The entire range of the earlier English and Scotish romantic, poetical, and even historical literature embraces so many items, which are either unattainable from their rarity or their cost, if they happen once in a lifetime to occur, that it may be said to be ground almost closed against the ordinary private buyer. Articles which are to be seen by the hundred in the priced catalogues of libraries dispersed twenty or thirty years since with fairly moderate figures attached to them, have, owing to severer competition from America as well as at home, either for public or private purchasers, trebled or quadrupled in value. With the more modern literature, of which the positive scarcity does not warrant this great inflation, we may reasonably look for a fall; but in the case of volumes which are really rare, it is hard to see how the chances of collectors can be improved in the future. The upshot will be, that they must be satisfied with smaller fish or modify their lines; for of old and elderly books of intrinsic value and interest there is a plentiful choice. With regard to a considerable body of Early English volumes, which formerly appeared in the catalogues of Thorpe, Rodd, the elder Pickering, and others, it is to be said that the fewness of survivors was not appreciated, and half-a-dozen public or closed libraries have absorbed them all.

It exemplifies the remarkable revolution in feeling and taste when we turn over the pages of one of William Pickering's catalogues—that for 1827—and observe a perfect set of the four folio Shakespeares, 1623-85, marked £105, while a large-paper series of Hearne's books, or of some standard edition of the classics in morocco, cost more; whereas at present the Hearnes and the classics are barely saleable at any price, and the dramatic volumes might be worth twenty times more than they brought seventy years since.

The poetical writers of the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Stuart eras have had, in a commercial sense, two or three reverses of fortune. From the period of publication down to the last quarter of the eighteenth century they were to be bought at prices little beyond waste paper, so soon as the original interest in them had subsided. The editors of Shakespeare—Pope, Hanmer, Theobald, Warburton, Capell, Steevens, Malone, Farmer, and Reed—awakened a sort of new interest in the subject, just in time to save the slender salvage of a century and a half's neglect or indifference from the mill and the kitchen-fire; and their example led to others coming upon the ground, such as West, Major Pearson, the Duke of Roxburghe, Lord Blandford, Lord Spencer, Bindley, and Heber, whose motives were primarily acquisitive. In or about 1833 a strong reaction set in, and prices fell till 1842-45, when the Bright and Chalmers sales, and the more sensible competition of the British Museum, again restored confidence and strength to the market. Since that time, our old poets have not, on the whole, suffered any marked decline, and the most recent revival is in their favour.

The Americans, it seems, call for first editions, and they have not to call twice, though they may be required to pay smartly. This new ticket owes its origin to the usual agency. One or two Transatlantic book-lovers gain the information from some source that this is the real article, that if you want fine poetry you must go to these fellows—not exactly Shakespeare and Spenser, for they had heard of them before—but to Gascoigne, Sydney, Herrick, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, and the rest of the company; and above all, if you desire to enjoy their beauties and appreciate their genius fully and absolutely, you are referred to the editio princeps—not that which the author corrected and preferred, but the one in morocco extra, which your bookseller recommends to you.

It is by no means that we seek to ridicule or discourage the pursuit, but we want and wish to see a more healthy and discriminating spirit among buyers. Let intending collectors devote a reasonable time to a preparatory study of the subject and survey of the field and then they will perhaps accomplish better results at a lower cost. Let them, once more, not be in too violent a hurry. The abundance of transmitted writings in a metrical shape only proves more conclusively the familiar fact that it is as easy to compose verses as it is difficult to compose poetry. The long succession of authors who fall within the category of poets has received an extent of editorial care and illustration in the course of the century, however, which argues the prevalence of a more favourable opinion of their merits. The names which are at present commanding chief notice are those which have always been esteemed: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Beaumont, Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, Wither, Sir John Davis, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; and among the Scotish bards Drummond takes the lead. The most singular feature about the matter is that, in the presence of all kinds of critical editions, the demand is not for them, but for the originals. The mission of the modern recensor comes to an end when, by a stupendous amount of research and erudition, he has emphasised the characteristics and gifts of a writer. Then the amateur steps forward, and expresses his readiness to give any price for the good old book, undisfigured by notes and emendations!

It is perhaps fruitless to attempt to turn the tide of common sentiment, and gentlemen must be permitted to choose their own money's worth. They may think and say that they want the volume as it left the author's hands, not diluted and overlaid by commentators. Granted, it is a product of the time, even though the author did not see the proofs, and the printer could not always decipher the MS. But then comes the larger and more general question: How much of the better class of early verse-writers are worth reading? The present deponent, without being conscious that he is very hyper-critical, states the deliberate result of actual examination and perusal when he affirms that of the minor poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, save perhaps Randolph, the productions of enduring value and interest could be brought within the compass of a moderate volume.

