CHAPTER IX
A PLEA FOR SPECIALISM—(Continued)
'Like ships before whose keels, full long embayed
In polar ice, propitious winds have made
Unlooked-for outlet to an open sea.'
Wordsworth.
First Editions.
o most of us it matters but little what becomes of our books when we are dead. We garner them for our own use and benefit absolutely, and when we are gone they may well be distributed among other book-lovers for aught we care. No doubt a considerable zest is added to collecting in the case of those lucky ones who, being established in the land, purpose to 'lay down' a library for their posterity. In such cases almost invariably there must be a thought of future value. It is but natural. Whether he lay down wine or books no man is so foolish as to lay down trash. Such schemes, however, do not always result in that success which their owner intended. Like wine, the value of books may 'go off.'
There are two classes of books, however, that he who is wealthy enough to lay down a library may acquire with perfect assurance. They are, in fact, gilt-edged securities. One is the original editions of famous Elizabethan and early Stuart authors, the other, the more estimable incunabula. Just as the population of the world increases yearly, so every year there are more and more book-collectors, and, consequently, more competition to acquire rarities. Every day, too, the chances of further copies coming to light are more remote. Books are not everlasting, and there will come a time when the only fifteenth-century volumes in existence will be those treasured in velvet-lined boxes and glass cases.
There can be little doubt that in fifty years' time a collection of Beaumont and Fletcher's or Massinger's plays in the original quartos will be worth not merely double its present value, but quadruple and more. Then there are the famous prose authors of the early Stuart period, such as Bacon, Barclay, Robert Burton, Daniel, Donne, Drayton, Shelton, and even the prolific Gervase Markham, to mention only a few. All these are good investments, as regards their first editions, for your children's children.