It is really not at all easy to see why a series of numbers, liable at any moment to injury, and always inconvenient to handle, should, the quality of the plates, if there are any, and other accessories being equal, be so greatly preferred to a volume bound in a proper manner. Perhaps it is a matter of sentiment, perhaps of pure scarcity, or perhaps the bonâ-fide book-collector likes to give himself as much trouble as he possibly can, by way of purifying his life and chastening his soul. However this may be, there is no question that some books are thought more highly of when in sections, and that the public in their blindness fail to see the reason why.
Well, there is, at any rate, much less reason, one would think, in paying £246 for a lace flounce wherewith to minister to the vanity of some middle-aged dame than there is for incurring a fractional obligation for classic works, which will outlast us by many a day, even though they may have the fortune to be uncut and in parts as issued. And besides, O shade of Mr. Burgess! did you not ignore in your lifetime the rule that it were best to let well alone, and were not the consequences terrible in the extreme?[#]
[#] The library of the late Mr. Frederick Burgess was sold by Messrs. Sotheby on May 31 and three subsequent days, 1894. It consisted almost entirely of then 'Fashionable' books, illustrated by Cruikshank and other talented artists. Parts had been bound up, original cloth covers removed, and expensive bindings substituted, not merely in a few instances, but as a general rule. The collection, though an excellent one of its kind, was disposed of at an enormous sacrifice.
Whether any regulations are really necessary for the proper preservation of books old or new let the bibliophiles determine; but so long as they exist it is folly to ignore them. Nay, further, to be as far upon the safe side as possible, we must prefer to buy our books with due regard to those rules and orders which our progenitors have in their wisdom drawn up, selecting the very best copies we can afford to pay or obtain credit for, and even going to the length of investing in 'parts' which shall not shame us, or cause us loss when the inevitable hour of parting arrives.
The cardinal rule of the game is triple-headed, and it is this: Buy the best you can, spend what you find convenient without stint, and, above all, keep to the track you have mapped out for yourself and have so far followed. Then will it be well with you now and hereafter in all things bookish. Act the contrary throughout, and every stiver you spend will swell the total of your confusion; drop by drop the clepsydra of your fortunes will run out to your bane.
But the rules which hem in the book-buyer, and direct his course, are not solely confined to technical points and details such as those mentioned. On the contrary, they are equally stringent in many other respects, and in particular as to the description of book to buy, its condition, and so on; for it is taken for granted that no man, or at least no bookman worthy the name, would purchase a bad or inferior edition when he could get a better, or a volume that was imperfect or had been shamefully used by a succession of careless owners. Between the quality of one edition and another there is often an immense difference, as all the world knows, or ought to know. That edition of '"Paradise Lost," a Poem in twelve books, the author John Milton, Printed for the Proprietors and sold by all the Booksellers,' no date, but about 1780, is one of the very worst that any misguided man ever picked up from a street stall. The mistakes, not merely in punctuation, but in spelling, are too gross and scandalous for mention; entire lines are not infrequently missing, and whole sentences often perverted. Contrast this with any copy of the first edition, no matter which title-page may have heralded it into the world, and we have a different book entirely. The rule says that, though an ordinary copy of the first edition may be three thousand times as valuable in money as this gutter abortion, you must nevertheless not be attracted by the latter because it is cheap—no, not even though you should think it good enough for everyday use.
Naturally enough there are free-lances among book-men, people who are a law unto themselves, and insist upon doing precisely as they like, but it will be noticed that they very rarely fly in the face of any rule in important cases. Your free-lance has the courage of the Seven Champions of Christendom when face to face with Stackhouse's 'History of the Bible,' but let him, for example, come across 'Tamerlaine, and other Poems, By a Bostonian;' not Herne Shepherd's London reprint, but the original tract which Calvin F. S. Thomas printed at Boston in 1827. Let us suppose also that it is in its original tea-tinted paper covers, just as Edgar Allen Poe sent it forth into the world. What would our free-lance do? Have it rebound in defiance of the rule? Hardly, for if he did he would reduce the importance of his exceptionally fortunate find, and therefore its value, to such a considerable extent that even he would hesitate long before committing himself to an act that could never be recalled. Moreover, he would have direct evidence with regard to a copy of this very Pamphlet before his eyes, for a collector once really did pick one up for a few pence. In the first place, let it be stated that only three copies of 'Tamerlaine' can now be traced. One is in the British Museum, which acquired it from the late Mr. Henry Stevens for one shilling. A second was found on a stall in America for the equivalent of something less, and it is this latter copy which furnishes the evidence referred to. The fortunate finder sent it to Messrs. C. F. Libbie and Co., the auctioneers of Boston, who sold it by auction in 1893 for the equivalent of £370 to the agents of Mr. George F. Maxwell, of New York, who had the pamphlet rebound in magnificent style by Lortic Fils, at a cost of several hundred dollars. Moreover, the covers were bound in, and the edges left untrimmed. No expense was spared; everything was done in proper order according to rule of thumb. Yet in April, 1895, when Mr. Maxwell's valuable library was sold by the same auctioneers, this copy of 'Tamerlaine,' vastly improved as one might think, dropped to £290, showing a clear loss of £80, irrespective altogether of the amount paid for binding, auctioneers' commission, and so on.
It may, of course, be said that it is a common thing for the same book to bring different amounts at different times, even when the sales take place within a few months of each other. A bookseller, dissatisfied with the amount bid for some scarce work he has put on the market, will frequently buy it in and offer it again later on with satisfactory results.
But 'Tamerlaine' is an altogether exceptional piece, and, moreover, where were the gentlemen who respectively bid £360 and £365 on the occasion when Mr. Maxwell secured it for a slightly larger sum? Wherever they were, they seem to have been fully alive to the fact that 'Tamerlaine' was not as it was when Poe sent it out for review ever so many years ago. 'Ah, broken is the golden bowl,' and it is to be feared by that talented binder, Lortic Fils. If ever I find 'Tamerlaine,' I shall keep every binder at arm's length, and not be tempted to paint the lily—no, not even though Derome himself should rise from the dead and offer to array it gratuitously in morocco, tooled to a heavenly pattern, and powdered all over with the fleurs-de-lys of imperial France. In this spirit let us reproduce the title-page of 'Tamerlaine,' as a [Frontispiece] to this Romance, so that we shall know it on the instant if the gods should only guide our feet to where a fourth copy lies hidden away. Then let us remember the rule to let well alone, and be thankful, for it is a rule of gold, the first and foremost of them all.
Never to outrage sentiment, always to identify one's self with the author as far as possible, is to respect both the living and the dead, and to make life comparatively easy, even though its path be strewn with flints and cobble-stones. May the person who has the maximum of respect for the private life and character of one of the greatest of modern poets eventually acquire the shabby copy of 'The Eve of St. Agnes' which the luckless half-immortal thrust into his pocket as the Don Juan was sent to the bottom of the Gulf of Genoa. It will come with a train of associations that will on the instant forbid the elimination of a single stain, or the slightest repair of its sea-swept cover.