Chapter 4

The only incident which calls for special mention in the two next short reigns is a law, 1 Richard III., 1483, by which it was enacted that if any of the printers or sellers of printed books--the 'great plenty' of which came from 'beyond the sea'--'vend them at too high and unreasonable prices,' then the Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, or any of the chief justices of the one bench or the other, were to regulate the prices.

BOOK-HUNTING AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING.

I.

THE introduction of printing into this country by Caxton during the latter half of the fifteenth century had very little immediate effect on book-collecting. The operations of the press were slow, its patrons few, and its work controlled by one man. The reproduction of MSS. was essentially a slow process, but when these transcriptions were finished, they rarely failed to find a purchaser. Caxton, like Sweynheim and Pannartz at Subiaco, soon learned the seriousness of over-printing an edition. Collectors were few, and the introduction of printing did not very materially add to their number. London, however, soon became a recognised centre of the trade in books, and Henry VII. patronized, in his curious fashion, the collecting of them. He read, according to Bacon, 'most books that were of any worth in the French tongue,' and one of the most commendable actions of this King was the purchase of the noble series of vellum copies of the works printed at Paris by Antoine Vérard, now in the British Museum--an act by which he may be said to have laid the foundation of our great national library. The value of books at this period is not without interest; but we must confine ourselves to one or two facts relating to Caxton's books. At his death in 1492, a copy of the 'Golden Legend' was valued at 6s. 8d. in the books of the Westminster churchwarden. From a note by Dibdin, it would seem that the price of Caxtons towards the end of the reign of Henry VII. was as follows:

'Godfray of Boulogne' (imperfect), ii_s._ Virgil's 'Æneid' (perfect), xij_d._ 'Fait of Arms and Chivalry' (perfect), ij_s._ viij_d._ 'Chastising of God's Children,' viij_d._

Henry VIII. was undoubtedly a book-lover as well as a book-collector. He established a library at St. James's. But perhaps it is rather as a book-disperser that Henry is entitled to notice in this place. The dissolution of the monasteries is the genesis of book-collecting in London. The first move in this respect is entitled 'An Act that all religious houses under the yearly revenue of £200 shall be dissolved and given to the King and his heirs,' and is dated 1535 (27 Henry VIII., cap. 28, ii. 134). The second is dated 1539. Whatever advantages in a general way the dissolution of the monasteries may have had, its consequences, so far as regards the libraries, which the monks considered as among their most cherished possessions, were disastrous beyond measure. Indeed, we have no conception of our losses. Addressing himself to Edward VI. in 1549, John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory, who had but little love for Popery of any description, writes in this strain: 'Avarice was the other dispatcher which hath made an end both of our libraries and books . . . to the no small decay of the commonwealth. A great number of them who purchased those superstitious mansions [monasteries], reserved of these Library-books, some . . . to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots; some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small numbers, but at times whole shipsfull, to the wondering of the foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with so ungodly gains, and so deeply shameth his natural country. I know a merchantman, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble Libraries for forty shillings price: a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these ten years; and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. . . . Our posterity may well curse this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities, unless they be stayed in time.' Fuller, in his 'Church History of Britain,' quotes Bale's lamentation, and adds his own testimony on the same subject: 'As brokers in Long Lane, when they buy an old suit buy the linings together with the outside, so it was considered meet that such as purchased the buildings of monasteries should in the same grant have the Libraries (the stuffing thereof) conveyed unto them. And now these ignorant owners, so long as they might keep a ledger-book or terrier by direction thereof to find such straggling acres as belonged unto them, they cared not to preserve any other monuments. The covers of books, with curious brass bosses and clasps, intended to protect, proved to betray them, being the baits of covetousness. And so many excellent authors, stripped out of their cases, were left naked, to be buried or thrown away. . . . What soul can be so frozen as not to melt into anger thereat? What heart, having the least spark of ingenuity, is not hot at this indignity offered to literature? I deny not but that in this heap of books there was much rubbish; legions of lying legends, good for nothing but fuel . . . volumes full fraught with superstition, which, notwithstanding, might be useful to learned men; except any will deny apothecaries the privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make antidotes of them. But, beside these, what beautiful Bibles, rare Fathers, subtile Schoolmen, useful Historians--ancient, middle, modern; what painful Comments were here amongst them! What monuments of mathematics all massacred together; seeing every book with a cross was condemned for Popish; with circles for conjuring.'

The calamities bewailed in such picturesque language by Bale and Fuller would have been much more serious but for the labours of one of our earliest antiquaries and book-lovers, John Leland. 'The laboryouse Journey and serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiquities geven of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to kynge Henry the viii in the xxxvij yeare of his Reygne,' 1549, is a remarkable publication, of great interest to the book-hunter and the antiquary.

