NUMBER 3.

SPRING, 1900.

NOTICE.

E have visited nearly all of the book collections named in the following monograph, and have inspected a vast number of the books mentioned. In some instances our information was obtained through persons specially commissioned by us for the purpose; in others, we have only a statement prepared by the owner; in cases where it was inexpedient for us to visit in consequence of the distance, sample volumes have been sent us, that is, one volume of each important set, and we have accepted the statement of the owner for the balance. It had been our original intention to give an account of the origin or beginning and development of each collection. This we soon found to be impracticable. These accumulations of extra-illustrated books were commenced by and grew to their present magnitude under the fostering care of their present owners; yet, on inquiring of them, not one seemed to have any clear conception as to when or how he first began to accumulate material with the intention of illustrating books. We believe that in the earlier times prints were collected purely for the love of them, and without any notion of illustrating books with them. It was so with us, and we could not with historic certainty fix the period when we first availed ourselves of prints for the purpose of illustrating the text of a book. The institution of privately illustrating is of too recent an origin for a history. The greater part of the work (extra illustrating) in this country has been accomplished within the past fifteen years. There were but very few engaged in it thirty years ago, and forty-five years ago we may say none. We also know that John Allan of New York, Mr. Dreer and Dr. Koecker of Philadelphia, and Mr. Moreau, of New York, have been enthusiasts in this work a very long time. I also know that there were many

people selecting and purchasing prints fifty years. ago, but for what purpose I have never ascertained. Nearly all of them are dead now, and I have not heard of their having illustrated any books.

I know one man, however, whose record as a print-collector goes far back, and who is still alive and still collecting. I do not believe that he ever illustrated any books. Many years ago his face became familiar to me in the old haunts where prints were sold, and I occasionally meet him now. We have never spoken and I never knew his name. He took offense at what he considered an unfair advantage on my part in obtaining a print which he wanted, and I think he hates me yet. This, however, is a problem for the moralist, and we shall not arraign it for adjudication before this tribunal.

The history of privately illustrated books is not unlike any other history; it cannot be written during the lifetime of its principal actors.

The nucleus around which this volume grew to its present dimensions was a lecture delivered before the Rembrandt Club of Brooklyn, December 8, 1880. We have deemed it advisable to retain this lecture nearly intact as a prefatory chapter. The dates and periods, however, have been made to conform to this publication.

The

The description of some of the collections is monotonous and a little cataloguey. In all cases, however, in which the owners were consulted the methods adopted were approved by them. facts were generally taken down in the libraries with the books before us, and from the memoranda there taken transcribed for these pages with little or no alteration, except that in some large collections the description of individual books has been abbreviated. No effort has been made to give undue significance to or withhold deserving praise from any collection, but all have been treated according to

our best judgment, on their merits. In many instances our time would not permit taking down the volumes with the same detail as in others. This has resulted in treating some small collections more fully than larger ones. Again, some owners were not altogether pleased with the publicity we proposed giving their private collections, and very properly insisted upon dictating the description of their books. There are many delightful volumes, principally in large collections, passed over hurriedly, to our regret; and yet some collections were visited as many as three times.

We have been specially solicitous to obtain collections from the outlying districts, whether large or small; they serve a purpose with us of determining the extent of the prevalence of the illustrating passion. Consequently we may have given an importance to collections of distant places which would command but little attention in the great cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

We have deemed it unnecessary to give verbatim titles to well-known works, and have clothed them generally in their every-day garments.

CHAPTER I.

Gentlemen of the Rembrandt Club:

The invitation which has brought me before you this evening, in the capacity of essayist, was to give my experience in the seductive art of privately illustrating books.

One prefatory word, therefore, as to personal experiences; for, though I am not so daintily endowed as to be deemed axiomatically modest, nor

I Probably no man ever lived who has done more to stimulate this department of art than he whose name has been assumed by this club.

A descriptive catalogue of the prints of Rembrandt, by an amateur, 1836, has been illustrated by inserting Rembrandt's own works.

"Rembrandt and his Works," by Burnet, 1859, has been many times illustrated.

One of the first privately illustrated books I remember ever having seen was a Dutch book about Rembrandt, by Immerzeel or Nagler. It was illustrated by reproduced and some original works of Rembrandt. This I saw at Nunan's, in Nassau street, New York, about forty years ago.

Nor can it be otherwise than that there should be a great desire to possess works so desirable, not only as works of art, but also for their great commercial value.

