In the Greek and Roman series, as well as in those of more modern days, there are various forms of deception and danger, against which I have had occasion to guard. Of course no one, who is out of leading strings, buys a Roman first or second brass, which has been polished with brick-dust, a lot which had befallen an entire cabinet sold at an auction within my remembrance. But there are less obvious sources of degradation due to various causes and motives, amongst which tooling for the purpose of creating an artificial bloom or patina, and plugging in order to disguise a bore or piercing, are the most usual.
The strangest feature about sophistication and forgery seems to be the elaborate trouble, which it must have cost to spoil a genuine coin or to fabricate a false one, where the original in good state is not difficult to procure. This may be ascribed to perverted ingenuity; but it is literally vain to attempt to trace to their parentage these phenomena. The systematic manufacture of Roman money is more understandable, because it flourished just when that money was most eagerly sought.
After all, the perils which beset the path of the collector, lend a fillip to the pursuit. Were there not such occasional contingencies, a career would be really deficient in anecdote and excitement, just as, without its rocks, quicksands, and sharks the sea would be less adventurous and less interesting.
I have personally come, and I trust that I may have been so fortunate as to bring some of the perusers of this small book, to the threefold conclusion under all the heads which I have discussed: 1. That for all ordinary buyers for their own pleasure and instruction the Eclectic principle is the best; 2. That Condition is a primary requirement; 3. That it is thoroughly practicable for an individual of very moderate fortune by persevering study—in itself a recreation—to form an extensive and valuable assemblage of whatever description of artistic property he prefers on terms, which will secure on realisation the return of the capital with interest.
This appears to be the only aspect of the Collecting question worth considering. Wealthy men, who indulge a taste for Books, Pictures, China, Coins, or Plate, do not commonly sympathise with the poorer sort, who have to deliberate over a heavier purchase, and to wait years, perhaps, for a dearly-coveted acquisition; and I pique myself a little on having achieved under serious drawbacks a creditable degree of success in the matter of Coins. If I had attempted the same task in other directions—almost in any other direction, I should have failed, inasmuch as books, pictures, plate, and china of an equal or parallel quality go too few to the £1000 to have suited me; and even postage stamps are in an unreachable altitude for a different reason—it is one of the enterprises, where exhaustive treatment seems to be an essential feature in the programme; while the interest is serial and concrete, rather than individual. One misses the perspective, the art, the sentiment, so omnipresent in genuine antiquities. As a sort of grown-up child’s hobby-horse it might be well enough, I thought; but when it acquires its own literature and Society, and, before you can see completeness in the near distance, locks up the purchase-money of a considerable estate, that fantasy and myself take different turnings. So that the Coin, rather even than the Book—not looking, of course, at the practical side—is the most manageable species of property, for supposing outlay to be a governing principle, all the other classes of objects of art are more or less vertu; and certain books have of late become so through the entrance into the field of the Fortunatus type of bibliophile.
The diversity of paths is wonderfully great, whether the means of acquisition are abundant or scanty; and for either contingency, as regards extent, there is a plea and a defence. The man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. On the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. It is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year’s end to year’s end. He occupies a parallel position to the master of a grand library, and is a curator with the power of sale rather than a proprietor and an intimate.
My personal tastes are fairly steadfast, and I have never been enabled to soar into the regions, where some of my distinguished and opulent acquaintances, such as Captain P—— and Lord G——, disburse more in a twelvemonth than I have done in a lifetime. But I have been truer on the other hand, to the plan, with which I set out. I felt certain that I should have to exercise a great deal of self-restraint and self-denial; I turned away with a sigh from many a prize, which might have been mine; and there has been this recompense—if it is one—that I have seen those coveted objects change hands more than once in several cases, while I pursue year after year—nay, decade after decade—my humbler programme and flight, till ultimately I may perhaps succeed, just as I am making my bow, in the part of the tortoise in the fable.
Some people are supremely happy without books, except the Family Bible, the London Directory, Bradshaw, and a handful of cheap printed paper in book-form, without china, without coins, without anything except tables and chairs. Do I wish I were as these? Not, as I now look at life, but perhaps, if I had, like them, been an eight-days’ puppy-dog—then, well, yes. One of the Huths, with whom I was debating this point, agreed with me that tables and chairs were very excellent things, but something more was to be desired, to be cultivated, if possible. But it is as human to go to extremes, as it is to err in other ways; and some men (I know one myself) make what ought to be the secondary consideration the first. I do not mean that I sit on the floor, and eat my food with my fingers; but the little additamenta to a home preponderate and overflow somewhat; one must take warning in time from gentlemen, one’s predecessors, who at last could barely find their tables and chairs.
Seeing that I have been up and down the market during a decently long succession of years, I am perhaps entitled to pay myself a few compliments on the singular rarity of occasions, which have found me on the losing and victimised side. Thrice have I suffered for my sins; for it was always my own fault. I handled things, which I did not understand; it is an error, against which I should urge every one to guard most strenuously. If you engage in the purchase of a strange commodity lying outside your own experience, it is marvellous in how many a way you are liable to the trumper. It is provoking to note the studious politeness, the almost brotherly interest, with which your friends will point out to you your sad mistake, when you have made it. For mysteries, to which you lack the key, noli tangere is the maxim. There are plenty of objects always in the market, which are fair to the eye, but bitter in the proof. How grateful I was to the enthusiast in his teens, who, when I had wasted a five-pound note on a worm-eaten xylographic block, put down a couple of guineas for it, and left me only poorer by the difference!