CHAPTER XIII
ODDS AND ENDS
ODDS and ends! The compiler of a volume of this sort is sure to find plenty of these,—scraps worth putting in somewhere, yet not coming precisely under any particular head. In the first place, 'Portrait' book-plates claim attention. We have seen that they exist, but, alas! that they are so few; for, to any reasonable person, members of the Heralds' College, of course, excepted, a man's features are certainly more interesting than his armorial bearings. In England, Sam. Pepys adopted the style, which was not then unknown on the Continent. Pirckheimer perhaps originated it, by placing, as I have already said, a portrait of himself at the end of the volumes, which contained his now familiar book-plate by Dürer on the front cover; and there are many other early foreign examples. One of the most conspicuous is the bust-portrait of John Vennitzer, of Nuremberg, engraved by Pfann, and dated in 1618, to which I have already alluded ([p. 140]). Pepys used to place the small variety of his portrait book-plate—that figured opposite—at the commencement of many of his books, and that showing his interwoven initials ('the little plate for my books') at the end. Both his portrait book-plates are by White. I have failed to find any allusion in his Diary to the engraving of these book-plates, though, as we have seen, he refers to the preparation of another (see [p. 8]). He very likely took the idea of a 'Portrait' book-plate from that which Faithorne, either in or soon after 1670, prepared to place in the volumes left by good Bishop Hacket to Cambridge (see [p. 201]).
It is possible that we have a portrait in the figure on the book-plate, already noticed, of Louis Bosch, a clergyman of Tamise, near Antwerp; but the head is too small to afford an interesting likeness. The priest sits at a table in his study, the walls of which are lined with volumes, and beneath him is written in Latin: 'A hunt in such a forest never wearies,'—the 'forest being,' as Lord De Tabley observes, 'the rows and ranks of his reverence's books.' In France the 'Portrait' book-plate is not uncommon; that of a French clergyman, Francis Perrault, figured opposite, is a nice piece of work, and bears the date 1764; but portraits, possibly or indeed probably, of the owners occur on French book-plates at an earlier date. In Italy there is an example in 1760, the book-plate of Filippo Linarti.
An instance of the use of the 'Portrait' book-plate in England during the last century is afforded by that of 'Jacobus Gibbs, Architectus, 1736,' which is found in the architectural books bequeathed by the possessor to the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, a building which he designed. James Gibbs was born at Aberdeen in 1674, but came south early in his career, and Londoners may see examples of his work in the churches of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and St. Mary le Strand. He also built the Senate House at Cambridge. He died in 1754. On his book-plate, which is oblong in shape and might well form the head-piece to a preface, the portrait appears in a medallion, surrounded by shell and scroll-work. The engraver, who signs his initials B. B., was Bernard Baron, a Frenchman, who came to England in 1736 and engraved Hogarth's portrait of Gibbs.