Beauty has been said to depend on Variety, and so we ought not to object to examples selected from widely different sources.
BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS
From the original Water-colour Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, in possession of Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London
Horace's multa renascentur comes into our mind when we stumble on a remark by Wodhull the collector in an Acta Apostolorum printed at Oxford in 1715: "In May, 1810, Mr. Leigh, auctioneer, told me that a copy of this edition had lately sold for £20, observing, 'these are the times to sell books, not to buy them.'" A more notable man, William Beckford, appears in a copy of the original French Vathek, 1787, as the second person of the drama by reason of the written matter referring to him, and being in the hand of M. Chavannes of Lausanne. The note occupies the whole of the available space on the title, and is as follows:—"A la demande de M. Beckford je me suis chargé de corriger son Manuscrit et de le faire imprimer à Lausanne. M. Beckford en quittant Lausanne se hata de le faire imprimer à Paris au Prejudice de l'Imprimeur de Lausanne, et je dus menacer M. Beckford de mettre dans les papiers son infidelité . . . et M. B. se hata de dedomager l'Imprimeur pour éviter la publicité."
So far as books with the autographs and MSS. notes of men of the modern school, such as Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, and Shelley, are concerned, the opportunities for securing specimens have certainly grown more numerous. We have already in the places specified above furnished many illustrations of this section, and they might be readily extended.
In the foreign department there is a perfectly inexhaustible store of material under a variety of heads: evidences of ownership and descent, biographical suggestions, historical links and side-lights, dated armorial ex libris. In 1869 the author met with a thick 4to volume, including the Cologne edition of the Legenda Sancti Albani Martyris, printed about 1475, on the fly-leaf or cover of which was a list of contents made in 1475; and in the Hopetoun copy of the Ethica of Aristotle the original owner had established the place of printing, otherwise unspecified, by a MS. note, dated 1469, in which he stated that the book was presented to him by its typographer, "Johannes Mentelin Argentin."
In a copy of the works of Petrarch in Latin, folio, 1501, occurs on the title: "Liber Antonij kressen juris vtriusq. doctoris emptus venecijs ligatus nurenberge Mcccccv;" and the noble old volume (now in the British Museum) is accompanied by a memoir of Kressen, printed about 1600, of uniform size, with a splendid portrait of the interesting Nüremberger.
A copy of the Vulgate of 1484 commands attention from the presence of a coeval MS. note pasted on the first leaf: "Hec Biblia est Petri Dominici Boninsegnis qui a fratre Cosmo empta fuit Anno mcccclxxxu. xviii. die Februarii." A Latin Horæ of the fifteenth century contains on a fly-leaf the ensuing little family story: "Ces Heures apartiennent a Damoyselle Michelle Du Derè Femme de M. Loys Dorleans Advocat en la Court du Parlement et lesquelles luy sont echeués par la succession de feu son père M. Jehan Duderè Conseiller du Roy & Auditeur en sa chambre des comptes 1577. Amour & Humilité sont les deux liens de nostre mariage." A St. Jerome's Epistolæ, printed at Mainz about 1470, is accompanied by the dated book-plate, 1595, of Christophorus Baro à Wolckhenstain.
In the French series the number of interesting items from a personal or historical point of view, if not both, is of course great, although, as a rule, French collectors have been rather sparing as annotators of their literary possessions. In a copy of De Bure's Sale Catalogue, 1786, now in the Huth Library, occurs a peculiarly striking exception, however, in the shape of a MS. note in the handwriting of Louis XVI., only three years prior to the fall of the Bastille, "Marquer les livres que je desire pour moi."