It would be eminently unwise for any one who treats his library as an investment to yield to the existing tendency to exorbitant prices for the later poets and playwrights, as the rise is due to ephemeral causes, and the demand, for the most part, is not likely to exhaust the supply. If the truth may be told, the literature of past ages in all countries, and nowhere more so than in England, is, in proportion to its immense extent, excessively barren of high-class writers or written matter. Each generation of collectors discovers this fact at last; but it discovers it for itself. We disdain to profit by the experience of our precursors, just as the little girl insisted on learning at her own cost how foolish it was to do a certain thing. Because there are a few highly interesting catholic publications, your amateur must be absolutely complete in the series. If it seems expedient to possess an example or two of ancient typography, he ends by doing his best to accumulate every example in the market. There is more than a probability that the service-books of the Romish Church have their archÆological and literary value: ergo, he orders every one which he sees advertised, albeit the differences are substantially far from momentous. He understands that some very curious volumes illustrative of ritualism and the various holy orders were printed here or abroad, and he proceeds to drain the booksellers' shelves throughout the universe of every bit of sorry stuff answering to this description. There are a dozen or so of Collections of Emblems, English or foreign, which are supposed to throw light on passages in Shakespeare and other authors; this is sufficient leverage for the concentration under the unfortunate gentleman's roof of a closely packed cartload.

Seriously and bibliographically speaking, there is a fairly wide difference and disparity among the old editions of the poets and romancists; and there are, and always will be, a distinguished minority, of which the selling prices may be expected to remain firm. Such men as Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chapman, Massinger, and among the lyric group Barnfield, Watson, Constable, Wither (earlier works and Hallelujah), Carew, Herrick, Suckling, and Lovelace, are to be viewed as standard and stable.

Then in the Scotish series there is permanence in Lyndsay, Drummond, and Burns. But, on the contrary, the minor, more obscure, or commoner productions must be carefully distinguished and circumspectly handled by those who do not desire or cannot afford to throw away their money. The names above cited are themselves very unequal; some, like Breton, Churchyard, Whetstone, Barnfield, Watson, and Constable, are sought, and will ever be sought, by reason of their peculiar rarity; and, save in a sentimental way, no one would probably dream of placing Beaumont, Chapman, Wither, and some of the rest on a par with Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger. There has been, however, a tendency to force on the notice of book-buyers, faute de mieux, many writers whose productions are neither rare nor of the first class—Heywood, Dekker, Webster, Ford, and Shirley—and to bracket them commercially with authentic desiderata either on the score of merit or of scarcity. Of the three former, the most difficult pieces to procure are the Civic Pageants. Nearly all Ford's and Shirley's works, except the Echo of the latter, 1618, are classable among common books even in the first editions.

Again, condition is a postulate which begins to assert itself in the book-market. Poor and bad copies are eschewed by many or most of those who are willing to pay handsomely for fine specimens; and the worst type of indifferent exemplars is the sophisticated volume, which can be manipulated by experts to such an extent that even a person of considerable experience will now and then be at fault. The American collector grows more fastidious every day, and discovers blemishes which we on this side of the water try to tolerate, if the article is rare or we badly want it. Our Transatlantic friends, however, are more inexorable, and go so far as to return purchases not answering the description in the auctioneer's catalogue to their English commission-agents.

We have instanced above two or three writers whose works command excessive prices mainly by virtue of the paucity of surviving copies, seconded by a faint and indirect literary interest; but we see that the list is open to extension. During the last half-century and upward the publications of Nicholas Breton have fetched sums, when they have occurred, totally incompatible with any intrinsic value; with some few exceptions they belong to the category of "three-halfpenny ware," as Chamberlain the letter-writer styles such things in his correspondence with Sir Dudley Carleton; half-a-dozen or so out of forty and more are undoubtedly curious and illustrative; but Mr. Corser and one or two other collectors made a speciality of the author. It is only the other day that Sir John Fenn's copy of Breton's Works of a Young Wit, 1577, recorded by Herbert in his Typographical Antiquities, and the only perfect one known, occurred at an auction and fetched £81! A fine book it was, too, with the blank leaf at end. Doubtless, the reason for the evanescence of Breton's literary labours is to be sought in their estimation by many, besides the letter-writer above quoted, as barely more than waste paper. Verily, their substantial worth is barely tangible.

