[69] Cf. Wynne’s Private Libraries of New York, p. 106. Mr. Brevoort died December 7, 1887.
[70] Cf. Sabin, v. 283; Farnham’s Private Libraries of Boston.
[71] February, 1880, aged eighty years. His father was Robert Lenox, a Scotchman, who began business in New York in 1783, and retired in 1812 with a large fortune, including a farm of thirty acres, worth then about $6,000, and to-day $10,000,000,—if such figures can be made accurate. Cf. also Charles Deane in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1880. Henry Stevens’s Recoll. of Lenox is conspicuous for what it does not reveal.
[72] The Lenox Library is now under the direction of the distinguished American historical student, Dr. George H. Moore, so long in charge of the New York Historical Society’s library. Cf. an account of Dr. Moore by Howard Crosby in the Historical Magazine, vol. xvii. (January, 1870). The officer in immediate charge of the library is Dr. S. Austin Allibone, well known for his Dictionary of Authors.
[73] Mr. Bartlett was early in life a dealer in books in New York; and the Americana catalogues of Bartlett and Welford, forty years ago, were among the best of dealers’ lists. Jackson’s Bibl. Géog., no. 641.
[74] The field of Americana before 1800 has been so nearly exhausted in its composition, that recent purchases have been made in other departments, particularly of costly books on the fine arts.
[75] Cf. Vol. III. p. 380.
[76] Because Greenland in the map of the Ptolemy of this year is laid down. The slightest reference to America in books of the sixteenth century have entitled them to admission.
[77] The book purports to have been printed in one hundred copies; but not more than half that number, it is said, have been distributed. Some copies have a title reading, Bibliographical notices of rare and curious books relating to America, printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the library of the late John Carter Brown, by John Russell Bartlett.
[78] Sir Arthur Helps, in referring to the assistance he had got from books sent to him from America, and from this library in particular, says: “As far as I have been able to judge, the American collectors of books are exceedingly liberal and courteous in the use of them, and seem really to understand what the object should be in forming a great library.” Spanish Conquest, American edition, p. 122.