“A number of the most curious, rare, and intrinsically valuable books—the very insertion of which in a bookseller’s catalogue would probably now make a hundred bibliomaniacs start from their homes by starlight, in order to come in for the first picking—a number of volumes of this description are huddled together in one lot, and all these classed under the provoking running title of ‘Bundles of Books,’ ‘Bundles of stitcht Books.’”[40]
Smith was one of the earliest collectors of Caxtons, and eleven books produced by our first printer sold for £3, 4s. 2d. at his sale. But one of the greatest points of interest connected with Smith’s library is that it included the books of Humphrey Dyson, collected at a much earlier date. Hearne notes in his “Collections”—
“That Mr. Rich. Smith’s rare and curious collection of books was began first by Mr. Humphrey Dyson, a publick notary, living in the Poultry. They came to Mr. Smith by marriage. This is the same Humphrey Dyson that assisted Howes in his continuation of Stow’s ‘Survey of London,’ ed. folio.”
Under date 4th September 1715 Hearne says—
“Mr. Richard Smith’s Catalogue that is printed contains a very noble and very extraordinary collection of books. It was begun first in the time of King Hen. VIII., and comeing to Mr. Smith, he was so very diligent and exact in continueing and improving, that hardly anything curious escaped him. He had made the best collection that possibly he could of Erasmus’s works.”[41]
In another place Hearne describes Dyson as—
“A person of a very strange, prying, and inquisitive genius in the matter of books, as may appear from many libraries; there being books chiefly in old English, almost in every library, that have belonged to him, with his name upon them.”[42]
The following interesting entry from Smith’s catalogue corroborates Hearne’s statement as to Smith’s acquisition of Dyson’s books—
“115. Six several catalogues of all such books, touching the state ecclesiastical as temporal of the realm of England, which were published upon several occasions, in the reigns of K. Henry the VIIth and VIIIth, Philip and Mary, Q. Elizabeth, K. James and Charles I., collected by Mr. H. Dyson: out of whose library was gathered by Mr. Smith a great part of the rarities of this catalogue.”
This lot only fetched seven shillings and sixpence.