Many interesting items occurred in the sale (July, 1889) of the library of the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (one of the most distinguished of London book-hunters), which occurred a few months after the venerable owner's death. The amount realized for 1,291 lots was £2,298 10s. 6d.; and among them were several Shakespeare quartos, in all instances slightly imperfect. By far the most important feature of the Shakespearian rarities, drawings and engravings, preserved at Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton—'that quaint wigwam on the Sussex Downs which had the honour of sheltering more record and artistic evidences connected with the personal history of the great dramatist than are to be found in any other of the world's libraries'—still remains intact, according to the late owner's direction. It was offered to the Corporation of Birmingham for £7,000, but without avail. The collection comprises early engraved portraits of Shakespeare, authentic personal relics, documentary evidences respecting his estates and individuals connected with his biography, and artistic illustrations of localities connected with his personal history. The most important of the several hundred items is perhaps the unique early proof of the famous Droeshout portrait, for which Halliwell-Phillipps gave £100, and for which an American collector offered him £1,000. A calendar of this extraordinary assembly was very carefully edited by Mr. E. E. Baker, F.S.A., in 1891, and the collection is still intact. Writing in June, 1887, Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps himself tells us that for nearly half a century he had been an ardent Shakespearian collector, 'being most likely the only survivor of the little band who attended the sale of the library of George Chalmers somewhere about the year 1840. But for a long time, attempting too much in several directions with insufficient means, and harassed, moreover, by a succession of lawsuits, including two in the Court of Torture—I mean Chancery—I was unable to retain my accumulations; and thus it came to pass that bookcase full after bookcase full were disposed of, some by private contract, many under the vibrations of the auctioneer's hammer. This state of affairs continued till February, 1872, but since that period, by a strict limitation of my competitive resources to one subject—the Life of Shakespeare—I have managed to jog along without parting with a single article of any description.'
A much more important collection of Shakespeariana than that which appeared in the Halliwell-Phillipps sale came under the hammer at the same place a few days afterwards, when the late Frederick Perkins's library was dispersed (2,086 lots realized £8,222 7s.). The sale, in fact, was the most important in this respect since that of George Daniel in 1864, to which, however, the Perkins Collection was considerably inferior. Mr. Perkins had spent many years of search and a large sum of money in collecting early editions of Shakespeare, but during the past thirty years not only has their value gone up in an appalling degree, but they are for the most part positively unprocurable. Under these depressing conditions, Mr. Perkins managed nevertheless to obtain eighteen first or very early quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays; and poor as is this show when compared with that of George Daniel, it is doubtful whether a sale so extensive from the particular point of view under consideration as that of Mr. Perkins can be expected until well into the next century. The highest price was paid for 'The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth,' 1600, £225; 'Romeo and Juliet,' 1599, fetched £164; the 'Merchant of Venice,' 1600 (printed by J. Roberts), £121; 'Henry V.,' 1608, third edition, £99. The First Folio fetched £415.
The dispersals of book-collections in 1890 included a few of considerable note. The exceedingly extensive one, for example, of the late Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was highly interesting as illustrating a phase of book-collecting which is now all but obsolete. It was rich in the classics, which three-quarters of a century ago would have created the greatest excitement. It occupied twenty-one days (May-June), when 6,919 lots realized a total of £10,982 3s.—a highly satisfactory result, when the general depreciation in the market value of the classics is considered. The extensive library of Mr. Thomas Gaisford (2,218 lots, £9,182 15s. 6d.), which was sold in April, 1890, included not only some fine editions of the classics, but a remarkable series of Blake's works, first editions of Keats, Byron, Shelley, Swinburne, the four folio editions of Shakespeare, and a few quartos, notably the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' 1602, £385; 'Love's Labour Lost,' 1598, £140; and 'Much Adoe about Nothing,' 1600, £130, all first editions. Some very interesting and rare Shakespeare items occurred also in the sale of the library of the late Frederick William Cosens, 1890, e.g., 'Merchant of Venice,' 1600, £270; and the 'Poems,' 1640, £61. The dramatic library of the late Frank Marshall (Sotheby's, June, 1890, £2,187 14s. 6d.), and the angling books of the late Francis Francis (Puttick's, July, 1890), were interesting collections in the way of special books.
