ago I came upon
a book�price five shillings�which was a relic of the battle of Waterloo. It was
an example of the Almanac imperiale (1805). On
the flyleaf was written:
In July, 1815, the English army halted in the neighbourhood of Garge, which
village was completely plundered, a magnificent library was torn to pieces and
thrown into the gardens and ponds adjoining� all around was strewed with books,
leaves, covers, etc. From amongst these I picked up this volume, and have no
doubt that others as well as myself will think It not
an uninteresting relic. [Signed:] A. C. Mercer.
��� Psychologically, there is doubtless a
difference between a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac, hut it is one of degree
and not of kind. Almost all incunabulists, however,
are bibliomaniacs. Lord Spencer remained a year in Rome without visiting the
Vatican, St. Peter�s, or the Coliseum. He was looking for early printed books, and left Rome happy when he found the Martial printed
by Sweynheym and Pannartz
in 1473. Who shall say
that he was not well rewarded? Under the spell of this fascination a man
otherwise careful and even penurious will expend thousands. The Marquis of Blandford paid �2260 at the Roxburghe
Sale in 1812 for a copy of the Decameron of
1471.
��� The late Professor Karl Witte, of Halle,
has related an experience which illustrates the seriocomic side of bibliomania.
He was in Verona, and visited the library of the Marquis Gianfillippi,
who showed him as his greatest treasure the first edition of a Book of Hours
printed by the elder Aldus at Venice in 1497. While Witte was engaged in
collating some rare old volumes, for which purpose he had come to Verona, the
old man suddenly began to fumble the books on the table with great agitation,
and finally, with a thousand apologies, asked the astonished professor if he
had not slipped the cherished Aldine into his pocket
�as a joke! Professor Witte in great irritation replied in the negative, and
declared that he would not leave the room until the precious book was found.
Some minutes later the Marquis discovered the book where he had laid it and
apologized profusely for his conduct with the na�ve explanation that �bibliomaniacs
knew no law:�
��� A French collector in the reign of Louis
Philippe was in the habit of pocketing prized books wherever he might be. This
practice was known to all the Parisian booksellers and it was the custom to
bill him quarterly accounts (or books �missing� from their shelves. He was a
man of honor and always paid without protest. Sir Edward Fitzgerald had the
same weakness. He was a kleptomaniac when it came to rare books, and his wife
regularly searched his pockets for stolen goods when he returned home.
��� Many a keen competition between rival booklovers
at a sale has resulted in the rupture of a friendship.
�I will get it
at your sale when you die:� a disappointed bibliomaniac once said to an
erstwhile friend.
��� Bibliomania has even provoked tragedy. In
1850, a book collector of Barcelona named Vincente
murdered a friend who had outbid him at a sale for a copy of the Ordinacions per los gloriosos
reys de Arago... de Valentia (1482). It was then believed to be a unique
copy. The irony of fate was that the case attracted so much attention that
there was a rummaging of old bookstalls throughout Europe, with the result that
six copies were discovered. It was proved at the trial that this was not Vincente�s first murder; for he had made way with a German
student, a Spanish poet, and nine other persons in order to get possession of
coveted volumes which pertained to them. On the scaffold the only clemency he
requested was that his collection might be kept intact and given to the public
library of Barcelona. In spite of his crimes, no bibliophile would deny that Vincente had the heart of a bookhunter.
��� Unlike the hunting of feral quarry, bookhunting is a harmless pursuit which inflicts no injury,
and there is no �closed� season in its indulgence. Any book is fair game
throughout the year. Moreover, there is a lure in the variety of the spoil.
Bibliomania may be made a study in the philosophy of rarity, or again a pursuit
of the fantastic akin to the Hunting of the Snark in
unreality. Perhaps that famous incident is really an allegory on myth-hunting.
The pastime of myth-hunting has as decided and
satisfying a charm as any other sport.. . . The
tracking of this curious and cross-bred game up hill and down dale, so to
speak, across the wilds of history soon becomes quite an exciting occupation.*******
��� One may go bookhunting
between hedgerows in Shakespeare�s England, or along the poplared
roads of France, or cross the seas with Hakluyt�s voyagers. One may journey
along the main-traveled roads of literature or history or science in search of
first editions, or may cross unfamiliar fields of booklore, and wander down
narrow lanes. The world of books is as open to the bookhunter
as the seven seas to the fishes or as the air to birds.
End
� London, Kegan Paul & Co., ioa.
* Mark Pattison, Essays,
11:322�323
� L�Anglais mangeur d�opium, traduit de l�anglais par A.D.M. [Alfred de Musset] (Paris, Mame et Delaunay-Vall�e, 1828).
**Trans. Bib.
Soc., VII:2o1.
*** See
Williamson, �Traders� Tokens of the Seventeenth Century� Proc. Royal Hist.
Soc., n.s., IV:i 71. The
late Dr. Howard left an unpublished monograph upon this interesting subject. It
was sold in London in 1905
****
�Napoleon as a Booklover� supra, pp. 69�70.
***** �The Man of One Book� The Dial, XXXIX:[a6ij�a63 (November 1, 1905).
****** Some time ago I came upon the Catalogue des livres de M. Sccousse, the
sale catalogue of the private library of Secousse,
secretary of the Academic des Inscriptions, and one of the most eminent
scholars and antiquaries of the middle of the eighteenth century. The library
embraced more than eight thousand items or lots, and covered the whole field of
French literature. It was sold at Paris in 1755. The catalogue in my
possession has the price of every book or lot entered upon the margin by some
faithful attendant at the sale.
******* G. H. Powell, Excursions
in Libraria (London, 1896), a fascinating and
little-known volume of studies in booklore.