Passing over the 100-guilder print of Rembrandt, which at its last sale fetched nearly $6,000, "One of the next best evidences of the effect of a man's culture upon the age is the money value which attaches to his works. The most wonderful instance of this is Rembrandt's 'Sleeping Dog,' sketched in the corner of a plate, measuring about four inches and a quarter wide by two and a half high, and afterwards cut down to three and a quarter by one and a half inches. Only one impression is known, which was sold at Mr. Hibbert's sale, 1809, for $7.50. The Duke of Buckingham subsequently obtained it for $30. At his sale in 1834 it brought $305, and in 1841 the British Museum paid $600 for it a little over $130 per square inch."-Hammerton, Etching and Etchers, p. 81.

so apathetic of praise as to be indifferent to applause, still I have a consciousness of the insignificant space occupied by the pronoun "I" in the English dictionary, and, on the other hand, of the usual obstrusive and ostentatious pretenses of the first person singular, notwithstanding Descartes has made it the column around which he has fabricated his great system of philosophy; Cogito, ergo sum, and nothing else is.

To present to you the starved and meager compend, the individual gleanings merely of a great subject, while the broader, more fertile, and more cultivated fields of equally easy access beyond the personal domain are inviting us to the harvest, would be an injustice to you and a parade of indefensible conceit in me.

There is a natural egotism or self-glorification in the relation of one's own achievements, even when never so modestly told; and more especially is this true in the present case, where the individual achievements are dwarfed by comparison with and proximity to the grander and more princely productions of the more cultured and more favored by fortune.

Not that I would in the least degree discourage modest individual effort, nor a just and emulous pride in one's own productions, however unpretentious; for the pleasure is no less keen (indeed, it is probably much keener) with the humble devotee than with those more bountifully endowed with the omnipotent dollar. There is at least one wholesome truth pervading all human endeavor after happiness; it is that the racy enjoyments of this life are those enjoyments in the attainment of which there have been an exertion and a force expended. The pleasure derived from this consecrated which so enhances the achievement of the booklover, cannot be bought with money; to him his achievement is not mere property-it is a laurel wreath of victory. "And bind it upon the plow," said Pliny.

energy,

One of the great reasons why the garrulous Dibdin's riotings among rare and valuable books are, after all, so devoid of genuine interest to the real lover, is that he occupied himself, to a great degree, in catering for men with measureless purses; hence his writings have the patrician odor of "plush linings, ""crushed levant," "spotless India proof before letter," and editions de luxe, rather than the more plebian smell of "old book-stalls," "cellars," and "hogskin."

More celebrity has attached to the finder of an entombed literary nugget, amid the accumulated dust and filth of ages (which nothing short of the keenness of scent, the latent sagacity of the persistent "book-hunter" would have brought to the light of day), than the quiet enjoyment of all that could be bought with the wealth of Croesus. The works of Aristotle, which have more influence on the

human mind than any other writings in existence, owe their discovery-after having been lost two hundred years to an old book-collector named Apellicon, who will never be forgotten while Aristotle lasts. The priceless volumes of Quintilian, rotten with damp, amid filth and dirt, were unearthed by Poggio, equally immortal.1 The commentaries and orations of Cicero were found under similar circumstances, begrimed, corroded, and soiled. This is also true of the annals of Tacitus, which lay in darkness until the fifteenth century.

The first book printed in England was "The Game of Chesse," by William Caxton, in 1474. A book-hunter nicknamed Snuffy Davy2 found at an old book-stall in Holland an only copy of this book, which he bought for two pence stirling, and which