The most noteworthy collections dispersed in 1891 included the Walton Hall library of the late Edward Hailstone, who was D.L. of the West Riding, Yorkshire (sold in February and April, 5,622 lots, £8,991 5s. 6d.), among which were many books of an exceedingly curious character; and the 'Lakelands' library of the late W. H. Crawford, of Lakelands, co. Cork (3,428 lots, £21,255 19s. 6d.), remarkable on account of its copy of the Valdarfer Boccaccio, 1471, £230; a copy (? unique) of Caviceo, 'Dialogue treselegant intitule le Peregrin,' 1527, on vellum, with the arms of France, £355; the Landino edition of Dante, 1481, with the engravings by Bacio Baldini from the designs by Botticelli, £360; Shakespeare's 'Lucrece,' 1594, £250, and 'Merchant of Venice,' 1600, £111; and the 'Legenda Aurea,' printed by Caxton, 1483, £465. The topographical and general library of the late Lord Brabourne was sold in May, 1891, also at Sotheby's; whilst the remainder of this library was sold at Puttick's in June, 1893. The collections scattered in 1892 included few of note, but we may mention those of the late Joshua H. Hutchinson, G. B. Anderson, and R. F. Cooke (a partner in the firm of John Murray, the eminent publisher) as including many first editions of modern authors; whilst those of John Wingfield Larking and Edwin Henry Lawrence, F.S.A., included a number of rare books, as may be gathered from the fact that the library of the former comprised 946 lots, which realized £3,925 13s., and that of the latter, 860 lots, £7,409 3s. The most interesting collection sold in 1893 was the selected portions from the books, MSS., and letters collected by William Hazlitt, his son, and his grandson; of the first importance in another direction was the sale of the Bateman heirlooms (books and MSS.).
The late Rev. W. E. Buckley, M.A., formerly Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford, and late Rector of Middleton-Cheney, Banbury, and vice-president of the Roxburghe Club, was a veritable Heber in a small way. Besides the enormous quantity of books sold in two portions (twenty-two days in all) in February, 1893, and April, 1894, several vanloads were disposed of locally, as not being worth the cost of carriage to London. His library must have comprised nearly 100,000 volumes, of which only a small proportion had any commercial importance. He managed, however, in his long career, to pick up a few bargains, notably the Columbus 'Letter' ('Epistola Christofori Colom.,' four leaves, 1493, with which was bound up Vespucci, 'Mundus novus Albericus Vesputius,' etc., 1503, also four leaves), which cost him less than £5, and which realized £315; he also possessed a first edition of Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 1766, £39 10s.; Keats's 'Poems,' first edition, 1817, in the original boards, £23 10s.; Fielding's 'Tom Jones,' 1749, first edition, uncut, in the original boards, £69. The two portions of the Buckley library sold at Sotheby's realized £9,420 9s. 6d. The smallest, as well as the choicest, library sold in 1894 (June 11) comprised the most select books from the collection of Mr. Birket Foster, the distinguished artist. The first, second, third, and fourth folio Shakespeares sold for £255, £56, £130, and £25 respectively; the quarto editions of the great dramatist included 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 1600, large copy, £122; 'Merchant of Venice,' 1600, £146; 'King Lear,' 1608, £100. Mr. Foster also possessed John Milton's copy of 'Lycophronis Alexandra,' which realized £90; an incomplete copy of Caxton's 'Myrrour of the World,' 1491, £77. The valuable and interesting dramatic and miscellaneous library of the late Frederick Burgess, of the Moore and Burgess minstrels, was sold at Sotheby's, in May-June, 1894, and included many choice editions of modern authors.
