Earl of Arundel's Badge.

In Jeremy Collier's 'Ecclesiastical History' (vol. ii. 307) we get a glimpse of book-matters in London in the middle of the sixteenth century. At the end of February, 1550, we learn that the Council book mentions the King's sending a letter for the purging of the library at Westminster. The persons are not named, but the business was to cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such-like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Archer. These books were many of them plated with gold and silver and curiously embossed. This, as far as we can collect, was the superstition that destroyed them. 'Here avarice had a very thin disguise, and the courtiers discovered of what spirit they were to a remarkable degree.' Here is another picture of an almost contemporaneous event, equally vivid in its suggestiveness: 'John Tyndale, the translator's brother, and Thomas Patmore, merchants, were condemned to do penance by riding with their faces to their horses' tails, with their books fastened thick about them, pinned, or tacked, to their gowns or clokes, to the Standard in Cheap; and there with their own hands to fling them into the fire, kindled on purpose to burn them.'

As a book-collecting period the sixteenth century, from the accession of Henry VIII.—when books became the organs of the passions of mankind—to the death of Elizabeth, is full of intense interest. The old order had changed; the world itself had made an entirely fresh start. Men and events of the previous two or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. The hobby became first a passion with the few, and then the fashion with the many. Henry VIII. was perhaps a passive rather than an active collector, with a distinct leaning in favour of beautiful books. His three children, who followed him on the throne of England, were collectors of books, and the majority of their purchases must have been made in London. Many of these books have, at some time or other, drifted from private hands into the sale-rooms, but perhaps the majority of those now existing are to be found within the walls of our public institutions. For example, at the sale of Dr. Askew's MSS., in 1775, a very interesting item was purchased by a Mr. Jackson, a Quaker, and a dealer in wine and spirits, with whom book-collecting was a passion. The MS. proved to be in the handwriting of Edward VI.; it was in French, and dealt with his opinion of his right to the title of Supreme Head of the Church. At Jackson's sale the MS. became the property of the British Museum. As another illustration, we may refer to the copy of the 'Flores Historiarum per Matthæum Westmonasteriensem,' etc., 1570, in the British Museum (Cracherode Collection) which is the identical one presented by Archbishop Parker (by whose authority it was published) to Queen Elizabeth. It afterwards fell into the hands of Francis, Earl of Bedford, who bequeathed it, with the furniture of a little study, to his secretary. It was subsequently in the possession of Ritson. And yet again, in the Eton College Library, there is a copy of the 'Missale Romanum,' printed at Paris by Hardouyn, 1530, which belonged to Mary, with a sentence in her handwriting; this volume afterwards came into the possession of Mary of Este, Queen of James II., and subsequently into the hands of a London bookseller, from whom it was purchased for fifty-three shillings by Bishop Fleetwood, and presented to the college library. Indeed, a large volume might be compiled on the Adventures of Some Famous Books.

Interesting and important as is the phase of book-collecting which relates to royal personages, it falls into insignificance beside that of men who have achieved greatness through their own abilities. The books collected by Thomas Cranmer, for example, quite overshadow in interest anything which the whole reign of the Tudors could produce. It has been well said that his knowledge of books was wide, and his opportunities for acquiring them unrivalled. Cranmer was a generous collector, for his library was quite open for the use of learned men. Latimer spent 'many an hour' there, and has himself told us that he met with a copy of Dionysius 'in my Lord of Canterbury's library.' We have already seen that many of Cranmer's books passed into the possession of the Earl of Arundel, but many were 'conveyed and stolen awaie.' Cranmer's books have found an enthusiastic historian in Prebendary Burbidge, who has almost rehabilitated the great ecclesiastic's library in the first part of Mr. Quaritch's 'Dictionary of English Book-collectors.' Another book-collector of a very different type was amassing an extensive library at a somewhat later period than Cranmer: Dr. Dee, the famous necromancer, had collected '4,000 volumes, printed and unprinted, bound and unbound, valued at 2,000 lib.,' of which one Greek, two French and one High Dutch volumes of MSS. alone were 'worth 533 lib.' It occupied forty years to form this library. Most of his books passed into the possession of Elias Ashmole—who was another collector with an insatiable appetite—and now form a part of the Ashmolean Museum. Some of Dee's singular MSS. were found, long after his death, in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered. Reverting for a moment to Ashmole, he himself tells us that he gave 'five volumes of Mr. Dugdale's' works to the Temple Library. And further: 'My first boatful of books, which were carried to Mrs. Tradescant's, were brought back to the Temple.' In May, 1667, he bought Mr. John Booker's study of books, and gave £140 for them. In 1681 he bought 'Mr. Lilly's library of books of his widow, for £50.'

