o much, then, for the benefit which the class to whom these pages are devoted derive to themselves from their peculiar pursuit. Let us now turn to the far more remarkable phenomena, in which these separate and perhaps selfish pursuers of their own instincts and objects are found to concur in bringing out a great influence upon the intellectual destinies of mankind. It is said of Brindley, the great canal engineer, that,—when a member of a committee, where he was under examination, a little provoked or amused by his entire devotion to canals, asked him if he thought there was any use of rivers,—he promptly answered, "Yes, to feed navigable canals." So, if there be no other respectable function in life fulfilled by the book-hunter, I would stand up for the proposition that he is the feeder, provided by nature, for the preservation of literature from age to age, by the accumulation and preservation of libraries, public or private. It will require perhaps a little circumlocutory exposition to show this, but here it is.
A great library cannot be constructed—it is the growth of ages. You may buy books at any time with money, but you cannot make a library like one that has been a century or two a-growing, though you had the whole national debt to do it with. I remember once how an extensive publisher, speaking of the rapid strides which literature had made of late years, and referring to a certain old public library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated how he had himself freighted for exportation, within the past month, as many books as that whole library consisted of. This was likely enough to be true, but the two collections were very different from each other. The cargoes of books were probably thousands of copies of some few popular selling works. They might be a powerful illustration of the diffusion of knowledge, but what they were compared with was its concentration. Had all the paper of which these cargoes consisted been bank-notes, they would not have enabled their owner to create a duplicate of the old library, rich in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers.
This impossibility of improvising libraries is really an important and curious thing; and since it is apt to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buying books, in quantities generally far beyond the available means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy of some special consideration. A man who sets to to form a library will go on swimmingly for a short way. He will easily get Tennyson's Poems—Macaulay's and Alison's Histories—the Encyclopædia Britannica—Buckle on Civilisation—all the books "in print," as it is termed. Nay, he will find no difficulty in procuring copies of others which may not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or of the retailer of new books. Of Voltaire's works—a little library in itself—he will get a copy at his call in London, if he has not set his mind on some special edition. So of Scott's edition of Swift or Dryden, Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, and the like. One can scarcely suppose a juncture in which any of these cannot be found through the electric chain of communication established by the book-trade. Of Gibbon's and Hume's Histories—Jeremy Taylor's works—Bossuet's Universal History, and the like, copies abound everywhere. Go back a little, and ask for Kennet's Collection of the Historians—Echard's History, Bayle, Moreri, or Father Daniel's History of France, you cannot be so certain of immediately obtaining your object, but you will get the book in the end—no doubt about that.
Everything has its caprices, and there are some books which might be expected to be equally shy, but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality, are as plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are Famianus Strada's History of the Dutch War of Independence—one of the most brilliant works ever written, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan's. There is Buchanan's own history, very common even in the shape of the early Scotch edition of 1582, which is a highly favourable specimen of Arbuthnot's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis, and Raynal's Philosophical History of the East and West Indies, without which no book-stall is to be considered complete, and which seem to be possessed of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements, since, month after month, in fair weather or foul, they are to be seen at their posts dry or dripping.
So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects some five thousand volumes or so of select works. If he is miscellaneous in his taste, he may get on pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and then his troubles will arise. He has easily got Baker's and Froissart's and Monstrelet's Chronicles, because there are modern reprints of them in the market. But if he want Cooper's Chronicle, he may have to wait for it, since its latest form is still the black-letter. True, I did pick up a copy lately, at Braidwood's, for half-a-guinea, but that was a catch—it might have caused the search of a lifetime. Still more hopeless it is when the collector's ambition extends to The Ladder of Perfection of Wynkin de Worde, or to his King Rycharde Cure de Lion, whereof it is reported in the Repertorium Bibliographicum, that "an imperfect copy, wanting one leaf, was sold by auction at Mr Evans's, in June 1817, to Mr Watson Taylor for £40, 19s." "Woe betide," says Dibdin, "the young bibliomaniac who sets his heart upon Breton's Flourish upon Fancie and Pleasant Toyes of an Idle Head, 1557, 4to; or Workes of a Young Wyt trussed up with a Fardell of Pretty Fancies!! Threescore guineas shall hardly fetch these black-letter rarities from the pigeon-holes of Mr Thorpe. I lack courage to add the prices for which these copies sold." But he has some comfort reserved for the hungry collector, in the intimation that The Ravisht Soul and the Blessed Weaper, by the same author, may be had for £15.[51] It creates a thrilling interest to know, through the same distinguished authority, that the Heber sale must have again let loose upon the world "A merry gest and a true, howe John Flynter made his Testament," concerning which we are told, with appropriate solemnity and pathos, that "Julian Notary is the printer of this inestimably precious volume, and Mr Heber is the thrice-blessed owner of the copy described in the Typographical Antiquities."
