Returning for a moment to Mr. Arnold and his contributions to bibliography, he did the booksellers a good turn and helped collectors justify their extravagance to their wives by publishing some years ago “A Record of Books and Letters.” Mr. Arnold devoted the leisure of six years to forming a collection of books with perseverance and intelligence; then he suddenly stopped and turned over to Bangs & Company, the auctioneers, the greater part of his collection, and awaited the result with interest. I say “with interest” advisedly, for the result fully justified his judgment. In his “Record” he gives the date of acquisition, together with the cost of each item, in one column, and in another the selling price. He also states whether the item was bought of a bookseller or a collector, or at auction. He had spent a trifle over ten thousand dollars, and his profit almost exactly equalled his outlay. I said his profit, but I have used the wrong word. His profit was the pleasure he received in discovering, buying, and owning the treasures which for a time were in his possession. The difference in actual money between what he paid and what he received, some ten thousand dollars, was the reward for his industry and courage in paying what doubtless many people supposed to be extravagant prices for his books.
Let us examine one only. It is certainly not a fair example, but it happens to interest me. He had a copy of Keats’s “Poems,” 1817, with an inscription in the poet’s handwriting: “My dear Giovanni, I hope your eyes will soon be well enough to read this with pleasure and ease.” There were some other inscriptions in Keats’s hand, and for this treasure Arnold paid a bookseller, in 1895, seventy-one dollars. At the auction in 1901 it brought five hundred dollars, and it subsequently passed into the Van Antwerp collection, finally going back to London, where it was sold in 1907 for ninety pounds, being bought by Quaritch. Finally it passed into the possession of the late W. H. Hagen and, at the sale of his library, in May, 1918, was knocked down to “G.D.S.” for $1950. From him I tried to secure it, but was “too late.”[7]