A curious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but the salient feature was—in fact, the ruling one, with one exception—that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.

The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr. Quaritch's Catalogue of Bindings, 1888, which includes particulars of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and one of Zaehnsdorf's Short History of Bookbinding, 1895, with illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced monographs upon it.

In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in the direction of independence, and its Transactions form an interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of bindings.

The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type, the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is no present approach to what may be termed the ensemble of a volume placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owners, like the old eighteenth-century work. But as they emerge from the workshop, and stand upon the shelves or in the case, their aspect is decidedly agreeable, while half a roomful of them are to be had for the price of a Clovis Eve or even a first-rate Padeloup. Very much, on the contrary, we are apt to conceive a dislike for that unwieldy imperial format which some of the Parisian libraires editeurs affect, and which perhaps occupy the same place in French literature of the day as our detestable English editions de luxe.

CHAPTER XIV

Aids to the formation of a library: (i.) Personal observation; (ii.) Works of reference—Rarity of taste and judgment—Dependence of some booksellers on want of knowledge in their clients—Trade catalogues—Principal modern books of reference criticised—Those for the (i.) Bibliography; (ii.) for the Prices—Unsatisfactory execution of Book Prices Current, &c.—The British Museum Catalogue of Early English books—Obsolete authorities—Their unequal demerit—British Museum General Catalogue and Mr. Quaritch's New General Catalogue—The former not implicitly trustworthy—Source of the value of the latter—The labours of Sir Egerton Brydges, Joseph Haslewood, and others—Tribute to their worth—Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica—The Heber Catalogue—Its magnitude and immense value and interest—Where Heber obtained his treasures—His library the most splendid ever formed in any country—Its absorption of all preceding collections—And the vital obligations of every succeeding collection to it—The Grenville Catalogue—George Daniel—His fly-leaf canards—Collier's Bibliographical Catalogue—Corser's Collectanea—Unequal value of the posthumous parts—The Huth Catalogue—Testimony to its character—Several monographs—Lord Crawford's Broadsides—Lists of the College libraries at Oxford and Cambridge—Catalogues of the Dyce and Forster Bequests to South Kensington—Halliwell-Phillipps's Shakespeariana—Blades's Caxton—Botfield's Cathedral Libraries—A new catalogue of the Althorp-Rylands books in preparation—Mr. Wheatley's scheme for cataloguing a library—Redundant cataloguing exemplified—Differences in copies of the same book and edition—French books of reference—Brunet, Cohen, Gay—Special treatises on Playing-cards, Angling, Tobacco: Bewick, Bartolozzi: Tokens, Coins and Medals, and Americana—Tracts relating to Popery—The Printing Clubs and Societies—Errors in books of reference liable to perpetuation—Heads of advice to collectors of books with supplements, extra leaves, &c.

The two principal aids to the formation of a library, great or small, general or special, are Personal Observation and Works of Reference. The first is obviously an uncertain quantity, and may be restricted to an ordinary mechanical experience, or may comprise the finest commercial and literary instinct. We have had among us ere now amateurs who possessed the highest qualifications for assembling round them gratifying and valuable monuments of their taste and judgment, with the harmless satisfaction of feeling tolerably sure that the investment, if not a source of profit, would not form one of serious loss. This is a fair and legitimate demand and expectation; but such characters are far rarer than the books which they collect; and if it were otherwise, the large industry which lies in the purchase and re-sale of literary property could not exist. The buyer whose knowledge is in advance of that of the salesman is a party whom Mr. —— and Mr. —— and the remainder of the alphabet pharisaically admire, while they privily harbour toward him sadly unchristian feelings and views.

The second and remaining auxiliary, the Book of Reference, has become a wide term, since it has so enormously developed itself, and formed branches, so as to constitute a library within a library, and to call for its own bibliographer. So far as the current value and general character of literary works are concerned, all the older authorities are more or less untrustworthy, and the same is to be predicated of a heavy proportion of auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues, where the first and sole object is to realise the maximum price for an article. The system pursued by the former class of vendors of late years renders it far more hazardous to bid on the faith of the printed descriptions, and there is, in fact, greater danger for the novice in the elaborate rehearsal of the title and the accompanying fillip in the shape of a note (usually erroneous) than the good old-fashioned plan of setting out the particulars briefly—even illiterately; for in the latter case the burden of discovering the exact truth is thrown on the customer or acquirer. We must say that few things are less satisfactory than trade-catalogues with certain honourable exceptions, which it might be invidious to particularise; and the book-buyer has to depend almost exclusively on his own discernment and the bibliographers. Of what he reads in the catalogues he may believe as much or as little as he likes.