Thy volumes, open as thy heart,
Delight, amusement, science, art,
To every ear and eye impart;
Yet who of all who thus employ them,
Can, like their owner's self, enjoy them?'
In addition to this reference, Scott, in one of his letters, speaks of 'Heber the magnificent, whose library and cellar are so superior to all others in the world.' Frequent mention is made of Heber in the notes to the Waverley novels. At one period of his life Heber was a Member of Parliament, and throughout his career it seems that he found recreation from the sport of collecting in the sport of the fields. He has been known to take a journey of four or five hundred miles to obtain a rare volume, 'fearful to trust to a mere commission.' He bought by all methods, in all places, and at all times, a single purchase on one occasion being an entire library of 30,000 volumes. Curiously enough, he disliked large-paper copies, on account of the space they filled. When he died, he had eight houses full of books—two in London, one in Oxford, and others at Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent, besides smaller collections in Germany. When sold, the number of lots was 52,000, and of volumes about 147,000, and the total amount realized £57,000, or about two-thirds of the original expenditure. The sale, which commenced in 1834, lasted over several years, and the catalogue alone comprises six thick octavo volumes. He is described as a tall, strong, well-made man.
Writing to Sir Egerton Brydges, the Rev. A. Dyce observes concerning Heber's death: 'Poor man! He expired at Pimlico,[47:A] in the midst of his rare property, without a friend to close his eyes, and from all I have heard I am led to believe that he died broken-hearted. He had been ailing some time, but took no care of himself, and seemed, indeed, to court death. Yet his ruling passion was strong to the last. The morning he died he wrote out some memoranda for Thorpe about books which he wished to be purchased for him' (Fitzgerald, 'The Book-Fancier,' p. 230).
In noticing Scott's edition of Dryden, and in alluding to the help which Scott obtained from Heber and Bindley, the Edinburgh Review speaks of the two as 'gentlemen in whom the love of collecting, which is an amusement to others, assumes the dignity of a virtue, because it gives ampler scope to the exercise of friendship, and of a generous sympathy with the common cause of literature.'
