The Confessions of a Collector

ne Collier and Frederic Ouvry, His Son-in-Law-The Millers of Craigentinny-'Inch-rule' Miller-He purchases at the Heber Sale by Cartloads-My Efforts to procure Particulars of all

ar Interest in My Eyes-His Personal Character-The Sad Change in the Book Market since Corser's Day-Mr Samuel Sanders-A Curious Incident-Mr Cosens, Mr Turner and Mr Lawrence-Their Characteristics-Some Account of M

other that of Title-taking. Of my purely literary work, which is not unknown to a few, I may say that the proportion of pot-boilers is not unreasonably large; it might have been larger, had I not chosen as an alternative to turn to account my conversance with old books as a moyen de parvenir, but during all the term of my relationship with Mr Huth I was incessantly engaged in storing up notes on the volumes, which came and which went, against an opportunity for p

her objects of general interest, to proceed, after furnishing the previous sketch of Mr Huth and my participation in his experiences as a collector, with s

rature without having any solid convictions of his own. The best part of his library consisted of books which he had purchased from his connexion by marriage, and which the latter had obtained more or less accidentally in the course of his prolonged career. Ouvry, however, did not get all. For in a note to myself, Collier expressly says that his unique copy of Constable's Diana, 1592, was exchanged by him with Heber for

the sobriquet of Inch-rule or Measure Miller, because he invariably carried with him the means of comparing the height of any book with which he met against his own; and if the new one had a superior altitude, out went the shorter specimen to make room for the more Millerian example. At the Heber sale, this gentleman saw his opportunity, and used it well. The bibliophobia had set in; prices were depressed, so far as the early English poetry

nd exhaustive footing, I jesuitically availed myself of the periodical consignments of books to Riviere for binding; and, with the leave of the latter, took notes of everything in his hands. Mr Christie-Miller himself vouchsafed me a certain amount of information, and from David Laing I derived many ot

n Pearson's in York Street, and found him from home; but I waited for him on the doorstep, and presently he arrived with two folio volumes under his arm. I asked him what he had got there. 'Why,' said he, 'two lots which were sold separately to-day at Sotheby's as "Old Newspapers, etc."' And he handed them to me, as I stood by him outside his shop. I glanced at the contents, and inqui

class schools and a university, and who had (like his father) an imperfect acquaintance not only with literature but with grammar. He was phenomenally ignorant and dull, like his parent. All three at present lie seventy feet beneath the ground, near H

r the vendors to his bankers. Mr Corser, on the contrary, was a man of very limited resources, and found it a difficult task now and then to keep pace with the desiderata submitted to his notice by the booksellers and auctioneers. I know as a fact that at the Bright sale in 1845, which must have marked a comparatively early stage in his bibliographical career, he was obliged to pay five per cent to the agent (Thorpe or Rodd), who bought for him; and his bill was not far from ￡1000. Altogether his fine and interesting library cost him, as he told me, ￡9000; and it realised about ￡20,000, chiefly owing to the competition of the B

rds crammed with volumes. I paid repeated visits here, and enjoyed the free range of everything which I desired to examine, provided that my excellent friend could put his hand on it. He had to light a candle on one occasion to hunt for a Caxton in a bedroom cupboar

nd who, as a younger man, enjoyed the genteel recreation of angling, and in his maturer life relished good wine and good talk. When I think of the Rector of Stand, and look at most of the circle which at present constitutes the book-collecting world, and governs the market, I p

extensive collections to one of the Colleges. I knew him very slightly. But, not long before his death, I was in the room at Sotheby's and expressed to a stranger my regret at having missed the day before an unique Wynk

Huth's. His line of collecting was, on the whole, a little outside my speciality or specialities, and Mr Lawrence was mainly associated in my mind as a member of a literary club to which I sometimes went as my father's guest. He was a subscriber to some of my literary enterprises, and I thence learned that he was F.S.A., a

that was of inferior account, from the incessant absorption of valuable MSS. by public libraries, Mr Cosens succeeded in obtaining a fair number of interesting and even important items, particularly an ancient codex on vellum of the Prick of Conscience, and a volume of Elizabethan lyrics, which I bought at an auction, unbound, and for which Mr Christie-Miller gave me some Roman parchment to enable Riviere to clothe it in a becoming style. This book contained Amoris Lachrym? and other poems by Nicholas Breton, printed in his Bower of Delights, 1591. Boone valued it at ￡60, but I gave ￡1

he Four Generations of a Literary Family. During a few years, and prior to the preparation and issue of his privately-printed catalogue, I saw a good de

autiful one in the original vellum wrapper, and had the duplicate at ￡6. I sold it to Ellis for ￡12, and he charged Locker ￡21. The latter upbraided me, who had no knowledge of his views, with making him pay ￡9 more than was necessary! He always struck me as a most unfortunate purchaser; and there was about him a flaccidity, which made him appear inconsistent and insincere. He gave an exorbitant price for a most wretched imperfect copy of Barnfield's Poems, 1598, and he actually paid highl

whose brand-new catalogue had appeared a nugget to his taste. This phase of the book-fancier's career, by the way, has its curious side. Such a thing has been known as for the publisher of a list of old books to lard

sly looked for, and at last printed, only to create a murmur of surprise at the almost total absence of interest and point. The contents of the Locker volume might have been imparted to the public with the most complete immunity from consequences in the writer's life-time-the