Book-stamp of Michael Wodhull.
His splendid library, which was a great consolation and pleasure to him in the solitude of the last years of his life, was particularly rich in early editions of the Greek and Latin classics, and in works printed in the fifteenth century. All the books—many of which were bound by Roger Payne—were in fine condition, and some of them had once formed part of the libraries of Francis I., Grolier, Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers, Longepierre, and other famous French collectors, and were bound by such fine craftsmen as Boyet, Derome, Monnier, etc. The covers of the volumes bound for Wodhull are mostly impressed with a stamp of his arms, impaled with those of his wife. A portion of Wodhull's books, principally duplicates, was sold by Leigh, Sotheby and Son, of York Street, Covent Garden, at two sales in 1801 and 1803. The first sale consisted of a thousand and fifty-nine lots, which realised three hundred and sixty-one pounds, ten shillings; and the second of one thousand six hundred and thirty-nine lots, for which the sum of eight hundred and fifteen pounds was obtained. The remainder of the library appears to have been kept at Thenford until 1886, when Mr. J.E. Severne, M.P., to whom it had descended, determined to part with it, and it was sold by Wilkinson, Sotheby and Hodge on January 11th, 1886, and nine following days. There were two thousand eight hundred and four lots in the sale, which produced the large sum of eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-two pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence.
The following are a few of the rarest and most interesting books in this splendid collection, with the prices they fetched:—the Catholicon of Joannes Balbus, printed at Mentz in 1460, three hundred and ten pounds; Cicero de Officiis, printed at Mentz in 1466, seventy-one pounds; Tullius de Senectute et Amicitia, printed by Caxton in 1481, two hundred and fifty pounds; (a perfect copy of Caxton's Mirrour of the World was sold in the 1803 sale for thirty-eight pounds, seventeen shillings); the first edition of Homer, printed at Florence in 1488, two hundred pounds; Poliphili Hypnerotomachia, printed by Aldus in 1499, fifty-three pounds; the Aldine Virgil of 1501, one hundred and forty-five pounds; Roman de Guy de Warwick, Paris, 1525, one hundred and thirty pounds; the New Actes and Constitucionis of Parliament maid by James V., Kyng of Scottis, printed on vellum at Edinburgh in 1541, one hundred and fifty-one pounds; the Contes of La Fontaine, Amsterdam (Paris), 1762, in two small 8vo volumes, bound in red morocco, ninety-three pounds; Molière's Works, with plates by Moreau, six volumes, 1773, seventy-seven pounds.
Among the books with historical or fine bindings were Alcyonius, Medices Legatus de Exsilio, in ædib. Aldi, Venetiis, 1522, bound for Francis I., with the arms of France, the crowned initial of the king, and the salamander stamped on the covers, fifty-eight pounds; Aristotle, De Arte Poetica, Florentiæ, 1548, bound for Henry II. of France and Diana of Poitiers, with the devices of the king and his mistress on the covers, two hundred and five pounds; Crinitus, De Poetis Latinis, Florentiæ, 1505, bound for Grolier, seventy-four pounds; Irenici Germania, Hagenoæ, 1518, also bound for Grolier, sixty-two pounds; and two works by Giordano Bruno—Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante, Parigi, 1584, and La Cena de la Ceneri, 1584; the former bound in citron morocco, with a red doublé by Boyet, and the latter in a beautiful mosaic binding by Monnier, realised respectively the large sums of three hundred and sixty pounds and three hundred and sixty-five pounds.
The principal manuscripts were a copy of Dante, with a commentary by Joannes de Sarravalle, written in the years 1416-17, which sold for one hundred and fifty-one pounds; and a very beautiful Roman Breviary of the beginning of the sixteenth century, on vellum, illuminated for François de Castelnau, Archbishop of Narbonne, for which five hundred and fifteen pounds was obtained.
FRANCIS HARGRAVE, 1741?-1821
Francis Hargrave, the eminent law writer, who was born about 1741, was the son of Christopher Hargrave of Chancery Lane. He entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1760, and in 1772 he greatly distinguished himself in the Habeas Corpus case of James Sommersett, a negro. Soon afterwards he was appointed one of the king's counsel, and in 1797 he was made Recorder of Liverpool. He was also for many years Treasurer of Lincoln's Inn. In 1813, in consequence of the impaired state of Hargrave's health, his wife petitioned Parliament to purchase the fine law library which he had amassed, consisting of a considerable number of printed books and about five hundred manuscripts; and on the recommendation of a Committee of the House of Commons the collection was acquired by the Government for the sum of eight thousand pounds, and deposited in the British Museum. Edwards, in his Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, says that 'the peculiar importance of the Hargrave Collection consisted in its manuscripts and its annotated printed books. The former were about five hundred in number, and were works of great juridical weight and authority, not merely the curiosities of black-letter law. Their collector was the most eminent parliamentary lawyer of his day, but his devotion to the science of law had, to some degree, impeded his enjoyment of its sweets. During some of the best years of his life he had been more intent on increasing his legal lore than on swelling his legal profits. And thus the same legislative act which enriched the Museum Library, in both of its departments, helped to smooth the declining years of a man who had won uncommon distinction in his special pursuit.' A catalogue of the manuscripts was compiled by Sir Henry Ellis, and published in 1818. Hargrave, among other important legal works, published a new edition of State Trials from the eleventh year of Richard II. to the sixteenth of George III., in eleven volumes folio, in 1776-81; Juridical Arguments and Collections, in two volumes, in 1797-99; and Jurisconsult Exercitations, in three volumes, in 1811-13. He died on the 16th of August 1821, and was buried in Lincoln's Inn Chapel. Lord Lyndhurst, in speaking of Hargrave's great legal knowledge, declared that 'no man ever lived who was more conversant with the law of his country.'