A very distinguished book-collector of the Elizabethan period was Sir Francis Drake, the great Admiral. It did not seem to be at all known that the distinguished naval hero was also a bibliophile until 1883, when the collection of books was brought from the old residence of the Drakes, Nutwell Court, Lympstone, Devon, to Sotheby's. The sale comprised 1,660 lots, representing several thousand volumes, the total being £3,276 17s. 6d. It was especially rich in books and old tracts of the early seventeenth century relating to the English voyages to America, and some of these realized very high figures. Although the library was undoubtedly founded by Drake, it was evidently continued by his descendants. Bacon, Baron of Verulam, was a distinguished book-collector, as the shelves of his chambers in Gray's Inn would have testified. Archbishop Parker, than whom 'a more determined book-fancier never existed in Great Britain,' and Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and the object of Tom Nash's withering scorn, were among the most inveterate book-collectors of Elizabethan London. Had Harvey—whose books usually contain his autograph on the title-page, and not a few of which were given him by Spenser—studied his books less, and the proper study of mankind a little more, he might have shown his talents off to a better advantage than in his conflicts with Nash. In the Bodleian there is a set of old tales and romances which Spenser lent Harvey, taking as a hostage, apparently, Harvey's copy of Lucian in four volumes. Harvey had a very poor opinion of such 'foolish' books, but he does not seem to have returned them to their rightful owner. The fire which destroyed Ben Jonson's MSS. undoubtedly consumed many of his printed books, but examples from his library, with 'Sum Ben Jonson' inscribed, are sometimes met with. Shakespeare may have had a library, but we have no evidence that he possessed even a copy of his own plays in quarto. The Elizabethan poets and dramatists were prodigious contributors to the press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his little finger points backward to his boy, who must be his interpreter; and so all day, gaping like a dumb image, he sits without motion, except at such times as he goes to dinner or supper, for then he is as quick as other three, eating six times every day.'

II.

From start to finish the Stuart dynasty ruled England for close on three-quarters of a century. That book-collecting should have existed at all under it is a marvel. But the hobby no longer depended upon the patronage of courts and courtiers. From the Wise Fool, James I., to the Foolish Fool, the second James, collectors pursued their hobby in London and out of it. James I. began to collect books at a very early age, and a list of his library was published for the first time in the Athenæum in 1893. It has, however, but little interest to us in this place, for doubtless most of the books were imported into Scotland from the great book centre, Paris. The library which he acquired after his accession to the throne of England is of little consequence, for he was not the person to purchase books when he had the means, and doubtless many of his bookish possessions were gifts. In the library at Eton College there is his copy of Captain John Smith's 'History of Virginia,' 1624, which was rescued by Storer from a dirty bookseller's shop in Derby, and the existence of many others might be traced. It is certain that 'he gave them shabby coverings, and scribbled idle notes on their margins.' Had his son Henry lived, he might have developed into a respectable book-collector. We know for certain that he 'paid a Frenchman that presented a book, £4 10s.'; and that he paid 'Mr. Holyoak for writing a catalogue of the library which the Prince had of Lord Lumley, £8 13s. 4d.' Charles II., like his forbears, was not a book-buyer, and so far as he is concerned we must content ourselves with repeating a little anecdote after Dibdin, who refers to an 'old and not incurious library at Workingham, in Suffolk,' where there was a very fine ruled copy of Hayes's Bible, published at Cambridge, 1674, in two volumes folio; on the fly-leaf it contains the following memorandum: 'N.B.—This Bible belonged to K. Charles IId. and [was] given by him to Duke Lauderdale and sold by auction wth ye rest of his Books.' In a comparatively modern hand, below, is written in pencil:

'Hark ye, my friends, that on this Bible look,

Marvel not at the fairness of the Book;