Such works as the Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly contradicting that fundamental principle of political economy, that the supply is always equal to the demand.
He, indeed, who sets his mind on the possession of any one of these rarities, may go to his grave a disappointed man. It will be in general the consolation of the collector, however, that he is by no means the "homo unius libri." There is always something or other turning up for him, so long as he keeps within moderate bounds. If he be rich and ravenous, however, there is nothing for it but duplicating—the most virulent form of book-mania. We have seen that Heber, whose collection, made during his own lifetime, was on the scale of those public libraries which take generations to grow, had, with all his wealth, his liberality, and his persevering energy, to invest himself with duplicates, triplicates—often many copies of the same book.
It is rare that the private collector runs himself absolutely into this quagmire, and has so far exhausted the market that no already unpossessed volume turns up in any part of the world to court his eager embraces. The limitation constitutes, however, a serious difficulty in the way of rapidly creating great public libraries. We would obtain the best testimony to this difficulty in America, were our brethren there in a condition to speak or think of so peaceful a pursuit as library-making. In the normal condition of society there—something like that of Holland in the seventeenth century—there are powerful elements for the promotion of art and letters, when wealth gives the means and civilisation the desire to promote them. The very absence of feudal institutions—the inability to found a baronial house—turns the thoughts of the rich and liberal to other foundations calculated to transmit their name and influence to posterity. And so we have such bequests as John Jacob Astor's, who left four hundred thousand dollars for a library, and the hundred and eighty thousand which were the nucleus of the Smithsonian Institution. Yes! Their efforts in this direction have fully earned for them their own peculiar form of laudation as "actually equal to cash." Hence, as the book-trade and book-buyers know very well, the "almighty dollar" has been hard at work, trying to rear up by its sheer force duplicates of the old European libraries, containing not only all the ordinary stock books in the market, but also the rarities, and those individualities—solitary remaining copies of impressions—which the initiated call uniques. It is clear, however, that when there is but one copy, it can only be in one place; and if it have been rooted for centuries in the Bodleian, or the University of Tubingen, it is not to be had for Harvard or the Astorian. Dr Cogswell, the first librarian of the Astorian, spent some time in Europe with his princely endowment in his pocket, and showed himself a judicious, active, and formidable sportsman in the book-hunting world. Whenever, from private collections, or the breaking-up of public institutions, rarities got abroad into the open market, the collectors of the old country found that they had a resolute competitor to deal with—almost, it might be said, a desperate one—since he was in a manner the representative of a nation using powerful efforts to get possession of a share of the literary treasures of the Old World.
In the case of a book, for instance, of which half-a-dozen copies might be known to exist, the combatants before the auctioneer would be, on the one side, many an ambitious collector desiring to belong to the fortunate circle already in possession of such a treasure; but on the other side was one on whose exertions depended the question, whether the book should henceforth be part of the intellectual wealth of a great empire, and should be accessible for consultation by American scholars and authors without their requiring to cross the Atlantic. Let us see how far, by a brief comparison, money has enabled them to triumph over the difficulties of their position.
It is difficult to know exactly the numerical contents of a library, as some people count by volumes, and others by the separate works, small or great; and even if all should consent to count by volumes, the estimate would not be precise, for in some libraries bundles of tracts and other small works are massed in plethoric volumes for economy, while in affluent institutions every collection of leaves put under the command of a separate title-page is separately bound in cloth, calf, or morocco, according to its rank. The Imperial Library at Paris is computed to contain above eight hundred thousand volumes; the Astorian boasts of approaching a hundred thousand: the next libraries in size in America are the Harvard, with from eighty thousand to ninety thousand; the Library of Congress, which has from sixty thousand to seventy thousand; and the Boston Athenæum, which has about sixty thousand.