Prices of Books / An Inquiry into the Changes in the Price of Books which have occurred in England at different Periods

by Henry B. Wheatley

Others were wiser than to oppose the new art, and many scribes, recognising the inevitable destruction of their trade, became printers. Caxton’s master, Colard Mansion, was an extensive writer of manuscripts before he took to the business of printing at Bruges. Much has been written upon famous collections of manuscripts, and upon the individual works which compose them, but it is not often that these come to public auction, so that the particulars of prices are comparatively meagre. The grand collections of the British Museum and the Bodleian[24] are preserved in safety for the use of the learned, and we only know that they are of the greatest value. What they would fetch if sold now can only be guessed, and it would be merely frivolous to inquire. Three of the grandest collections in the Museum—the old Royal Library, the Cotton, which was only saved from slow destruction by the establishment of the British Museum, to which it was transferred, and the Harley, which the nation obtained for £10,000—must now be of untold value.

The purchase by the British Museum of the library of Dr. Charles Burney greatly added to the completeness of the collections of Greek Classics. Among the manuscripts is the wonderful Iliad of Homer on vellum, formerly belonging to Mr. Towneley, which, although it cannot be dated further back than the beginning of the fourteenth century, is supposed to be of the earliest date of the MSS. of the Iliad known to scholars. A committee appointed to consider the purchase of the library stated in their report: “With respect to the value of the manuscripts, the Homer is rated by the different witnesses at from £600 to £800, and one of them supposed it might even reach so high a price as £1000;[25] the Greek rhetoricians are estimated at from £340 to £500; the larger copy of the Greek Gospels at £200; the geography of Ptolemy at £65; and the copy of Plautus at £50. One witness estimates the whole of the ancient manuscripts at upwards of £2500, and an eminent bookseller at £3000.” “The books with manuscript notes, together with Dr. Burney’s Variorum Compilation, including the Fragmenta Scenica Græca, are estimated by one at £1000, and by another as high as £1340.” It must be remembered that this was written in 1818, and these prices may be multiplied considerably at the present day.

Even those large private collections which have been in the market of late years have mostly been sold in bulk, so that little light has been thrown upon the current value of fine manuscripts.

One of the best sources of information respecting present prices is to be found in Mr. Quaritch’s admirable catalogues of his collections of literary treasures.

When the treasures of Hamilton Palace were dispersed by public auction, the priceless collection of manuscripts was sold by private contract to the German Government. The amount paid has never been officially announced, but it is believed to have reached the sum of £75,000. Some of these manuscripts were not required at Berlin, and they were sold in May 1889 by Messrs. Sotheby for £15,189.

The gem of the collection was the fifteenth-century manuscript of Dante’s Divina Commedia, illustrated with upwards of eighty drawings, attributed to Sandro Botticelli. Of it a writer in the Times said, “This priceless volume may, without exaggeration, be described as the most valuable manuscript in existence, from its artistic interest, for it stands alone as an example of a literary work of the first order illustrated by an artist of the highest rank.”

It is impossible here even to register some of the many beautiful works that made the manuscripts of the Duke of Hamilton so famous. Great dissatisfaction was felt by the British public when it was found that these treasures were to be transported to Berlin. Before the final decision was made, Mr. Ruskin, in a “General statement explaining the nature and purposes of St. George’s Guild,” wrote—

“I hear that the library of Hamilton Palace is to be sold some time this spring. That library contains a collection of manuscripts which the late Duke permitted me to examine at leisure, now some thirty years ago. It contains many manuscripts for which I have no hope of contending successfully, even if I wished to do so, against the British Museum or the libraries of Paris and Vienna. But it contains also a very large number of manuscripts, among which I could assuredly choose some for which the partly exhausted general demand might be not extravagantly outbid, and I think the English public ought to have confidence enough in my knowledge of art and history to trust me with a considerable sum for this purpose.”

Mr. Quaritch, who entered into Mr. Ruskin’s plans, circulated this pamphlet, and asked for contributions to be sent to him, which he would forward to Mr. Ruskin. Had the Government of this country been of the same mind with Mr. Ruskin, these manuscripts would not have been lost to the country.