If it were pleasing to the Author, in the course of his Journey, to receive attentions, and to acknowledge hospitalities, from the gay and the great, it were yet more pleasing to hope and to believe that such attentions and hospitalities had been acknowledged with feelings and expressions becoming the character of a gentleman. They have been so; as the pages of the work abundantly testify. But English courtesy is too frequently located. It is a coin with a feeble impress, and seems subject to woful attrition in its circulation. The countenance, which beams with complacency on receiving a guest to enliven a dull residence, in a desolate neighbourhood, is oftentimes overcharged with sadness, or collapses into rigidity, if the same guest should come under recognizance in a populous city. When I write "Instructions for an Author on his travels," I will advise a measured civility and a constrained homage:—to criticise fearlessly, and to praise sparingly. There are hearts too obtuse for the operations of gratitude. The Scotch have behaved worthy of the inhabitants of the "land of cakes." In spirit I am ever present with them, and rambling 'midst their mountains and passes. If an Author may criticise his own works, I should say that the preface to the Scotch Tour is the best piece of composition of which I have been ever guilty.

How little are people aware of the pleasure they sometimes unconsciously afford! When Mr. James Bohn, the publisher of the Scotch Tour, placed me, one day, accidentally, opposite a long list of splendidly bound books, and asked me "if I were acquainted with their author?" I could not help inwardly exclaiming ... "Non omnis Moriar!"[473] I am too poor to present them to my "Sovereign Mistress, the Queen Victoria;" but I did present her Majesty, in person, with a magnificently bound copy of the Scotch Tour; of which the acceptance was never acknowledged from the royal quarter; simply because, according to an etiquette which seems to me to be utterly incomprehensible, books presented in person are not acknowledged by the Donee. I will not presume to quarrel with what I do not exactly understand; but I will be free to confess that, had I been aware of this mystery, I should have told her Majesty, on presenting the volume, that "I had the greater pleasure in making the offering, as her illustrious Father had been among the earliest and warmest patrons of my book-career; and that the work in question contained no faithless account of one of the most interesting portions of her dominions." This copy for the Queen had a special vellum page, on which the Dedication, or Inscription, was printed in letters of gold.

[473] This magnificent set of books, not all upon large paper, was valued at £84. It has been since sold to Lord Bradford.

At length we approach the once far-famed Atticus: the once illustrious Richard Heber, Esq., the self-ejected member of the University of Oxford. Even yet I scarcely know how to handle this subject, or to expatiate upon a theme so extraordinary, and so provocative of the most contradictory feelings. But it were better to be brief; as, in fact, a very long account of Mr. Heber's later life will be found in my Reminiscences, and there is little to add to what those pages contain. It may be here only necessary to make mention of the sale of his wonderful library; wonderful in all respects—not less from the variety and importance of its contents, than from the unparalleled number of duplicate volumes—even of works of the first degree of rarity. Of the latter, it may suffice to observe that, of the editio princeps of Plato, there were not fewer than ten copies; and of that of Aristotle, five or six copies: each the production of the Aldine Press. Several of these Platonic copies were, to my knowledge, beautiful ones; and what more than one such "beautiful copy" need mortal man desire to possess? I believe the copy of the Plato bought at the sale of Dr. Heath's library in 1810 was, upon the whole, the most desirable.[474] Both works are from the press of the elder Aldus.

[474] The Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville possesses a copy of this first edition (from the library of the Rev. Theodore Williams) in an uncut state. It may defy all competition. There is, however, in the Spencer library, at Althorp, described by me in the second volume of the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, a very beautiful copy, delicately ruled with red lines, which may be pronounced as almost in its primitive state. The leaves "discourse most eloquently" as you turn them over: and what sound, to the ears of a thorough bred bibliomaniac, can be more "musical?"

It may be observed, as mere preliminary matter, that it was once in contemplation to publish the literary life of Mr. Heber; and an impression comes across my mind that I had tendered my services for the labour in question. The plan was however abandoned—and perhaps wisely. There was also to have been a portrait prefixed, from the pencil of Mr. Masquerier, the only portrait of him—in later life—but the strangest whims and vagaries attended the surrendering, or rather the not surrendering, of the portrait in question. I am in possession of a correspondence upon this subject which is perfectly sui generis. The library of Mr. Heber was consigned to the care and discretion of Messrs. Payne and Foss—booksellers of long established eminence and respectability. It was merely intended to be an alphabetical, sale catalogue, with no other bibliographical details than the scarcity or curiosity of the article warranted. It was also of importance to press the sale, or sales, with all convenient dispatch: but the mass of books was so enormous that two years (1834-6) were consumed in the dispersion of them, at home; to say nothing of what was sold in Flanders, at Paris, and at Neuremberg. I have of late been abundantly persuaded that the acquisition of books—anywhere, and of whatever kind—became an ungovernable passion with Mr. Heber; and that he was a Bibliomaniac in its strict as well as enlarged sense. Of his library at Neuremberg he had never seen a volume; but he thought well of it, as it was the identical collection referred to by Panzer, among his other authorities, in his Typographical Annals. Of the amount of its produce, when sold, I am ignorant.

I have said that the Catalogue, which consisted of XII parts (exclusively of a portion of foreign books, which were sold by the late Mr. Wheatley) was intended merely to be a sale catalogue, without bibliographical remarks; but I must except Parts II, IV, and XI: the first of these containing the Drama, the second the English Poetry, and the third the Manuscripts—which, comparatively, luxuriate in copious and apposite description. "Si sic omnia!" but it were impracticable. I believe that the Manuscript Department, comprised in about 1720 articles, produced upwards of £5000. It may not be amiss to subjoin the following programme.

Part. I.7486articles;Sold by Sotheby
II.6590——Ditto
III.5056——Ditto
IV.3067——Sold by Evans
V.5693——Sold by Wheatley
VI.4666——Sold by Evans
VII.6797——Ditto
VIII.3170——Ditto
IX.3218——Sold by Sotheby
X.3490——Ditto
XI.1717——Sold by Evans
XII.1690——Sold by Wheatley

From which it should seem, first that the total number of articles was nearly fifty three thousand—a number that almost staggers belief; and places the collections of Tom Rawlinson and the Earl of Oxford at a very considerable distance behind; although the latter, for condition (with one exception), has never been equalled, and perhaps will probably never be surpassed. Secondly, if it be a legitimate mode of computation—taking two books for each article, one with another, throughout the entire catalogue—it will follow that the entire library of Mr. Heber, in England, contained not fewer than one hundred and five thousand volumes. The net amount of the Sale of this unparalleled mass of books is said to have been £55,000: a large sum, when the deductions from commissionship and the government-tax be taken into consideration.[475] Dr. Harwood thought that the sale of Askew Library was a remarkable one, from its bringing a guinea per article—one with another—of the 4015 articles of which the library was composed. The history of the Heber Sale might furnish materials for a little jocund volume, which can have nothing to do here; although there is more than one party, mixed up with the tale, who will find anything but cause of mirth in the recital. That such a Monument, as this library, should have been suffered to crumble to pieces, without a syllable said of its owner, is, of all the marvellous occurrences in this marvellous world, one of the most marvellous: and to be deprecated to the latest hour. Yet, who was surrounded by a larger troop of friends than the Individual who raised the Monument?

[475] These deductions, united, are about 17 per cent.: nearly £10,000 to be deducted from the gross proceeds.