The late Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte was a giant among book-collectors, but his books were almost exclusively philological. Mr. Victor Collins, who has compiled an 'Attempt' at a catalogue, in which there are no less than 13,699 entries, states that 'as a young man the Prince was fond of chemistry, and on one occasion he was desirous of reading a chemical work that happened to exist only in Swedish. He learned Swedish for the purpose, and this gave him a taste for languages, very many of which he studied. His object in forming the library was to discover, rather perhaps to show, the relationship of all languages to each other. Nor was it only distinct languages he included in his plan, but their dialects, their corruptions, even slang, thieves' slang—slang of all kinds. In carrying out his idea the Prince had of course the advantages of exceptional abilities, and, until the fall of the Empire, of unlimited money. Some of the bindings are very beautiful. As to the printing, the Prince for long had a fully-fitted printing-office on the basement floor of his house in Norfolk Terrace, Bayswater. The Prince being a Senator of France, a cousin of Louis Napoleon, and a well-known philologist, people brought him all sorts of interesting books. Therefore it is not surprising to find that the library includes rare works not present, for instance, in the British Museum. There are three early German Bibles which Mr. Gladstone, visiting the Prince once, thought should be presented to the British Museum. To the best of Mr. Gladstone's knowledge, one of the three did not exist anywhere else, and either of the three would be worth about £500. They are remarkable specimens of early German printing, and are profusely illustrated.' Mr. Collins calculates that there are at least 25,000 volumes in the collection, and that fully thirty alphabets are spread through them. This extraordinary collection, like the Shakespearian one formed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, is still awaiting a purchaser (see the Times, July 25, 1895).
The collection, also a special one, of a recently-deceased book-collector may be mentioned here, and for the following particulars we are indebted to Mr. Elliot Stock: 'Edmund Waterton, the son of Charles Waterton, the naturalist, lived at first at Walton Hall, his father's residence. He sold this, and bought a house at Deeping, Waterton, where his ancestors formerly lived. He had a large old library, a great part of which he inherited from his father. His great pleasure was in his "Imitatio Christi" collection. He succeeded in gathering together some 1,500 different editions, printed and MS. He had given commissions to booksellers all over Europe to send him any edition they might meet with, and one of the pleasures of his life was to see the foreign packets come by post. I sent him a seventeenth-century edition which I came across accidentally for his acceptance on "spec." It turned out it was one he had been looking for for a long time, and his letter describing his glee when it was brought up to his bedroom in the morning with his breakfast was very comic. He kept an oblong volume like a washing-book, with all the editions he knew of, some thousands in all, and his delight in ticking one more off the lengthy desiderata was like that of a schoolboy marking off the "days to the holidays." Edmund Waterton had a number of rare books besides those in his "Imitation" collection; notably a very tall First Folio Shakespeare, with contemporary comments made by some ancestor, who had also made good some of the missing pages in MS. He was a lineal descendant of Sir Thomas More, on his mother's side, and possessed Sir T. More's clock, which still went when I stayed with him. It was apparently the same clock that hangs on the wall at the back of Holbein's celebrated picture of Sir Thomas More and his family. Waterton had one of the longest and clearest pedigrees in the country, tracing back to Saxon times without break; his family were Catholics, and seem to have lost most of their property in the troublous times of the Reformation. Anyone who was interested in the "Imitation," whether as a collector or not, always met with kindness, and almost affection, from him. The first time I met him—which arose from my making the facsimile of the Brussels MS.—he showed his confidence and goodwill by lending me, for several days, his oblong record of editions to look over.'
Mr. Waterton's collection of the 'Imitation' came under the hammer at Sotheby's in January, 1895, in two lots. The first comprised six manuscripts and 762 printed editions, ancient and modern, in various languages, of this celebrated devotional work, arranged in languages in chronological order. It realized £101. The second lot comprised a collection of 437 printed editions, a few of which were not included in the former, and sold for the equally absurd amount of £43. The British Museum had the first pick of this collection, and the authorities were enabled to fill up a large number of gaps in their already extensive series of editions. The six MSS. and over 250 printed editions passed into the possession of Dr. Copinger, of Manchester, through Messrs. Sotheran, of the Strand, who, indeed, purchased the two 'lots' when offered at Sotheby's.
