Moses Pitt made up another sale in February 1678-79, chiefly of books printed at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, which took place in Petty Canons Hall, near St. Paul’s Churchyard. In June 1679 William Cooper sold the libraries of Stephen Watkins and Dr. Thomas Shirley (the catalogue of which contained an appendix of Richard Chiswell’s books) at the Golden Lion, over against the Queen’s Head Tavern, in Paternoster Row. John Dunsmore sold in November 1679 the library of Sir Edward Bysshe, Clarenceux King at Arms, at his house, near the sign of the Woolpack, in Ivy Lane. This library was more varied in its character than many of those that were sold before it, and it contained a considerable amount of French, Italian, and Spanish literature, including some early editions of Molière. This catalogue is deserving of particular attention, because the books are described as “curiously bound and richly gilt.” Hitherto no mention had been made of bindings in the various catalogues. This attention to binding was to grow, and Thomas Hearne protested against it some years after. In his memoranda under date 15th February 1725-26 he wrote respecting the sale of John Bridges’ library: “I hear they go very high, being fair books in good condition, and most of them finely bound. This afternoon I was told of a gentleman of All Souls’ College (I suppose Dr. Clarke) that gave a commission of eight shillings for a Homer in two vols., a small 8vo, if not 12mo. But it went for six guineas. People are in love with good binding more than good reading.”[38]
The British Museum Library contains a valuable collection of early sale catalogues, and one of the volumes, containing the first eleven sales from Seaman to Bysshe, is of considerable interest from having the following note in Richard Heber’s handwriting—
“This volume, which formerly belonged to Narcissus Luttrell, and since to Mr. Gough, is remarkable for containing the eleven first Catalogues of Books ever sold by auction in England. What renders it still more curious, is that the prices of nearly all the articles are added in MS. When it came into my possession it had suffered so much from damp, and the leaves were so tender and rotten, that every time the volume was opened, it was liable to injury. This has been remedied by giving the whole a strong coat of size. At Willett’s sale, Booth, the bookseller of Duke Street, Portland Place, bought a volume of old catalogues for £2, 3s. (see Merly Catalogue, 531), and charged the same in his own shop catalogue for 1815, £21 (6823). It contained merely the eight which stand first in the present collection, of which Greenhill’s and Godolphin’s were not priced at all; and Voet’s and Sangar’s only partially. However, it enabled me to fill up a few omissions in the prices of my copy of Sangar’s.—N.B. The prices of Willett’s and the present copy did not always tally exactly.”
Heber paid six shillings for this volume at Gough’s sale in 1810, and Charles Lewis’s labours in sizing and binding in 1824 cost £2, 15s. At Heber’s sale the volume sold for £3.
In April 1680 was sold “the Library of the Right Hon. George, late Earl of Bristol, a great part of which were the curiosities collected by the learned Sir Kenelm Digby, together with the Library of another Learned person.” It is impossible from the catalogue to tell which lots belonged to Sir Kenelm; and there seems to be little doubt that few of the books which he left in Paris when he came to London, and which were confiscated by the French Government on his death in 1665, were included in this catalogue. According to M. Delisle,[39] Sir Kenelm’s books eventually reached the French national library. The proceeds of the sale of 3878 lots was only £908, and this does not look as if there were many of Digby’s books, nobly bound by Le Gascon, in this sale.
In 1681 Edward Millington’s name came into notice as the seller, in May of that year, of the libraries of Lawson, Fawkes, Stockden, and Brooks.
Richard Chiswell sold in 1682 the Bibliotheca Smithiana, or library of Richard Smith, Secondary of the Poultry Compter, who is better known to us as the author of the useful “Obituary” published by the Camden Society in 1849. This was probably the finest library brought to the hammer up to this date. Oldys wrote of the possessor, that “for many years together [he] suffered nothing to escape him that was rare and remarkable”; and he added, that his “extraordinary library makes perhaps the richest catalogue of any private library we have to show in print, making above four hundred pages in a very broad-leaved and close-printed quarto.” Richard Chiswell sold the library in May “at the auction house known by the name of the Swan, in Great St. Bartholomew’s Close.”
The auctioneer made the following remarks in his Address to the Reader—
“Though it be needless to recommend what to all intelligent persons sufficiently commends itself, yet perhaps it may not be unacceptable to the ingenious to have some short account concerning this so much celebrated, so often desired, so long expected library, now exposed to sale. The gentleman that collected it was a person infinitely curious and inquisitive after books; and who suffered nothing considerable to escape him that fell within the compass of his learning, for he had not the vanity of desiring to be master of more than he knew how to use. He lived to a very great age, and spent a good part of it almost entirely in the search of books. Being as constantly known every day to walk his rounds through the shops as he sat down to meals, where his great skill and experience enabled him to make choice of what was not obvious to every vulgar eye. He lived in times which ministered peculiar opportunities of meeting with books that are not every day brought into publick light; and few eminent libraries were bought where he had not the liberty to pick and choose. And while others were forming arms, and new-modelling kingdoms, his great ambition was to become master of a good book. Hence arose, as that vast number of his books, so the choiceness and rarity of the greatest part of them; and that of all kinds, and in all sorts of learning.... Nor was the owner of them a meer idle possessor of so great a treasure; for as he generally collated his books upon the buying them (upon which account the buyer may rest pretty secure of their being perfect) so he did not barely turn over the leaves, but observed the defects of impression, and the ill acts used by many; compared the differences of editions; concerning which and the like cases, he has entered memorable and very useful remarks upon very many of the books under his own hand: observations wherein, certainly never man was more diligent and industrious. Thus much was thought fit to be communicated to public notice, by a gentleman who was intimately acquainted both with Mr. Smith and his books.”
Dibdin condemns the compiler of the catalogue severely, and adds—