The Library [6]
when your collection is sold after your death." And he kept his word. The fever of gambling is not absent from the auction-room, and people "bid jealous" as they sometimes "ride jealous" in the hunting-field. Yet, the neophyte, if he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle. The chamber has the look of a rather seedy "hell." The crowd round the auctioneer's box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany, they would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour. Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked down for trifling sums. Let the neophyte try his luck, however, and prices will rise wonderfully. The fact is that the sale is a "knock out." The bidders are professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to distribute them afterwards among themselves. Thus an amateur can have a good deal of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper value, and by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to "run him up." The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the owner of the books. A bidder must be able to command his temper, both that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to bid recklessly, and that he may disregard the not very carefully concealed sneers of the professionals.
In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the collector. One man is for bibles, another for ballads. Some pursue plays, others look for play bills. "He was not," says Mr. Hill Burton, speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, "he was not a black- letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early-English dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old brown calf man, or a Grangerite, {1} or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt topper, or a marbled insider, or an editio princeps man." These nicknames briefly dispose into categories a good many species of collectors. But there are plenty of others. You may be a historical-bindings man, and hunt for books that were bound by the great artists of the past and belonged to illustrious collectors. Or you may be a Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical "Marginalia." Or you may covet the earliest editions of modern poets--Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson, or even Ebenezer Jones. Or the object of your desires may be the books of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830. Or, being a person of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country histories. Again, your heart may be set on the books illustrated by Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century. Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and for the books of the Giunta press. In fact, as many as are the species of rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of collectors. There is one sort of men, modest but not unwise in their generations, who buy up the pretty books published in very limited editions by French booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and Jouaust. Already their reprints of Rochefoucauld's first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the lyrics attributed to Moliere, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch high prices in the market. By a singular caprice, the little volumes of Mr. Thackeray's miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their old modest price is increased twenty fold. It is not always easy to account for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting there are certain definite laws. "Why do you pay a large price for a dingy, old book," outsiders ask, "when a clean modern reprint can be procured for two or three shillings?" To this question the collector has several replies, which he, at least, finds satisfactory. In the first place, early editions, published during a great
In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the collector. One man is for bibles, another for ballads. Some pursue plays, others look for play bills. "He was not," says Mr. Hill Burton, speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, "he was not a black- letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early-English dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old brown calf man, or a Grangerite, {1} or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt topper, or a marbled insider, or an editio princeps man." These nicknames briefly dispose into categories a good many species of collectors. But there are plenty of others. You may be a historical-bindings man, and hunt for books that were bound by the great artists of the past and belonged to illustrious collectors. Or you may be a Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical "Marginalia." Or you may covet the earliest editions of modern poets--Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson, or even Ebenezer Jones. Or the object of your desires may be the books of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830. Or, being a person of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country histories. Again, your heart may be set on the books illustrated by Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century. Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and for the books of the Giunta press. In fact, as many as are the species of rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of collectors. There is one sort of men, modest but not unwise in their generations, who buy up the pretty books published in very limited editions by French booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and Jouaust. Already their reprints of Rochefoucauld's first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the lyrics attributed to Moliere, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch high prices in the market. By a singular caprice, the little volumes of Mr. Thackeray's miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their old modest price is increased twenty fold. It is not always easy to account for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting there are certain definite laws. "Why do you pay a large price for a dingy, old book," outsiders ask, "when a clean modern reprint can be procured for two or three shillings?" To this question the collector has several replies, which he, at least, finds satisfactory. In the first place, early editions, published during a great