But the fruits of Leland's researches cannot now be fully known, for he was too intent on accumulating material to draw up an adequate inventory. Much that he preserved from destruction is now in the British Museum, and some is in the Bodleian at Oxford. Some of the fragments which he had saved from the general destruction had been placed in the King's own library in Westminster.

The dissolution of the monasteries had among its many effects the creation, so to speak, of a large number of collectors. One of the most famous of the early sixteenth-century collectors, Sir Thomas More, however, died (in 1535) before he could have availed himself of the many treasures scattered to all quarters of the earth.

Dibdin records a bibliomaniacal anecdote which is well worth repeating here, as it shows how More's love of books had infected even those who came to seize upon him to carry him to the Tower, and to endeavour to inveigle him into treasonable expressions: 'While Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer weare bussie in trussinge upp his bookes, Mr. Riche, pretending,' etc., 'whereupon Mr. Palmer, on his deposition, said, that he was soe bussie ab{t} the trussinge upp Sir Tho. Moore's bookes in a sacke, that he tooke no heed of there talke.'

Henry, Earl of Arundel, was not slow to seize upon the advantages which the dissolution placed before everyone. At Nonsuch, in Surrey, he formed a library, which is described in a biography of him, written shortly after his death, as 'righte worthye of remembrance.' Besides his numerous MSS. and printed books, he acquired a considerable portion of the library of Cranmer, which was dispersed at the death of the Archbishop. His books passed to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, at whose decease they were purchased by Henry, Prince of Wales, and are now in the British Museum. The Earl of Arundel's books are handsomely bound, and are known by his badge of the white horse and oak branch which generally occurs on the covers.

In Jeremy Collier's 'Ecclesiastical History' (vol. ii. 307) we get a glimpse of book-matters in London in the middle of the sixteenth century. At the end of February, 1550, we learn that the Council book mentions the King's sending a letter for the purging of the library at Westminster. The persons are not named, but the business was to cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such-like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Archer. These books were many of them plated with gold and silver and curiously embossed. This, as far as we can collect, was the superstition that destroyed them. 'Here avarice had a very thin disguise, and the courtiers discovered of what spirit they were to a remarkable degree.' Here is another picture of an almost contemporaneous event, equally vivid in its suggestiveness: 'John Tyndale, the translator's brother, and Thomas Patmore, merchants, were condemned to do penance by riding with their faces to their horses' tails, with their books fastened thick about them, pinned, or tacked, to their gowns or clokes, to the Standard in Cheap; and there with their own hands to fling them into the fire, kindled on purpose to burn them.'

As a book-collecting period the sixteenth century, from the accession of Henry VIII.--when books became the organs of the passions of mankind--to the death of Elizabeth, is full of intense interest. The old order had changed; the world itself had made an entirely fresh start. Men and events of the previous two or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. The hobby became first a passion with the few, and then the fashion with the many. Henry VIII. was perhaps a passive rather than an active collector, with a distinct leaning in favour of beautiful books. His three children, who followed him on the throne of England, were collectors of books, and the majority of their purchases must have been made in London. Many of these books have, at some time or other, drifted from private hands into the sale-rooms, but perhaps the majority of those now existing are to be found within the walls of our public institutions. For example, at the sale of Dr. Askew's MSS., in 1775, a very interesting item was purchased by a Mr. Jackson, a Quaker, and a dealer in wine and spirits, with whom book-collecting was a passion. The MS. proved to be in the handwriting of Edward VI.; it was in French, and dealt with his opinion of his right to the title of Supreme Head of the Church. At Jackson's sale the MS. became the property of the British Museum. As another illustration, we may refer to the copy of the 'Flores Historiarum per Matthæum Westmonasteriensem,' etc., 1570, in the British Museum (Cracherode Collection) which is the identical one presented by Archbishop Parker (by whose authority it was published) to Queen Elizabeth. It afterwards fell into the hands of Francis, Earl of Bedford, who bequeathed it, with the furniture of a little study, to his secretary. It was subsequently in the possession of Ritson. And yet again, in the Eton College Library, there is a copy of the 'Missale Romanum,' printed at Paris by Hardouyn, 1530, which belonged to Mary, with a sentence in her handwriting; this volume afterwards came into the possession of Mary of Este, Queen of James II., and subsequently into the hands of a London bookseller, from whom it was purchased for fifty-three shillings by Bishop Fleetwood, and presented to the college library. Indeed, a large volume might be compiled on the Adventures of Some Famous Books.

