The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

Of Pierceforest, of which he possessed the edition by Giles Gourmont, 1531-2, in folio, Heber speaks as follows: ‘This is a Romance of great Character, value and merit. Mr Warton, upon whatever authority, asserts it to have been originally written in verse about 1220, and not till many years afterwards translated into prose, an assertion which cannot be confirmed; no MS. of any Metrical Romance under that title appearing to be anywhere extant, and indeed it is probable that he confounded Pierceforest with Perceval. It is, however, believed to be one of the oldest prose Romances extant, and is mentioned by Caxton in his Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry.’

A volume by Spenser receives this perhaps somewhat out-of-date notice; but it demonstrates the habit of Heber in regard to all classes of works of importance in his possession: ‘This is the first edition of Spenser’s Shepheard’s Calendar, and of extraordinary rarity, not to be found in the most distinguished libraries. Mr Todd was obliged to take a journey to Cambridge to obtain a sight of a copy. The subsequent editions in 4to are rare and valuable, but far less so than the present....’

We have to go back a long way, and cross the sea, before we reach the patria of the next sample, the Historia Naturalis of Pliny, printed by Jenson in 1469, in rich old blue morocco, from the library of Camus de Limari, at whose sale in 1783 it fetched 3000 livres. Heber has inscribed a MS. note on the flyleaf to this effect. The book sold at his sale for £31, 10s.

We return home at the next specimen, which is Gosson’s Playes Confuted in Five Actions in the same volume with Lodge’s Reply to Gosson, and a third tract relating to the theatre. Mr Heber notes: ‘The present vol. contains only 3 out of a remarkably curious collection of 8 pieces, bound together soon after the publication of the latest, somewhere about 1580. This may be ascertained by the antiquity of the handwriting, which exactly records them all, on the reverse of the title-page of Playes Confuted. So late as 1781 they all remained together in Mr Beauclerc’s collection (see cat., 4137), with the exception of Gascoigne’s Delicate Diet for Drunkards. They seem afterwards to have passed into Mr Nassau’s library, who divided them into 5 different vols., which are now all in my possession.

‘As to Gascoigne’s Delicate Diet, it is, I apprehend, the same copy contained in G. Steevens’s collection of Gascoigne’s Works, now in my possession—in fact, no other is known.’ It was on that account, presumably, that the copy sold at Heber’s sale for £27, 16s. 6d.

The history of Marlowe’s Dido, 1594, must not be repeated here, as it is already printed in the Handbook. Nobody has ever seen the elegy by Nash on Marlowe, mentioned by Warton. The copy of Dido given by Isaac Reed to George Steevens, and bought at Steevens’s sale in 1800 by Sir Egerton Brydges, was transferred by the latter to Heber, at whose sale it produced £39. The Duke of Devonshire’s, which had previously been Kemble’s, cost Henderson the actor fourpence.

A good deal of mystery surrounds the Lee Priory collection, which seems to have at one time contained many dramatic rarities of the first order, most, if not all, of which eventually found their way to Heber. Henry Oxenden of Barham, near Canterbury, is known to have owned in 1647 an extraordinary assemblage of old English plays, bound together in six volumes, and comprising the Taming of a Shrew (not Shakespear’s), 1594, Ralph Roister Doister, Hamlet (1603), and other precious remains. What became of them, there is no record; but it has sometimes occurred to me that they might have gone to Lee Priory. At Lord Mostyn’s, at Gloddaeth in Carnarvonshire, there is a second series of volumes; but of the contents I have no personal knowledge. To return to the Heber Dido for a moment, it may be permissible to transcribe Steevens’s note: ‘This copy was given me by Mr Reed. Such liberality in a collector of Old Plays is at least as rare as the rarest of our dramatic pieces.—G. S.’

Now and again, of course, Heber is misinformed, or his information has been superseded, as where he alludes to Shakespear’s Henry the Fourth, 1608, as a first-rate rarity. His copy sold for £12, 12s. In the note about it he takes occasion to mention that Steevens bought many of the books of the Rev. J. Bowle, whom Gifford called ‘the stupidest of two-legged creatures,’ but who had a very curious library, of White.

But Heber’s insight into the contents and merits of his books is admirable. In his copy of Tatham’s Ostella, 1650, he draws our attention to the author’s Ode to Lovelace on his journey into Holland, and adds, ‘It must have been written before his marriage. The Prologue on the removal of the Cockpit has not been hitherto noticed, and on the next page is a mention of a Play called “The Whisperer; or, what you please,” of which this is the only record.’

These extracts might be indefinitely extended; but in a volume not intended for merely bibliographical purposes the foregoing citations may suffice to establish Heber’s intelligent and painstaking treatment of his books and to explain the stress which I laid on his Catalogue in my younger days as one of the leading resources in an attempt to remodel, on an improved and enlarged plan, our national stores.