The historian of the private libraries of New York makes us acquainted with a sect well known in the actually sporting world, but not heretofore familiar in the bibliological. Here is a description of the Waltonian library of the Reverend Dr Bethune. In the sunshine he is a practical angler, and—
"During the darker seasons of the year, when forbidden the actual use of his rod, our friend has occupied himself with excursions through sale catalogues, fishing out from their dingy pages whatever tends to honour his favourite author or favourite art, so that his spoils now number nearly five hundred volumes, of all sizes and dates. Pains have been taken to have not only copies of the works included in the list, but also the several editions; and when it is of a work mentioned by Walton, an edition which the good old man himself may have seen. Thus the collection has all the editions of Walton, Cotton, and Venables in existence, and, with few exceptions, all the works referred to by Walton, or which tend to illustrate his favourite rambles by the Lea or the Dove. Every scrap of Walton's writing, and every compliment paid to him, have been carefully gathered and garnered up, with prints and autographs and some precious manuscripts. Nor does the department end here, but embraces most of the older and many of the modern writers on ichthyology and angling."
The Prowler and the Auction-Haunter.
hese incidental divisions are too numerous and complex for a proper classification of book-hunters, and I am inclined to go back to the idea that their most effective and comprehensive division is into the private prowler and the auction-haunter. The difference between these is something like, in the sporting world, that between the stalker and the hunter proper. Each function has its merits, and calls for its special qualities and sacrifices. The one demands placidity, patience, caution, plausibility, and unwearied industry—such attributes as those which have been already set forth in the words of the Antiquary. The auction-room, on the other hand, calls forth courage, promptness, and the spirit of adventure. There is wild work sometimes there, and men find themselves carried off by enthusiasm and competition towards pecuniary sacrifices which at the threshold of the temple they had solemnly vowed to themselves to eschew. But such sacrifices are the tribute paid to the absorbing interest of the pursuit, and are looked upon in their own peculiar circle as tending to the immortal honour of those who make them. This field of prowess has, it is said, undergone a prejudicial change in these days, the biddings being nearly all by dealers, while gentlemen-collectors are gradually moving out of the field. In old days one might have reaped for himself, by bold and emphatic biddings at a few auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of which the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin—a name familiarly abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin. His descriptions of auction contests are perhaps the best and most readable portions of his tremendously overdone books.
Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the sale of the Roxburghe library, perhaps the most eminent contest of that kind on record. There were of it some ten thousand separate "lots," as auctioneers call them, and almost every one of them was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of the collecting community, and had been, with special pains and care and anxious exertion, drawn into the vortex of that collection. Although it was created by a Duke, yet it has been rumoured that most of the books had been bargains, and that the noble collector drew largely on the spirit of patient perseverance and enlightened sagacity for which Monkbarns claims credit. The great passion and pursuit of his life having been of so peculiar a character—he was almost as zealous a hunter of deer and wild swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not considered in the least peculiar—it was necessary to find some strange influencing motive for his conduct; so it has been said that it arose from his having been crossed in love in his early youth. Such crosses, in general, arise from the beloved one dying, or proving faithless and becoming the wife of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the illustrious marriage of the sister of his elected. She was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal rank, yet there would be many countervailing advantages in the position of an affluent British Duchess which might reconcile a young lady, even of so illustrious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not happened that Lord Bute and the Princess of Wales selected her younger sister to be the wife of George III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as the good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it seems, the necessity, as a matter of state and political etiquette, that the elder sister should abandon the alliance with a British subject.
So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of the Duke's bibliomania; and it is supposed to have been in the thoughts of Sir Walter Scott, when he said of him that "youthful misfortunes, of a kind against which neither wealth nor rank possess a talisman, cast an early shade of gloom over his prospects, and gave to one splendidly endowed with the means of enjoying society that degree of reserved melancholy which prefers retirement to the splendid scenes of gaiety." Dibdin, with more specific precision, after rambling over the house where the great auction sale occurred, as inquisitive people are apt to do, tells us of the solitary room occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which he slept and died: "all his migrations," says the bibliographer, "were confined to these two rooms. When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed on which this bibliomaniacal Duke had expired, I felt—as I trust I ought to have felt on the occasion." Scott attributed to an incidental occurrence at his father's table the direction given to the great pursuit of his life. "Lord Oxford and Lord Sunderland, both famous collectors of the time, dined one day with the second Duke of Roxburghe, when their conversation happened to turn upon the editio princeps of Boccaccio, printed in Venice in 1474, and so rare that its very existence was doubted of." It so happened that the Duke remembered this volume having been offered to him for £100, and he believed he could still trace and secure it: he did so, and laid it before his admiring friends at a subsequent sitting. "His son, then Marquess of Bowmont, never forgot the little scene upon this occasion, and used to ascribe to it the strong passion which he ever afterwards felt for rare books and editions, and which rendered him one of the most assiduous and judicious collectors that ever formed a sumptuous library."[34] And this same Boccaccio was the point of attack which formed the climax in the great contest of the Roxburghe roup, as the Duke's fellow-countrymen called it. I am not aware that any of the English bibliographers have alluded to any special cause for this volume's extreme rarity. Peignot attributes it to a sermon preached by the Italian pulpit orator Savonarola, on the 8th of February 1497, against indecorous books, in consequence of which the inhabitants of Florence made a bonfire of their Boccaccios,—an explanation which every one who pleases is at liberty to believe.[35]
The historian of the contest terms it "the Waterloo among book-battles," whereto "many a knight came far and wide from his retirement, and many an unfledged combatant left his father's castle to partake of the glory of such a contest." He also tells us that the honour of the first effective shot was due to a house in the trade—Messrs Payne and Foss—by whom "the Aldine Greek Bible was killed off the first in the contest. It produced the sum of £4, 14s. 6d. Thus measuredly, and guardedly, and even fearfully, did this tremendous battle begin." The earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off when Lord Spencer bought two Caxtons for £245, a feat of which the closing scene is recorded, with a touching simplicity, in these terms:—"His Lordship put each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph." As every one does not possess a copy of the three costly volumes of which the Bibliographical Decameron consists—and, further, as many a one so fortunate as to possess them has not had patience and perseverance enough to penetrate to the middle of the third volume, where the most readable part is to be found—a characteristic extract, describing the heat of the contest, may not be unwelcome:—
"For two-and-forty successive days—with the exception only of Sundays—were the voice and hammer of Mr Evans heard with equal efficacy in the dining-room of the late Duke, which had been appropriated to the vendition of the books; and within that same space (some thirty-five feet by twenty) were such deeds of valour performed, and such feats of book-heroism achieved, as had never been previously beheld, and of which the like will probably never be seen again. The shouts of the victors and the groans of the vanquished stunned and appalled you as you entered. The striving and press, both of idle spectators and determined bidders, was unprecedented. A sprinkling of Caxtons and De Wordes marked the first day, and these were obtained at high, but, comparatively with the subsequent sums given, moderate prices. Theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and philology chiefly marked the earlier days of this tremendous contest; and occasionally during these days, there was much stirring up of courage, and many hard and heavy blows were interchanged; and the combatants may be said to have completely wallowed themselves in the conflict. At length came poetry, Latin, Italian, and French: a steady fight yet continued to be fought; victory seemed to hang in doubtful scales—sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other side of Mr Evans, who preserved throughout (as it was his bounden duty to preserve) a uniform, impartial, and steady course; and who may be said on that occasion, if not 'to have rode the whirlwind,' at least to have 'directed the storm.'"