A modest collection was formed a few years afterwards by Pierre-Louis Guinguené, who wrote a valuable work on the literary history of Italy. He is remembered as having published amid the terrors of 1791 an amusing essay on the authority of Rabelais 'in the matter of this present Revolution.' He led a peaceful life through all that troubled time, and succeeded in forming a very useful library containing about 3000 volumes; it was purchased for the British Museum on his death, and became the foundation of the great series of works on the French Revolution which has been brought together there.
The long life of M. Antoine Renouard bridges over the space between the days of Mirabeau and the time when the élégants of the Third Empire had invented a new bibliomania. Renouard had ordered bindings from the elder Derôme; in 1785 he bought a book at La Vallière's sale. In his Epictetus there is the following note: 'Bought in May 1785, the first book printed on vellum that entered my library; rather luxurious for a young fellow of seventeen, but then all my little savings were devoted to acquiring books; parties of pleasure, and elegancies of toilette, everything was sacrificed to my beloved books; and at that time a brisk and brilliant business permitted expenses which were followed by hard years of privation; it was in my first youth that I found it easiest to spend money on my books.' Renouard began life as a manufacturer. His father made gauze stuffs, and kept a shop in the Rue Apolline. In 1787 the Abbé le Blond, the librarian of the Collège Mazarin, heard that Molini had sold a fine Aldine Horace to a shopkeeper. 'The next day,' says Renouard, 'Le Blond came into my library. "Oh! I shall not have the book," he exclaimed, and when I looked round, he said, "I beg your pardon, I hoped to tempt you with a few louis for your bargain, but I have given up the idea at once, and I only ask the double favour of seeing the book and of being allowed to make your acquaintance."' Renouard was the historian of the House of Aldus, and naturally became the possessor of some of Grolier's finest books. During his career as a bookseller he parted with most of them; and at the sale of his library in 1854 the 'Lucretius,' the 'Virgil,' and the 'Erasmus,' were all that remained in his collection.
CHAPTER XVI.
LATER ENGLISH COLLECTORS.
In describing the English collections of the eighteenth century we have the advantage of using the memoranda of William Oldys for the earlier part of the period. D'Israeli deplored the carelessness which led the 'literary antiquary' to entrust his discoveries and reminiscences to the fly-leaves of notebooks, to 'parchment budgets,' and paper-bags of extracts. He expressed especial disappointment at the loss of the manuscript on London Libraries, with its anecdotes of book-collectors and remarks on booksellers and the first publishers of catalogues. The book has come to light since his time, having been discovered among the important collections bequeathed by Dr. William Hunter to the University of Glasgow; it was published by Mr. W. J. Thoms about the year 1862 in Notes and Queries, and was afterwards printed by him in a volume containing a diary and other 'choice notes' by Oldys and an interesting memoir of his life. 'In his own departments of learning,' says Mr. Thoms, 'Oldys exhausted all the ordinary sources of information,' and adds that 'his copious and characteristic accounts of men and books have endeared his memory to every lover of English literature.'
