Dr. Francis Bernard, physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, was also physician to James II. He was a good judge of books, and collected a very fine library, which was sold by auction in October 1698 at his late dwelling in Little Britain. Dibdin says he was “a stoic in bibliography. Neither beautiful binding nor amplitude of margin ever delighted his eye or rejoiced his heart; for he was a stiff and straightforward reader, and learned in literary history beyond all his contemporaries. His collection was copious and excellent.”
The account given of the doctor in the Address to the Reader prefixed to the catalogue is of considerable interest—
“The character of the person whose collection this was is so well known, that there is no occasion to say much of him, nor, to any man of judgment that inspects the Catalogue, of the collection itself. Something, however, it becomes us to say of both; and this, I think, may with truth and modesty enough be said, that as few men knew books, and that part of learning which is called Historia Literaria, better than himself, so there never appeared in England so choice and valuable a Catalogue to be thus disposed of as this before us. Certain it is, this library contains not a few which never appeared in any auction here before, nor indeed, as I have heard him say, for aught he knew—and he knew as well as any man living—in any printed Catalogue in the world. It was very seldom that he bought any book without some very particular reason. For if any man died, he certainly knew what we call the secret history of learning so well, that if there were but one single passage in an author for which only it was to be valued, it never escaped him. Being a person who collected his books, and not for ostentation or ornament, he seemed no more solicitous about their dress than his own; and therefore you’ll find that a gilt back or a large margin was very seldom any inducement to him to buy. ’Twas sufficient to him that he had the book.... 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.... Give me leave to say this of him upon my own knowledge, that he never grudged his money in procuring, nor his time or labour in perusing any book which he thought could be any ways instructive to him; and having the felicity of a memory always faithful, always officious, which never forsook him, though attacked by frequent and severe sickness, and by the worst of all diseases, old age, his desire for knowledge attended him to the last, and he pursued his studies with equal vigour and application to the very extremity of his life.”
He had thirteen Caxtons, which sold altogether for less than two guineas, less than these books fetched at Richard Smith’s sale. A curious volume of Tracts, consisting of “The Bellman’s Night Walks” (1632), “The Bellman of London” (1608), “Life of Ned Browne,” “Cut Purse,” &c., sold for 2s. 8d.; Stubbe’s “Anatomie of Abuses” (1585), for 8d.; and Tusser’s “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” (1590) for 4d. In spite of these low prices, the total amount of the sale was £1600, the expenses of the sale—4s. in the pound = £320—being deducted.
The catalogue was charged 2s. 6d.
The last sale in the seventeenth century to be recorded is that of John Lloyd, Bishop of St. Davids, sold in 1699 by John Bullord at Tom’s Coffee-House.
When auctions were first started conditions of sale were formulated, and with the exception of a little elaboration, they remain pretty much what they were at first; but there were certain peculiarities which are worthy of mention.
The catalogues were not at first divided into day’s sales, but as many lots as possible were sold in the time fixed for the sale. The hours were usually from nine to twelve, and from two to six. Sometimes the sales only took place in the evening. In 1681 we learn that an average sale of 544 lots in a day was considered satisfactory. In the Conditions of Sale printed in the Catalogue of Seaman’s library we read—
“That the Auction will begin the 31st of October at the Deceased Dr’s house in Warwick Court in Warwick Lane punctually at nine Of the Clock in the morning and two in the afternoon, and this to continue daily until all the books be sold.”
The early hour was found a disadvantage, and books often sold for low prices at the beginning of sales, so that Cooper was forced to make a rule that the sale should not be commenced unless there were twenty present. At this time biddings of a penny were common.