Speaking from a connoisseur's rather than from a reader's point of view, when we leave behind us the pre-Restoration writers of Great Britain and Ireland, we do not encounter much difficulty in a commercial sense, if we consider the length of time and the almost innumerable names, excepting Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Swift's Gulliver, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, and a few early Byrons and Shelleys, unless the buyer schedules among his desiderata the earlier Anglo-American literature. For as we draw nearer to our own day, items which were thought to be superlatively uncommon, including sundry pieces by Tennyson and Browning, have failed to maintain their reputation for scarcity, as any one might have foreseen that they would do. The preposterous prices paid for some copies have brought out others, and the ultimate supply will probably exceed the demand.

Even where an English collection may not enter the Continental lines, but preserves its national character, there are numerous classes of books of foreign origin and from foreign presses, which are fairly entitled to consideration and admittance. These publications embrace not merely religious and controversial literature, but a large and important body of material for English and Scotish biography and history, and for the elucidation of Irish affairs. Every season brings to light some new features in this immense series, which is, of course, susceptible of a classifying process, and may be ranged under such sections as we have above indicated, besides a considerable residue which falls under the head of poetry and typography, the latter constituting a branch of the History of English Printing, and the former being worthy of notice as embracing some of the rarest metrical productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which owed their issue from presses in Germany and the Low Countries to various agencies, but chiefly to the exigencies of foreign military service by English and Scotish officers during the English operations in the Netherlands under Elizabeth and during the Thirty Years' War.

The foreign sources of English books, or books written by or about English, Scotish, and Irish folk, have been—

It is always to be borne in mind that these adjuncts at the foot of title-pages in troubled periods are not unfrequently fictitious; and we have elsewhere equally shown that Greenwich and Waterford are names appended to early controversial works of which the writers desired to conceal the real parentage.

Of English presses it might seem almost superfluous to speak; but in fact the typographical fortunes of London have experienced their flux and reflux. At first we find the City itself in sole possession of the industry and privilege; then Westminster came; thirdly, Southwark. Of the provincial places of origin, Oxford appears to have been the foremost, and was followed at intervals by York, Cambridge, Canterbury, Ipswich, Worcester, and other centres, of which some preserved their reputation down to comparatively recent times, while Oxford and Cambridge of course remain important and busy seats of printing. Beverley, Nottingham, Derby, Northampton, Bristol, Birmingham, Gateshead, and Newcastle-on-Tyne have never been more than occasional sources of literary production, and certain towns, such as Lincoln and Gainsborough, are only known from local or small popular efforts; there is an edition of Robin Hood's Garland with the Gainsborough imprint. One or two publications purporting to have been executed at Sherborne in Dorsetshire belong to the firm of William Bowyer of London.

There was a distinct centralising tendency at a later period, by which the English metropolis absorbed the principal share of work, and it was followed, owing to economical causes, by a reaction which we know to be at present in full force, and which has restored to the provinces, but to new localities, Bungay, Guildford, Bristol, no less than Edinburgh and Aberdeen, an appreciable proportion of the custom of the London publishing houses; nor is it unusual to send MSS. abroad for the sake of the advantage accruing from cheaper labour. We not long since secured this boon in Scotland; but Scotland has grown as dear as London.

The Scotish Series is a difficult and costly one to handle. The early vernacular literature of that country has suffered from two classes of destructive agency, neglect and fanaticism, to a greater extent than England, and the disappearance of the more popular books and tracts has been wholesale. The attempt on the part of a collector, however rich and persevering he might be, to form a complete series of original editions of the poetical and romantic writers of North Britain, could only be made in ignorance of the utter impossibility of success. The late David Laing abundantly illustrated this fact in his numerous publications, and further evidence of it may be found throughout the bibliographical works of the present writer.

The old Scotish presses were Edinburgh, Leith, St. Andrew's, Glasgow, Stirling, and Aberdeen; but a large proportion of the literary productions of Scotish authors, including much of the historical group relative to Mary Queen of Scots, proceeded from foreign places of origin, where the writers had settled or were temporarily resident.

