It was under the hospitable roof of Mr. Barlow’s library in New York that, “having gloated for years over second-hand compilations,” Harrisse says that he found himself “for the first time within reach of the fountain-heads of history.” Here he gathered the materials for his Notes on Columbus, which were, as he says, like “pencil marks varnished over.” These first appeared less perfectly than later, in the New York Commercial Advertiser, under the title of “Columbus in a Nut-shell.” Mr. Harrisse had also prepared (four copies only printed) for Mr. Barlow in 1864 the Bibliotheca Barlowiana, which is a descriptive catalogue of the rarest books in the Barlow-Aspinwall Collection, touching especially the books on Virginian and New England history between 1602 and 1680.
Mr. Barlow now (1864) sumptuously printed the Notes on Columbus in a volume (ninety-nine copies) for private distribution. For some reason not apparent, there were expressions in this admirable treatise which offended some; as when, for instance (p. vii), he spoke of being debarred the privileges of a much-vaunted public library, referring to the Astor Library. Similar inadvertences again brought him hostile criticism, when two years later (1866) he printed with considerable typographical luxury his Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, which was published in New York. It embraces something over three hundred entries.[37] The work is not without errors; and Mr. Henry Stevens, who claims that he was wrongly accused in the book, gave it a bad name in the London Athenæum of Oct. 6, 1866, where an unfortunate slip, in making “Ander Schiffahrt”[38] a personage, is unmercifully ridiculed. A committee of the Société de Géographie in Paris, of which M. Ernest Desjardins was spokesman, came to the rescue, and printed a Rapport sur les deux ouvrages de bibliographie Américaine de M. Henri Harrisse, Paris, 1867. In this document the claim is unguardedly made that Harrisse’s book was the earliest piece of solid erudition which America had produced,—a phrase qualified later as applying to works of American bibliography only. It was pointed out that while for the period of 1492-1551 Rich had given twenty titles, and Ternaux fifty-eight, Harrisse had enumerated three hundred and eight.[39]
Harrisse prepared, while shut up in Paris during the siege of 1870, his Notes sur la Nouvelle France, a valuable bibliographical essay referred to elsewhere.[40] He later put in shape the material which he had gathered for a supplemental volume to his Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, which he called Additions,[41] and published it in Paris in 1872. In his introduction to this latter volume he shows how thoroughly he has searched the libraries of Europe for new evidences of interest in America during the first half century after its discovery. He notes the depredations upon the older libraries which have been made in recent years, since the prices for rare Americana have ruled so high. He finds[42] that the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, as compared with a catalogue of it made by Ferdinand Columbus himself, has suffered immense losses. “It is curious to notice,” he finally says, “how few of the original books relating to the early history of the New World can be found in the public libraries of Europe. There is not a literary institution, however rich and ancient, which in this respect could compare with three or four private libraries in America. The Marciana at Venice is probably the richest. The Trivulgiana at Milan can boast of several great rarities.”
For the third contributor to the recent bibliography of Americana, we must still turn to an adopted citizen, Joseph Sabin, an Englishman by birth. Various publishing enterprises of interest to the historical student are associated with Mr. Sabin’s name. He published a quarto series of reprints of early American tracts, eleven in number, and an octavo series, seven in number.[43] He published for several years, beginning in 1869, the American Bibliopolist, a record of new books, with literary miscellanies, largely upon Americana. In 1867 he began the publication (five hundred copies) of the most extensive American bibliography yet made, A Dictionary of books relating to America, from its discovery to the present time. The author’s death, in 1881,[44] left the work somewhat more than half done, and it has been continued since his death by his sons.[45]
In the Notas Para una bibliografia de obras anonimas i seudonimas of Diego Barros Arana, published at Santiago de Chile in 1882, five hundred and seven books on America (1493-1876), without authors, are traced to their writers.
As a second class of contributors to the bibliographical records of America, we must reckon the students who have gathered libraries for use in pursuing their historical studies. Foremost among such, and entitled to be esteemed a pioneer in the modern spirit of research, is Alexander von Humboldt. He published his Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent,[46] in five volumes, between 1836 and 1839.[47] “It is,” says Brevoort,[48] “a guide which all must consult. With a master hand the author combines and collates all attainable materials, and draws light from sources which he first brings to bear in his exhaustive investigations.” Harrisse calls it “the greatest monument ever erected to the early history of this continent.”
Humboldt’s library was bought by Henry Stevens, who printed in 1863, in London, a catalogue of it, showing 11,164 entries; but this was not published till 1870. It included a set of the Examen critique, with corrections, and the notes for a new sixth volume.[49] Harrisse, who it is believed contemplated at one time a new edition of this book, alleges that through the remissness of the purchaser of the library the world has lost sight of these precious memorials of Humboldt’s unperfected labors. Stevens, in the London Athenæum, October, 1866, rebuts the charge.[50]
Of the collection of books and manuscripts formed by Col. Peter Force we have no separate record, apart from their making a portion of the general catalogue of the Library of Congress, the Government having bought the collection in 1867.[51]
The library which Jared Sparks formed during the progress of his historical labors was sold about 1872 to Cornell University, and is now at Ithaca. Mr. Sparks left behind him “imperfect but not unfaithful lists of his books,” which, after some supervision by Dr. Cogswell and others, were put in shape for the press by Mr. Charles A. Cutter of the Boston Athenæum, and were printed, in 1871, as Catalogue of the Library of Jared Sparks. In the appendix was a list of the historical manuscripts, originals and copies, which are now on deposit in Harvard College Library.[52]
In 1849 Mr. H. R. Schoolcraft[53] printed, at the expense of the United States Government, a Bibliographical Catalogue of books, etc., in the Indian tongues of the United States,—a list later reprinted with additions in his Indian Tribes (in 1851), vol. iv.[54]