III.
The history of the second and third quarters of the present century makes mention of very few collectors of the first rank. Among the more important of those whose libraries came under the hammer within that period, we may specially refer to the following: William Upcott, who started early in life as an assistant to R. H. Evans, but who in 1806 became sub-librarian of the London Institution. He was one of the first to take up autograph-collecting, of which, indeed, he has been termed the pioneer. He certainly collected with great advantage and knowledge, and his vast accumulations were sold at Sotheby's in four batches during 1846, he having died in September, 1845; John Hugh Smyth Piggott, whose library, in three portions, was sold at the same place, 1847-54; W. Y. Ottley, the prolific writer of books on art, 1849; W. Holgate, of the Post Office, whose library included a number of Shakespeariana, June, 1846; Hanrott, 1857; Sir Thomas Bernard, 1855; Isaac D'Israeli, the author of 'Curiosities of Literature,' in 1849, and his unsparing critic, Bolton Corney, in 1871; S. W. Singer, in four parts, 1860; J. Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phillipps), in 1856, 1857, and 1859; and the Rev. Dr. Hawtrey, part of whose books were sold, far below their worth, in 1853, and the rest nine years later. Many of the foregoing were literary men, who aimed rather at getting together a useful library than one of rarities. The sale of all such libraries makes a very sorry show beside that of the more ostentatious collections. For instance, the books which Macaulay used with such brilliant effect, and including among them an extraordinary number of tracts, many excessively rare, only realized £426 15s. 6d., when sold in 1863 in 1,011 lots. Douglas Jerrold's little library, sold in August, 1859, in 307 lots, only fetched £173 3s. In very strong contrast to these is the remarkable little library, formed between 1820 and 1830 by Henry Perkins, of Hanworth Park, Feltham, a member of the brewing firm. This collection comprised only 865 lots, but when sold at Sotheby's in June, 1873, the total was found to be close on £26,000! There was a copy each of the 42-line and 40-line Gutenberg Bible—the former is now in the Huth Library, and the latter in the Ashburnham Library; several other very early printed Bibles, including Coverdale's, Matthews', and Cranmer's, two works printed by Caxton, with many other important books were sold.
The late George Daniel (who was born about 1790) may be regarded as the connecting link between the collectors of the early part of the present century and those of to-day. When, for example, Perry and Bindley left off, Daniel commenced. There was no great rush after Shakespeare quartos in the earlier part of the present century, and book-collecting for a time ceased to be the pet hobby of wealthy members of the peerage. When George Daniel, a critic and bibliographer of exceptional abilities, began to collect, he soon made Shakespeare, as well as the earlier English poets, objects of solicitude. He resided for many years in the historic old red-brick tower at Canonbury.[72:A] The sale of Daniel's extraordinary collection was held at Sotheby's in July, 1864, when a First Folio, one of the finest in the world—now in the possession of Baroness Burdett-Coutts—sold for £716 2s., and when twenty of the Shakespeare quartos realized a total of about £3,000.
George Daniel is now remembered by but few book-collectors. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt knew him very well, and describes him as a retired accountant, whose idiosyncrasy consisted of rares morçeaux, bonnes bouches, uniques—copies of books with a provenance, or in jackets made for them by Roger Payne—nay, in the original parchment or paper wrapper, or in a bit of real mutton which certain men call sheep. He was a person of literary tastes, and had written books in his day. But his chief celebrity was as an acquirer of those of others, provided always that they were old enough or rare enough. An item never passed into his possession without at once ipso facto gaining new attributes, almost invariably worded in a holograph memorandum on the fly-leaf. Daniel was in the market at a fortunate and peculiar juncture, just when prices were depressed, about the time of the great Heber sale. His marvellous gleanings came to the hammer precisely when the quarto Shakespeare, the black-letter romance, the unique book of Elizabethan verse, had grown worth ten times their weight in sovereigns. Sir William Tite, J. O. Halliwell, and Henry Huth were to the front. It was in 1864. What a wonderful sight it was! No living man had ever witnessed the like. Copies of Shakespeare, printed from the prompters' MSS. and published at fourpence, fetched £300 or £400. I remember old Joseph Lilly, when he had secured the famous Ballads, which came from the Tollemaches of Helmingham Hall, holding up the folio volume in which they were contained in triumph as someone whom he knew entered the room. Poor Daniel! he had no mean estimate of his treasures—what he had was always better than what you had. Books, prints, autographs—it was all the same. I met him one morning in Long Acre. I had bought a very fine copy of Taylor, the Water Poet. "Oh, yes, sir," he said, "I saw it; but not quite so fine as mine." He went up to Highgate to look through the engravings of Charles Matthews the elder. They were all duplicates—of course inferior ones. "Damn him, sir!" cried Matthews afterwards to a friend; "I should like him to have had a duplicate of my wooden leg."
John Payne Collier, who was born a year before Daniel, but who lived until 1883, was a collector with very similar tastes. He had been a reporter on the Morning Chronicle, and in all probability imbibed some of his book-collecting zeal from Perry. His book-buying and literary career commenced, according to his own account, in 1804 or 1805, when his father took him into the shop of Thomas Rodd, senior, on which occasion he purchased his 'first Old English book of any value,' namely, Wilson's 'Art of Logic,' printed by Grafton, 1551; from this he ascertained that 'Ralf Roister Doister' was an older play than 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' and also that it was by Nicholas Udal, Master of Eton School. When in Holland, in the winter of 1813-14, Collier purchased among other books an imperfect copy of Tyndale's 'Gospel of St. Matthew,' to which, as he says in his 'Diary,' 'the date of 1526 [1525] has been assigned, and which seems to be the very earliest translation into English of any portion of the New Testament. Many years afterwards—I think in the spring of 1832—I happened to show it to Rodd, the learned bookseller. I was at that time ignorant on the subject, and Rodd offered me books to the value of two or three pounds for it. I gladly accepted them.' This fragment, for which Collier paid a florin, was sold to Mr. Grenville by Rodd for £50, and is now in the British Museum. Writing in the Athenæum, January 31, 1852, he gives an account of the origin of events which led to one of the fiercest literary quarrels of modern times: 'A short time before the death of the late Mr. Rodd, of Newport Street [i.e. early in 1849], I happened to be in his shop when a considerable parcel of books arrived from the country. He told me that they had been bought for him at an auction—I think in Bedfordshire. . . . He unpacked them in my presence . . . and there were two which attracted my attention, one being a fine copy of Florio's "Italian Dictionary," of the edition of 1611, and the other a much-thumbed, abused, and imperfect copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare, 1632. The first I did not possess, and the last I was willing to buy, inasmuch as I apprehended it would add some missing leaves to a copy of the same impression which I had had for some time on my shelves. As was his usual course, Mr. Rodd required a very reasonable price for both; for the first I remember I gave 12s. and for the last only £1 10s. . . . On the outside of one of the covers was inscribed, "Tho. Perkins, his booke."' Collier was vexed at finding that the volume contained no leaves which would help him in completing the volume he already had. He had employed another person to do the collating, and it was not until some considerable time after, and on examining thoroughly the volume himself, that he discovered it to contain a large series of emendations, which Collier included in his 'Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays,' 1853, which set the whole town by the ears. Collier's library was dispersed at Sotheby's in 1884; it was an unusually interesting sale, and included many very rare and curious books.