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I The works of Aristotle were found in a cellar by Apellicon, a book-collector of Teos, where they had been hid by Neleus and forgotten. For two hundred years the precious documents remained in their subterranean prison. When found, damp, moths, and worms had made great inroads upon them, but Apellicon had them immediately copied, and hence the preservation of these writings, which have had more influence on the human mind than any other writings in existence. There are many strange stories of the finding of manuscripts, such as the history of the "War of Ilium, Geoffrey of Monmouth's story of Gaultier's discovery of the Cimbric volume," "Chatterton's discovery of Rowley's Poems," and "Ireland's discovery of the Vortigern." But let us turn to the more historical. In a dark and filthy dungeon, begrimed with dirt and rotten with damp, Poggio found the priceless works of Quintilian. Groping about in the same noisome cavern, he rescued the first three books and part of the fourth of the “Argonautica " of Valerius Flaccus. Many of Cicero's orations were discovered under similar circumstances lurking in out-of-the-way places, where they had been hid to escape the despoiler. The grand and glorious masterpiece of Lucretius was found in a monastery. Many other classics, among them Plautus, Tacitus, Manilius, Petronius, and Arbiter, were stumbled upon in the monasteries of Germany. Propertius, the prince of the Latin elegiac poets, had a narrow escape indeed. The manuscript, and, there is reason to believe, the only manuscript that contained his poems, was found stained, squalid, and crumpled under the casks in a wine cellar. In Westphalia a monk came accidentally upon the histories of Tacitus, and to this happy chance we are indebted for one of the most priceless volumes of antiquity, a work which has had more influence on modern prose literature than any other single book in the world. The most interesting treatise which Cicero has bequeathed to us was discovered amid a heap of refuse and rubbish near Milan, by a bishop of Lodi, early in the fifteenth century, and the only valuable manuscript of Dioscorides was when found in a similar state, so thoroughly riddled by insects, says Lambecins, that one would have scarcely stooped to pick it up. Livy, or rather what remains of him, was picked up piecemeal. One of Horace's odes was found sticking to an early impression of Cicero's "Offices." Part of the "Odyssey" (300 lines) was found grasped in the hands of a mummy.

2 Davie Wilson, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, was called Snuffy Davy. He was the prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls for rare volumes. He would detect for you an old black-letter ballad among the leaves of a law paper, and find an editio princeps under the mask of a school Corderius.

he sold to Osborne, a London bookseller, for $100. Osborne sold it to Dr. Anthony Askew for $320, and at Dr. Askew's sale it was purchased for $850, for the Royal Library, where it will ever remain.1 Should another perfect copy of this book turn up, heaven only knows what it would fetch. Quaritch, a London book-seller, has now an imperfect copy, for which his price is $2,000.2 I might animadvert upon the gems which have been resurrected by the book-hunter from the basement of William Gowans, in Nassau street, New York. Of choice books, however, Mr. Joseph Sabin, also of Nassau street, undoubtedly kept, during a period of ten years, from 1865 to 1875, the finest stock in New York.3 Gowans probably had the largest collection of its kind in the world. And some of these restored volumes in princely wardrobes, still retaining the genuine perfume of time are now the pride of the Lenox Library. The many anecdotes related of Mr. Gowans will not be transmitted here. But were we called upon to advance advice to novitiates in book-hunting out of the storehouse of our knowledge obtained through personal attrition with old-book sellers generally, and the like of Mr. Gowans specially, we should say that of all the places known to us an oldbook store is probably the most hazardous in which to make an ostentatious display of your learningyou are never quite sure of your audience. Many a

1 And we all remember Sir Walter's quiet satire on the book-collecting race in the mock heroics which he puts into the mouth of Jonathan Oldbuck: "Happy, thrice happy Snuffy Davy, and blessed were the times when thy industry could be thus rewarded."

2 The questions, "What becomes of all the books?" "Who are the great biblioclasts?" are certain to be asked by the inquisitive reader at some stage of this lecture, and they may as well be answered here as elsewhere. I would refer the inquirer to a beautiful little book, published in 1880, by Trübner & Co., London, "The Enemies of Books, by William Blades, in which he enumerates and devotes Chapter I. to Fire as one of the enemies, Chapter II. to Water, Chapter III. to Gas and Heat, Chapter IV. to Dust and Neglect, Chapter V. to Ignorance, Chapter VI. to The Book Worm, Chapter VII. to Other Vermin, Chapter VIII. to Bookbinders, Chapter IX. to Collectors. With all these and many other enemies, is it at all surprising that whole editions have passed into the realms of the unknowable?

3 Mr. Sabin's knowledge was probably greater than that of any man in this country, and his fame extended to all the book-markets of the world. He was an Englishman, born in Hampshire, in 1821. He died leaving the great work of his life unfinished. It was a dictionary of all the books ever published relating to America. In alphabetic order he had reached "Pa"; his strong desire to live was associated with the completion of this work. The task was colossal. Mr. Sabin's son succeeded him in the business, or in that department relating specially to prints.

4 There are at this moment books to be purchased for trivial sums which will eventually be worth their weight in gold; this much we know from a contemplation of the fact; but to identify them among the mass of extant worthless literature pitched into your lap in railroad cars, and rained upon you at the stations, requires a shrewder discernment than we possess.