The great bulk of Selden's books were given by his executors to the Bodleian; but several chests of monastic manuscripts were sent to the Inner Temple, and perished in a fire. He passed his whole life as a scholar; and yet, it is said, he deplored the loss of his time, and wished that he had neglected what the world calls learning, and had rather 'executed the office of a justice of the peace.' Sir Matthew Hale should be remembered for his gift of mss. to Lincoln's Inn. He made it a condition that they should never be printed; and the language of his will shows a certain dread of dealing lightly with the secrets of tenure and prerogative. 'My desire is that they be kept safe and all together in remembrance of me. They were fit to be bound in leather, and chained and kept in archives: they are a treasure not fit for every man's view, nor is every man capable of making use of them.'
We shall close our account of the century with a few words about Dr. Bernard, a stiff, hard, and straightforward reader, whose library of medicine and general literature was sold by auction in 1698. 'Being a person who collected his books not for ostentation or ornament he seemed no more solicitous about their dress than his own'; and therefore, says the compiler of his catalogue, 'you'll find that a gilt back or a large margin was very seldom any inducement to him to buy. It was sufficient to him that he had the book.' 'The garniture of a book,' he would observe,'was apt to recommend it to a great part of our modern collectors'; he himself was not a mere nomenclator, and versed only in title-pages, 'but had made that just and laudable use of his books which would become all those that set up for collectors.' He was the possessor of thirteen fine Caxtons, which fetched altogether less than two guineas at his sale; the biddings seem to have been by the penny; and Mr. Clarke in his Repertorium Bibliographicum observed that the penny at that time seems to have been more than the equivalent of our pound sterling in the purchase of black-letter rarities.
CHAPTER XII.
GROLIER AND HIS SUCCESSORS.
Jean Grolier, the prince of book-collectors, was born at Lyons in 1479. His family had come originally from Verona, but had long been naturalised in France. Several of his relations held civic offices; Étienne Grolier, his father, was in charge of the taxes in the district of Lyons, and was appointed treasurer of the Milanese territories at that time in the occupation of the French. Jean Grolier succeeded his father in both these employments. He was treasurer of Milan in 1510, when Pope Julius formed the league against the French, which was crushed at the Battle of Ravenna; and for nearly twenty years afterwards Grolier took a principal part in administering the affairs of the province. Young, rich, and powerful, a lover of the arts and a bountiful patron of learning, he became an object of almost superstitious respect to the authors and booksellers of Italy. He was eager to do all in his power towards improving the machinery and diffusing the products of science. He loved his books not only for what they taught but also as specimens of typography and artistic decoration. To own one or two examples from his library is to take high rank in the army of bookmen. The amateur of bindings need learn little more when he comprehends the stages of Grolier's literary passion, its fervent and florid beginnings, the majesty of its progress, and its austere simplicities in old age.
Grolier was the personal friend of Gryphius, the printer of Lyons, and of all the members of the House of Aldus at Venice. Erasmus, who was revered by Grolier as his god-father in matters of learning, once paid a compliment to the treasurer, which was not far from the truth. 'You owe nothing to books,' he wrote, 'but they owe a good deal to you, because it is by your help that they will go down to posterity.' The nature of Grolier's relations with the Venetian publishers appears in his letters to Francis of Asola about the printing of a work by Budæus. He writes from Milan in the year 1519: 'I am thinking every day about sending you the "Budæus" for publication in your most elegant style. You must add to your former favours by being very diligent in bringing out my friend's book, of which I now send you the manuscript revised and corrected by the author. You must take the greatest care, dear Francis, to present it to the public in an accurate shape, and this indeed I must beg and implore. I want beauty and refinement besides; but this we shall get from your choice paper, unworn type, and breadth of margin. In a word, I want to have it in the same style as your "Politian." If all this extra luxury should put you to loss, I will make it good. I am most anxious that the manuscript should be followed exactly, without any change or addition; and so, my dear Francis, fare you well.' The book appeared with a dedication to Grolier himself, in which Francis of Asola recounts the many favours received by the elder Aldus in his lifetime, by himself, and by his father Andreas. The presentation copy was magnificently printed on vellum, with initials in gold and colours. Grolier inscribed it with his name and device, so that it became easy to verify its subsequent history. It appeared among the books of the Prince de Soubise, and belonged afterwards to the Count Macarthy, and in 1815 was bought by Mr. Payne and transferred to the Althorp Library.
BINDING EXECUTED FOR GROLIER.