Interesting and important as is the phase of book-collecting which relates to royal personages, it falls into insignificance beside that of men who have achieved greatness through their own abilities. The books collected by Thomas Cranmer, for example, quite overshadow in interest anything which the whole reign of the Tudors could produce. It has been well said that his knowledge of books was wide, and his opportunities for acquiring them unrivalled. Cranmer was a generous collector, for his library was quite open for the use of learned men. Latimer spent 'many an hour' there, and has himself told us that he met with a copy of Dionysius 'in my Lord of Canterbury's library.' We have already seen that many of Cranmer's books passed into the possession of the Earl of Arundel, but many were 'conveyed and stolen awaie.' Cranmer's books have found an enthusiastic historian in Prebendary Burbidge, who has almost rehabilitated the great ecclesiastic's library in the first part of Mr. Quaritch's 'Dictionary of English Book-collectors.' Another book-collector of a very different type was amassing an extensive library at a somewhat later period than Cranmer: Dr. Dee, the famous necromancer, had collected '4,000 volumes, printed and unprinted, bound and unbound, valued at 2,000 lib.,' of which one Greek, two French and one High Dutch volumes of MSS. alone were 'worth 533 lib.' It occupied forty years to form this library. Most of his books passed into the possession of Elias Ashmole--who was another collector with an insatiable appetite--and now form a part of the Ashmolean Museum. Some of Dee's singular MSS. were found, long after his death, in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered. Reverting for a moment to Ashmole, he himself tells us that he gave 'five volumes of Mr. Dugdale's' works to the Temple Library. And further: 'My first boatful of books, which were carried to Mrs. Tradescant's, were brought back to the Temple.' In May, 1667, he bought Mr. John Booker's study of books, and gave £140 for them. In 1681 he bought 'Mr. Lilly's library of books of his widow, for £50.'

A very distinguished book-collector of the Elizabethan period was Sir Francis Drake, the great Admiral. It did not seem to be at all known that the distinguished naval hero was also a bibliophile until 1883, when the collection of books was brought from the old residence of the Drakes, Nutwell Court, Lympstone, Devon, to Sotheby's. The sale comprised 1,660 lots, representing several thousand volumes, the total being £3,276 17s. 6d. It was especially rich in books and old tracts of the early seventeenth century relating to the English voyages to America, and some of these realized very high figures. Although the library was undoubtedly founded by Drake, it was evidently continued by his descendants. Bacon, Baron of Verulam, was a distinguished book-collector, as the shelves of his chambers in Gray's Inn would have testified. Archbishop Parker, than whom 'a more determined book-fancier never existed in Great Britain,' and Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and the object of Tom Nash's withering scorn, were among the most inveterate book-collectors of Elizabethan London. Had Harvey--whose books usually contain his autograph on the title-page, and not a few of which were given him by Spenser--studied his books less, and the proper study of mankind a little more, he might have shown his talents off to a better advantage than in his conflicts with Nash. In the Bodleian there is a set of old tales and romances which Spenser lent Harvey, taking as a hostage, apparently, Harvey's copy of Lucian in four volumes. Harvey had a very poor opinion of such 'foolish' books, but he does not seem to have returned them to their rightful owner. The fire which destroyed Ben Jonson's MSS. undoubtedly consumed many of his printed books, but examples from his library, with 'Sum Ben Jonson' inscribed, are sometimes met with. Shakespeare may have had a library, but we have no evidence that he possessed even a copy of his own plays in quarto. The Elizabethan poets and dramatists were prodigious contributors to the press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his little finger points backward to his boy, who must be his interpreter; and so all day, gaping like a dumb image, he sits without motion, except at such times as he goes to dinner or supper, for then he is as quick as other three, eating six times every day.'

II.

