The Confessions of a Collector

's Sale-A Frost-I buy All the Best Lots for a Trifle-The Volume of Occasional Forms of Prayer and Its History-Pyne's Personal Career and Relations-His Investigation of the Affairs of a Noble Family-Th

llis and the Corser Sale-My Successful Tactics-He lends m

ble for me to render them subservient to my all-engrossing design, were Mr Henry Pyne, Assistan

ances led him to restrict himself to the limit laid down by Maitland in his Lambeth Catalogue. I worked very hard at Mr Pyne's office in St James's Square, and at his private house, at the stores he had brought together on this rather hard-and-fast principle; to me, as a bibliographer, the extrinsic merits of the copies were immaterial, and I owed to my estimable and thenceforward life

ss constrained and formal than that with Mr Huth, and I regarded Mr Pyne as my benefactor in his way to an equal extent. The financial strength of the former placed him in a position which was not altogether natural, although I am far from thinking that he failed to fill the rank, to which his wealth entitled him, with dignity and judgment. It was, indeed, due to Mr Huth's half involuntary s

od of Mr Huth's collecting fancy, and it occurred to me one day to ascertain from Mr Pyne, if possible, how it stood with the property. He said that he was meditating the sale of the boxful to someone. What did it contain? He could not recollect exactly, but there wer

with an ardour for the monuments of the Civil War period, gave me ￡20 for the refuse. But Mr Pyne was once or twice tempted by my offers for books in his own series, and I had from him, among others, Th

one Lane he had seen Cocker's Decimal Arithmetic, 1685 (first edition), marked eighteenpence.

m I thought that I could trust, and he got me at nominal prices all the rarest lots, comprising a few of the gems in the English historical series, and some absolutely unique. I cannot divine how it so chanced; but about ￡16 placed me in possession of all I wanted. One item my agent missed, and I had to hunt down the acquirer, who gave it up to me at a trifling advance. The Museum soon afterw

but I was not just then in a buying humour; and it passed into other hands. But it was the identical collection of Occasional Forms of Prayer of the time of Elizabeth, in spotless state, with the autograph of Humphrey Dyson on nearly every title-page, which had been missing eve

in great measure, so that he never became master of many volumes of first-rate consequence. He told me that the rise in the figures for rare early literature at the Bright sale in 1

husband necessitated her lover's desperate leap out of the window. One of his daughters married our Resident in Cashmere, and she was, when I met her in London, regretting the rule

yn owned the moor on which the town of Llandudno was subsequently built; and I have mentioned that he owned a splendid library and collection of antiquit

quest of an additional book-case, and that a dealer approached him with an offer of his services. He explained his object, and pointed to the article he had come to view. The dealer begged to k

eph Lilly, Bernard Quaritch, F. S. Ellis, B. M. Pickering, John Pearson and his successors, Messrs J. Pearson & Co., and Willis & Sotheran. My transactions with the Wallers, the Rimells, the Walfords, Reeves & Turner, Edward Stibbs, John Salkeld, and some of the provincial dealers, have also been a source o

rd Street, and when I contracted my humble liability with him, and accidentally brushed elbows with Mr Huth once or twice, neither of them foresaw how strongly I should influence the library of the latter, or how I should find it practicable to select from Lilly's shelves many scores of rare volumes with a view to their translation to his own particular clie

ow whether it possessed value or not. He left behind him a large stock, which was publicly sold, and of which I was a purchaser here and there. It struck me as a curious trait in a man who had much natural shrewdness that he allowed many volumes of the rarest character to remain on his shelves, when they might have been with very slight trouble converted into money. Under the hammer they commanded prices which paid homage to the departed owner's supposed capability of placing everything to the best advantage; the trade hung off a good deal; and Lilly was not popular, besides. The B

occupied, and still occupies in the hands of a son. The Daniel books had been collected under specially favourable circumstances. They were selected at leisure during a period of over thirty years from auction-room and book-shop, whenever an item, which struck their proprietor's practical instinct as a safe and desira

Ba

tion of the Bo

crece,

's Love's M

confidential servant of the Tollemaches, from Helmingham Hall, Bentley, the Suffolk seat of that ancient family. But when I consider the numberless precious volumes, which have dropped, so to speak, into my hands, coming, as I of course did, at a far less auspicious juncture, I arrive at the conclusion, not t

ted with a similar amount of ignorance or credulity, since there probably never was one circulated with so many unfounded or hyperbolical assertions, from the time that Messrs Sotheby & Co. first started in business. If the means are justified by the end, however, the retired accountant had calculated well; the bait, which h

e, which it neither was nor is. One of the best which I have seen was that sold at Sotheby's for Miss Napier of Edinburgh through the recommendation of Mr Pyne aforesaid, who admonished the lady to put a reserve of ￡100 on it. This was wholesome advice, for it was put in at that figure, and the only advance was ￡1 from a member of a solid ring opposite to myself, who had looked in from curiosity to see how the bidding went. At ￡101 it would have fallen a prey to the junto; it

body desires it. The auctioneers have a stereotyped note to the effect that the first Shakespear is yearly becoming more difficult to procure, which may be so, but simply because, although fresh copies periodicall

s was so bewildering, that I got nearly everything which I had marked. It was before the day, when Mr Quaritch asserted himself so emphatically and so irrepressibly, and John Pearson was not yet very pronounced in his opposition. I had therefore to count only on Lilly and Ellis, apart from the orders of the British Museum through Boone. By employing Ellis I subst

5, with the autograph of Lucy, Lady Lyttelton. Two copies occurred in successive lots, the large paper first; the others did not notice the difference in size, till I had bought the rare variety, and then Lilly, holding the usual sort of copy in his hand, and turning round to the porter, asked h

suggested that they should be sold together. The price was ￡31; but most unfortunately they both proved imperfect, so that my hope of obtaining a rich pri

not very conversant with these matters, and his leading counsellor had much to learn. I retain to this hour a foolish regret, that I permitted Mr Christie-Miller to carry off anything, but I am sufficiently patriotic to be glad, that the British Museum was so successful. I have in my mind's eye the long rows of old quarto tracts as they lay together, while Mr Rye, the then keeper,

iotheca Anglo-poetica, on the blank pages of which Freeling had often recorded the sources, whence he procured his rare books at a very different tariff from that prevailing in Longman & Co.'s catalogue. It may not be generally known that this eminent collector, whose curious library was sold in 1836, enjoyed through his official position at the General Post Office peculia