The Earl of Sunderland’s fine library was for several years housed in the mansion which formerly stood on the site of the Albany in Piccadilly. It was removed to Blenheim in 1749, where it remained till the great sale of 1881-83. Oldys reports that the King of Denmark offered Lord Sunderland’s heirs £30,000 for the library,[6] and that the great Duchess Sarah of Marlborough was in favour of the offer being accepted, but it was not.
We learn from Hearne’s “Remains” that £3000 was offered by the University of Oxford for the noble library of Isaac Vossius, the free-thinking Canon of Windsor, and refused. Hearne adds, “We should have purchased them, and not stood in such a case upon punctilio and niceties, when we are so lavish of our money upon trifles that bring dishonour on the University.” The library was taken abroad, and soon afterwards sold to the University of Leyden for the same amount as that previously offered by Oxford (£3000).[7]
Thomas Osborne, the chief bookseller of his time, bought the great Harley library, consisting of about 50,000 volumes of printed books, 41,000 prints, and about 350,000 pamphlets, for £13,000. This seems a small amount for so matchless a collection, but it is not certain that Osborne made a very profitable investment by his purchase. We shall have more to say of the bookseller and the library in the next chapter.
As an instance of the low price of books at this time, the anecdote of Mr. David Papillon’s agreement with Osborne may be mentioned here. The contract was that the bookseller should supply Mr. Papillon (who died in 1762) with one hundred pounds’ worth of books at threepence apiece, the only conditions being that they should be perfect, and that there should be no duplicates. Osborne was at first pleased with his bargain, and sent in a large number of books; but he soon found that it would be impossible to carry out the agreement without great loss, as he was obliged to send in books worth shillings instead of pence. Long before he had supplied the eight thousand volumes required, he begged to be let off the contract.
Things were worse in Russia, where Klostermann, the bookseller to the Imperial Court, sold books by the yard (fifty to one hundred roubles, according to binding). Every courtier who had hopes of a visit from the Empress Catharine was expected to have a library, and as few of them had any literary taste, they bought them at this rate. Sometimes waste-paper books were lettered with the names of celebrated authors.
Authorship could hardly become a profession until after the invention of printing, and even then it was long before a living could be got out of books. Dr. Edward Castell laboured for seventeen years in the compilation of his immense undertaking—the Lexicon Heptaglotton, to accompany Walton’s Polyglot Bible. During this time he maintained at his own cost as writers seven Englishmen and as many foreigners. All of them died before the work was completed. Besides expending £12,000 of his own money he was obliged to borrow £2000 more, and this not being sufficient, he petitioned Charles II. that a prison might not be the reward of so much labour. Notwithstanding a circular letter from the king recommending the purchase of this work the author ended his days in poverty, and a great part of the impression was thrown into garrets, where many of the copies were destroyed by damp or rats.
A similar case was that of Thomas Madox, the learned author of the “History of the Exchequer,” who wrote to Dr. Charlett requesting him to get his book into the College Libraries at Oxford, and explaining that the cost of the impression was £400 for paper and print, and as only 481 copies were printed, “when all the books shall be sold I shall be just able to pay the charges with a trifling over-plus.... This affair,” he adds, “has given me much perplexity, and perfectly cured me of scribbling.”[8]
Thomas Hearne was more fortunate, and amassed a small fortune by his publications. One thousand guineas were found in gold in his rooms at St. Edmund Hall after his death. His books were soon out of print, and fetched large prices even in his own lifetime.
Lord Spencer bought the whole of the library of Count Revickzky, a catalogue of which had been privately printed by the original owner at Berlin in 1784. According to Dibdin, when the Count was in England he offered his whole collection to Lord Spencer for a certain round sum to be paid to him immediately, and for a yearly sum by way of annuity. The offer was accepted, and as the Count died soon afterwards, Lord Spencer obtained the library at a cheap rate. The same noble collector offered the Duke di Cassano Serra £500 for two books, viz., the Juvenal of Ulric Han, and the Horace of Arnaldus de Bruxella, Naples, 1474, but the offer was not accepted. In 1820 Lord Spencer bought the whole collection.
The Duke of Devonshire purchased the valuable library of Dr. Thomas Dampier, Bishop of Ely, for nearly £10,000 after the bishop’s death in 1812. Dr. Dibdin has printed in his “Reminiscences” (vol. i. p. 363) a list of prices at which Dr. Dampier valued the various classes of books in his library.