From start to finish the Stuart dynasty ruled England for close on three-quarters of a century. That book-collecting should have existed at all under it is a marvel. But the hobby no longer depended upon the patronage of courts and courtiers. From the Wise Fool, James I., to the Foolish Fool, the second James, collectors pursued their hobby in London and out of it. James I. began to collect books at a very early age, and a list of his library was published for the first time in the _Athenæum_ in 1893. It has, however, but little interest to us in this place, for doubtless most of the books were imported into Scotland from the great book centre, Paris. The library which he acquired after his accession to the throne of England is of little consequence, for he was not the person to purchase books when he had the means, and doubtless many of his bookish possessions were gifts. In the library at Eton College there is his copy of Captain John Smith's 'History of Virginia,' 1624, which was rescued by Storer from a dirty bookseller's shop in Derby, and the existence of many others might be traced. It is certain that 'he gave them shabby coverings, and scribbled idle notes on their margins.' Had his son Henry lived, he might have developed into a respectable book-collector. We know for certain that he 'paid a Frenchman that presented a book, £4 10s.'; and that he paid 'Mr. Holyoak for writing a catalogue of the library which the Prince had of Lord Lumley, £8 13s. 4d.' Charles II., like his forbears, was not a book-buyer, and so far as he is concerned we must content ourselves with repeating a little anecdote after Dibdin, who refers to an 'old and not incurious library at Workingham, in Suffolk,' where there was a very fine ruled copy of Hayes's Bible, published at Cambridge, 1674, in two volumes folio; on the fly-leaf it contains the following memorandum: 'N.B.--This Bible belonged to K. Charles IId. and [was] given by him to Duke Lauderdale and sold by auction w{th} y{e} rest of his Books.' In a comparatively modern hand, below, is written in pencil:

'Hark ye, my friends, that on this Bible look, Marvel not at the fairness of the Book; No soil of fingers, nor such ugly things, Expect to find, Sirs, for it _was the King's_.'

The most distinguished Metropolitan book-collector of the period was Sir Robert Cotton, who began as early as 1588, and who had assistance from such antiquaries as William Camden and Sir Henry Spelman. This library, after being closed on account of the treasonable character of the documents contained in it, passed into the possession of Cotton's son, Sir Thomas, whose house was almost adjoining Westminster Hall. Anthony à Wood gives a curious account of a visit he paid it, when he found its owner practising on the lute. The key of the library was in the possession of one Pearson, who lodged with a bookseller in Little Britain. Wood was 'forced to walk thither, and much ado there was to find him.' This library was removed to Essex Street, and again back to Westminster to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard, where it suffered greatly from a fire in 1731, and what remains of it is now in the British Museum. Sir Thomas Bodley was another collector, but few of his accumulations appear to have come from London. The extraordinary collection of pamphlets got together by Tomlinson, and now stored in the British Museum, is too well known to need more than a passing reference. It is not so generally known that Narcissus Luttrell was a very voracious collector of broadsides, tracts, and so forth. To nearly every one of the items he affixed the price he paid for it. In 1820, at the Bindley sale, this extraordinary collection, ranging in date from 1640 to 1688, and comprising twelve volumes, realized the then large amount of £781.

Sir Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls under James I., was a book-collector of the right sort, and his box of charming little editions of the classics, with which he used to solace himself on a journey, is now in the safe keeping of the British Museum. Sir Julius was born in 1557, and died in April, 1636; he possessed a fine collection of highly interesting manuscripts, which had the narrowest possible escape from being destroyed at the latter part of the last century. The collection was rescued in time by Samuel Paterson, the auctioneer, and it is now in the British Museum.

Robert Burton (the author of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy') was, like Luttrell, also a great collector of tracts, and his library, now in the Bodleian, is peculiarly rich in historical, political, and poetical pamphlets, and in miscellaneous accounts of murders, monsters, and accidents. He seems to have purchased and preserved a copy of everything that came out. 'There is no nation,' says Johnson, 'in which it is so necessary as in our own to assemble the small tracts and fugitive pieces.' 'The writers of these' frequently have opportunities 'of inquiring from living witnesses, and of copying their representations from the life, and preserve a multitude of particular incidents which are forgotten in a short time, or omitted in formal relations, and yet afford light in some of the darkest scenes of state.' 'From pamphlets,' says the same writer, 'are to be learned the progress of every debate, and of every opinion.' And he compares the impression produced on the mind of him who shall consult these tracts, and of another that refers merely to formal historians, to the _difference of him who hears of a victory, and him who sees the battle_. Archbishop Laud collected from far and wide. John Selden, like Laud, had a distinct weakness for learned books, and consequently could have found little to satisfy his cravings in London. Selden, when disturbed, put his spectacles into the book he was busy with by way of marking the place; and after his death numbers of volumes were found with these curious book-markers. John Felton, who murdered Buckingham, was also a book-collector in a small way. In Lilly's catalogue for 1863 there was a copy of Peacham's 'Compleat Gentleman,' 1622, with the following on the fly-leaf: 'John Felton, vicessimo secundo die Junii, 1622.'

A few glances, at this point, at the more material phases of book-collecting may not be without interest. The following is one of the earliest bookseller's statements of accounts with which we are acquainted. It was rendered to 'the Right Honourable the Lord Conway,' on May 31, 1638, by Henry Seile, whose shop was at the sign of the Tiger's Head, Fleet Street: