The Confessions of a Collector

for Me-His Irritability-A Strange Tale about an Unique Tract-The Old Gentleman and the Immoral Publication-Dryden's Copy of Spenser-Th

nd One, which Pickering had, and sold to Me-He has a First Edition of

he now and then resisted my overtures; but as a rule he gave way on my undertaking to pay his price. I owed to him a large number of eminently rare volumes, of which he did not always appreciate the full significance. I could sp

Squire Meldrum, 1594, and Verstegan's Odes, 1601, both books of the highest rarity, and the Lyndsay unexceptionable, but the other horribly oil-stained. I exchanged the Withals for twenty guineas, and the remaining two for thirty more. The first was in the original binding, and it was not for me to disturb it; but the Scotish book and the Odes I committed to Riviere. He made a grimace, when h

ller and Ouvry. He was ambidexter; for he executed a vast amount of modern binding for the trade, and wa

ld not be found. I called two or three times, and Riviere at last exclaimed: 'Damn the thing; what do you want for it?'-pulling out his cheque-book. I replied tha

us mor?eau found its way to a stall-keeper in London, who confidently appraised it at one shilling. He had occasional proposals for it, but they never topped the moiety; and he at last carried it to Edward Stibbs in Museum Street, and told him that, if he could not get his price, he would burn it. Stibbs behaved in a truly princely manner by handing him half-a-crown.

ent, he demanded of him with a very grave air whether he was acquainted with the nature of the publication, which he had sold to him. As Ellis hardly collected his drift, and seemed to await a farther disclosure, he added, 'That is a most indecent book, sir.' Ellis expressed his sorrow, and e

f competition. It was his way, and not altogether a bad one, of gauging the market, and supplying his own deficiencies at other people's expense. But Addington occasionally bought prints of his friend Mrs Noseda, on whose judgment he implicitly relied, and now and then he took

ever heard the origin of his career as a collector. He was somewhat before my time. But I ascribed his peculiarly fitful method of buying to uncer

said in a tone, which suggested the presence of a pebble in his mouth, that he was 'Mr Murray Re-Printer.' This person was the predecessor of Pr

s, which he sold for ￡35 to Trinity College, Cambridge, having got it at an auction for ￡1, where it was entered in the catalogue without a word; nor did I venture to stand between Mr Huth and him in the case of

de, and that, again, for a yet worse one-drink. Many valuable volumes passed thro

ock of Bottesford Manor, and without reflection I tried, standing on Tom Tiddler's ground, to dissuade him from his project in the hearing of Ellis, and to let me have the refusal for Mr Huth. It was a beautiful little book, The School of Virtue, the second part, 1619, and unique. To the Museum it

in. He pleasantly declined, and I was astonished the next morning to receive from him a fierce epistle enjoining me to restore to him instantly the book, which I had taken. I contented myself with writing him a line, to intimate that I had not the volume, and that I thought when he found it, he would be sorry that he had expressed his views in such a manner. I heard no more from him, till, a few days subsequently in my absence, he called on me, and asked to see my wife, and to her he declared his extreme regret at what had occurred, and announced the discovery of the lost

afterward distinguished him, and which one is surprised to find in a person of considerable worldly resources-in other words, with something to lose. I bought a copy of his Earthly Paradise, when i

nd empirical; they might do very well for wall-papers. I must not be too sure; but I should imagine that any one, who is familiar with the early printed books illustrated by engravings of whatever kind, would be apt to take th

. Swinburne. I have come across the latter elsewhere; but Cruikshank whom my grandfather had known so well, a short, square-

ctors of the day, and I obtained from him a few very rare volumes, including a copy of England's Helicon, quarto, 1600, which he had found in a bundle at Sotheby's in 1857, shortly after the realisation of ￡31 at the same rooms for one at the Wolfreston sale. He gave ￡1 for this but it was not very fine, and like the Wolfreston and every other known copy, except Malone's in the Bodleian, wanted, as I subsequently discovered, the last leaf. P

d him to the number of those who assisted me in carrying out, through Mr Huth and a few others, my interminable task of cataloguing the entire corpus, with very slight reservations, of our early national

a recommendation in the case of one, who knew comparatively little of the selling value, and to whom cheapness was not the slightest object. The pamphlet in question was the pioneer of many scores of articles of the highest rarity and interest, which found their way through the same channel to the ultimate possessor. Among them was a curious copy in the original calf binding with many uncut leaves of Taylor the Water Poet's works, 1630, formerly belonging to Charles Cotton

let me have the book after all for ￡2, 2s., or throw it at my head. He did the former, and an American agent begged me as a favour to let him pay me double the money, which, as I thought him to be in jest, I declined. I subsequently parted with it to Pickering for ￡2, 12s. 6d., which was about the prevailing tariff thirty years since. I may take the pr

the distant hope of completing them. Yet he held his ground, and gradually enlarged his premises, till they were among the