Oldys had some special advantages as a collector of old English poetry. He knew, as no one else at that time knew, the value of the plays and pamphlets that encumbered the stalls; he had no competitor to fear 'clad in the invulnerable mail of the purse.' Oldys was born in 1696; he became involved, while quite a young man, in the disaster of the South Sea Bubble; and in 1724 he was obliged to leave London for a residence of some years in Yorkshire. Among the books that he abandoned was the first of his annotated copies of Langbaine, which he found afterwards in the hands of a miserly fellow, begrudging him even a sight of the notes. 'When I returned,' he writes, 'I understood that my books had been dispersed; and afterwards, becoming acquainted with Mr. Thomas Coxeter, I found that he had bought my Langbaine of a bookseller who was a great collector of plays and poetical books.' His autobiography shows that he soon restored his literary losses. His patron, Lord Oxford, for whom he afterwards worked as librarian, was anxious to buy everything that was rare. 'The Earl,' says Oldys, 'invited me to show him my collections of manuscripts, historical and political, which had been the Earl of Clarendon's, my collections of Royal Letters and other papers of State, together with a very large collection of English heads in sculpture.' Mr. Thoms quotes a note from the Langbaine to show that Oldys had bought two hundred volumes 'at the auction of the Earl of Stamford's library at St. Paul's Coffee-house, where formerly most of the celebrated libraries were sold.' It was while Oldys was living in Yorkshire, under the patronage of Lord Malton, that he saw the end of the library of State Papers collected by Richard Gascoyne the antiquary. The noble owner of the mss. had been advised to destroy the papers by a lawyer, Mr. Samuel Buck of Rotherham, 'who could not read one of those records any more than his lordship'; but he feared that they might contain legal secrets or disclose flaws in a title or, as Oldys said, 'that something or other might be found out one time or other by somebody or other.' Richard Gascoyne, he adds, possessed a vast and most valuable collection of deeds, evidences, and ancient records, which after his death, about the time of the Restoration, came to the family of the first Earl of Strafford. They were kept in the stone tower at Wentworth Woodhouse until 1728, when Lord Malton 'burnt them all wilfully in one morning.' 'I saw the lamentable fire,' says Oldys, 'feed upon six or seven great chests full of the said deeds, some of them as old as the Conquest, and even the ignorant servants repining.... I did prevail to the preservation of some few old rolls and public grants and charters, a few extracts of escheats, and original letters of some eminent persons and pedigrees of others, but not the hundredth part of much better things that were destroyed.'
One or two extracts from the 'diary and choice notes' will show the minute attention given by Oldys to everything concerned with books. Under the date of June 29th, 1737, we read: 'Saw Mr. Ames' old mss. on vellum, entitled Le Romant de la Rose, which cost forty crowns at Paris when first written, as appears by the inscription at the end: it had been Bishop Burnet's book, his arms being pasted in it, and Mr. Rawlinson's, being mentioned in one of his catalogues; in the same catalogue also is mentioned Sir William Monson's collection, which Mr. West bought and lent me before the fatal fire happened at his chambers in the Temple.' Mr. Thorns adds that Sir William Monson, an Admiral of note in the reign of James i., formed considerable collections, principally about naval affairs. Under the date of August 8th, we read of a visit to Strype the historian. 'Invited by Dr. Harris to his brother's at Homerton, where old Mr. Strype is still alive, and has the remainder of his once rich collection of mss., tracts, etc.' Dr. Knight's letter of a few months' earlier date was printed by Nichols in his Literary Anecdotes. 'I made a visit to old Father Strype when in town last: he is turned ninety, yet very brisk, and with only a decay of sight and memory.... He told me that he had great materials towards the life of the old Lord Burleigh and Mr. Foxe the martyrologist, which he wished he could have finished, but most of his papers are in "characters"; his grandson is learning to decipher them.' Under the dates of September 1st and 7th Oldys records that 'the Yelverton library is in the possession of the Earl of Sussex, wherein are many volumes of Sir Francis Walsingham's papers'; and a few days later, 'Dr. Pepusch offered me any intelligence or assistance from his ancient collections of music, for a history of that art and its professors in England; and as to dramatic affairs, he notes that the Queen's set of Plays had at first been thought too dear; but after Mrs. Oldfield the actress died, and they were reported to be his collection, then the Queen would have them at any rate.' When Oldys died his curious library was purchased by Thomas Davies, and was put up to auction in 1762. The list of printed books comprises many literary treasures which in our days can hardly be procured, but at that time went for a song. 'The manuscripts were not so many as might be expected from so indefatigable a writer'; it seems that Oldys had always been too generous with his gifts and loans.
Among his notices of the London libraries we find an interesting account of the collection at Lambeth, then housed in the galleries above the cloisters. 'The oldest of the books were Dudley's, the Earl of Leicester, which from time to time have been augmented by several Archbishops of that See. It had a great loss in being deprived of Archbishop Sheldon's admirable collection of missals, breviaries, primers, etc., relating to the service of the Church, as also Archbishop Sancroft's.' The books and mss. belonging to Sancroft had in part been deposited at Lambeth; but on his deprivation they were removed to Emmanuel College at Cambridge. Oldys added that there was another apartment for mss., 'not only those belonging to the See, but those of the Lord Carew, who had been Deputy of Ireland, many of them relating to the state and history of that kingdom.'