The libraries of Mr. Thomas J. Wise and Mr. Walter Slater may be bracketed together, partly because they have been formed side by side. They differ in many respects, however. Mr. Wise's is a small but choice collection of books, autographs, and manuscripts of modern writers. He possesses, for the most part, in first editions of the finest quality, practically everything written by Matthew Arnold, William Blake, Robert Browning and Mrs. Browning, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, George Eliot, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Landor, Meredith, William Morris, John Ruskin, Swinburne, and Tennyson. Of Shelley, for example, Mr. Wise has a collection of 400 books and pamphlets by or concerning him. There is only one other collection comparable to it, and it is that possessed by Mr. Buxton Forman. Of Byron Mr. Wise has everything, including 'The Waltz,' 'Poems on Various Occasions,' and all the other excessively rare publications of this prolific poet, the only exception, indeed, being 'The Curse of Minerva,' 1812. Mr. Wise's collection of Ruskiniana is practically complete, and includes a number of privately-printed pamphlets issued to a few personal friends. Mr. Walter Slater's books and manuscripts include a unique series of both Dante G. Rossetti and Walter Savage Landor. Of the former, it contains the manuscript of three-fourths of the 'House of Life' series of sonnets, the manuscript of 'St. Agnes,' and the whole of the extant manuscript of 'The King's Tragedy'; these manuscripts usually include not only the 'copy' as it was sent to the printer, but usually the first and second drafts. The series of Landor books and pamphlets is quite complete, from his first book of poems, 'Moral Epistles,' issued in 1795, and the equally excessively rare 'Poems from the Arabic and Persian,' issued at Warwick in 1800, to 'Savonarola,' in Italian, 1860. Mr. Slater has a complete series of the first editions of the curious works of Mrs. Behn.
Mr. Clement K. Shorter, the editor of the Illustrated London News, the Sketch, and several other publications, is a book-collector who, like Mr. Wise and Mr. Slater, has pitched his 'tent' on the northern heights of London. Mr. Shorter has an unusually complete set of the works of Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë—besides the 'Cottage Poems' of old Mr. Brontë—and Matthew Arnold. Of the last named there are copies of the very limited editions of 'Geist's Grave,' 'St. Brandran,' 'Home Rule for Ireland,' and 'Alaric at Rome.' Mr. Shorter's Ruskin treasures include a volume of the plates of 'Modern Painters,' on India paper, bound up in vellum. There are also several first editions of the earlier works of Carlyle, and William Watson's 'Lachrymæ Musarum,' on vellum, with the original manuscript bound up with it. Mr. Shorter has many interesting manuscripts and books by Oliver Wendell Holmes, R. L. Stevenson, and A. C. Swinburne, with autographs or notes by their respective authors. Mr. Richard le Gallienne, the well-known author, has for many years been a confirmed book-hunter, and has come across some rare and interesting finds. Mr. Henry Norman, the traveller and assistant editor of the Daily Chronicle, has a number of choice and rare books, chiefly first editions of American authors—J. Russell Lowell, Longfellow, O. W. Holmes, Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Whittier—nearly all of whom were personal friends of Mr. Norman's. Mr. Norman has gone to the extravagance of two sets of the first editions of Thomas Hardy's books, whilst of George Meredith there is one complete set.
The House of Commons contains several men who have very excellent libraries and excellent judgments of books. Mr. Leonard Courtney has been guilty of bookstalling a good many times in his successful career, and is, perhaps, an exception to the general rule that good political economists usually make poor book-hunters. Mr. Courtney possesses a good many uncommon books, which he has picked up from time to time. Mr. Augustine Birrell, Q.C., the author of 'Obiter Dicta,' and son-in-law of the late Frederick Locker-Lampson, has a good library of from 5,000 to 6,000 books. Among these may be noticed the first edition of Gray's 'Elegy,' picked up at Hodgson's for 3s. 6d.; first edition of Keats' 'Endymion,' purchased off a stall in the Euston Road for 2s. 6d.; first edition of 'Wuthering Heights'; and an extensive series of books relating to or by Dryden, Pope, Swift, and others of that period, as well as a number of presentation copies of books by Matthew Arnold, Browning, and Tennyson, etc. Mr. T. R. Buchanan, M.P., who was for many years librarian of All Souls' College, Oxford, has a small but select library of books which are, for the most part, remarkable on account of the beauty or rarity of their bindings. It is especially strong in fine specimens of early English and Scotch bindings; there are a few examples from De Thou's library, and a few characteristic specimens of Italian and Flemish bindings of the best periods. The books themselves are principally editions of the classics; but the section of Bibles printed in England and Scotland is a full one. There are also many volumes with a personal interest; for example, the copy of Locke's 'Essay concerning the Human Understanding' was once Coleridge's, and contains a note by him to this effect: 'This is, perhaps, the most admirable of Locke's works; read it, Southey,' etc.; and the copy of the 'Libri Carolini,' 1549, was Scaliger's.
Captain R. S. Holford, of Dorchester House, Park Lane, has a choice library of beautiful and rare books, formed by his father, the late H. S. Holford. For many years its chief treasure was the only known first edition of 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 1678, which was valued at £50; during the last few years, however, four other copies have turned up, without, however, lessening the commercial value of the Holford copy, which would probably fetch two or three times the amount at which it was valued thirty years ago. The facsimile of the first edition issued a few years ago was made from Mr. Holford's copy. A few other treasures of Captain Holford's library may be briefly mentioned as follows: A fifteenth-century manuscript of Livy's 'Historia,' on vellum, in a Venetian binding, with the arms of Aragon; Cardinal Hippolyto d'Este's copy of Rhinghier, 'Cento Giuochi Liberali, et d' Ingegno,' Bologna, 1551; Grolier's copy of Pliny, 'Epistolæ,' etc., Venice, 1518; of Valerius Maximus, Venice, 1534; and of 'Epitomes des Roys de France,' Lyons, 1546; the Maioli copy of Homer, 'Odyssea,' Paris, 1538; Du Bellay's 'Memoirs,' 1572, with the arms of Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé; and the copy of 'Liber Psalmorum Davidis,' 1546, bound by Nicholas Eve for De Thou.