The principal channels through which we have in modern times augmented our information of their products are the catalogues of Fraser of Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, the Duke of Roxburghe, Pitcairn, Constable, Chalmers, Maidment, Gibson-Craig, David Laing, and the Rev. William Makellar, the last a cousin of Sir William Stirling Maxwell of Keir, and a collector from 1838 to 1898. A purely Irish Library would inherently differ both from one limited to English or to Scotish books. There is no early typography or poetry, no works printed on vellum, no masterpieces of binding. The collectors in that part of the empire have always been few in number, and in fact Irish books have been chiefly collected by persons who were not Irishmen, nor even residents in that country. It used to be the case that, where a book was remarkably successful in England, the Dublin booksellers reprinted it, and, as these reproductions are generally scarcer than the originals, doubtless in limited numbers.

The series consists of a handful of books and tracts of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1570-1625); of publications relative to the Civil War (1644-48); of others relative to the Commonwealth and Jacobite troubles (1650-90); of literary illustrations of the state of Ireland under the Houses of Orange, Stuart, and Brunswick or Hanover, and of modern days. The bibliographical writings of Sir James Ware are usually quoted and consulted for the literature within his time, but they have become almost obsolete. The two other works of reference for amateurs and students are those by Charles Vallancey (Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, 1786-1807, 7 vols.) and Charles O'Conor (Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, 1814-26, 4 vols.).

But we have to go to more recent authorities to discover that the typographical productions of Ireland in the first decade of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comprise a few books of the greatest rarity and one or two of which no copies are at present known. On the other hand, certain Elizabethan volumes, purporting to have proceeded from Irish presses, are generally believed to have an English origin, while others with German imprints of a later date (second half of the seventeenth century) are absolutely proved to have been clandestinely executed at home.

A very fair and comprehensive idea of the salient features in the present series may be gained from the Grenville and Huth catalogues and from Hazlitt's Collections (General Index). Considerable stress is laid by collectors on a large-paper copy with the Decisions filled in in MS., the Memorandum, &c., of the List of Claims, 1701, in connection with the Irish forfeitures. But in fact a copy of this work is always available, when any one wants it, which is seldom enough.

There was no regular printing here till the beginning of the seventeenth century, although one or two Marian tracts falsely purport to have come from the Waterford press. Dublin had a printer, John Frankton, who worked from 1601 to 1620 or thereabout, and produced many books, tracts, and broadsheets, some not yet recovered; the city also boasted a Society of Stationers in 1608, and many volumes appeared at London "Printed for the Partners of the Irish Stock," referring to the Plantation of Ulster. The places in Ireland itself, where the art of typography was pursued, were Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Belfast (as in the section just dismissed). But the rarest articles in the earlier series emanated from London or from Continental presses, the writings of Nicholas French and Cranford's Tears of Ireland, 1642, taking a prominent rank in the latter category.

The leading collectors on Irish lines have been Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Grenville, Mr. Huth, Mr. Bradshaw, Canon Tierney, Mr. Shirley, and Bishop Daly.

In the English series I have supposed the admission of a certain number or proportion of foreign books, which are of catholic interest, and have acquired a standing among many classes of collectors whose bias is principally national. But there are two other series of very unequal extent, importance, and costliness, which more directly appeal to the buyers of these islands, namely, the earlier Anglo-American literature belonging to the Colonial period, and the American reproductions of the favourite books of Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Thackeray, and others in the present century. The latter category enters into the department of curiosities, and has yet to acquire bibliographical importance. In one or two cases, works issued at home in numbers have been published in the States in book-form prior to their appearance here. This happened with the Yellow-Plush Correspondence, reprinted direct from Fraser's Magazine at Philadelphia in 1838, and curious as the writer's earliest separate publication. These papers were not collected in England till 1841.

The products of the Colonial period include all the books emanating from American presses between 1640, the date of the Bay Psalm-Book at Cambridge, N.E., from the press of Stephen Day, and the Declaration of Independence. There has been a disposition to treat the whole of this output of printed matter with a special tenderness and reverence on political grounds; but it obviously is of a very mixed and unequal character, and, as time goes on, there must be a continuous winnowing process, and a consignment to oblivion of a vast assortment of the dullest theology and of political ephemerides. There will always remain a rich heirloom to our American kinsfolk and ourselves of historical nuggets in the shape of narratives of the fortunes and careers of the Pilgrim Fathers, their experiments in statecraft, their religious trials, their early superstitions and strange intolerance of personal liberty in a land chosen by its settlers for liberty's sake; and of course there is a section of literary products appertaining to the New World, namely, ritualistic ordinances, liturgical manuals, and collections of statutes, which derive what one is bound to term an artificial interest from the local circumstances, or, in other words, from the place of origin. A theological treatise, a Bible, a volume of prayers, or a law-book, published in England in the second half of the seventeenth century, may be worth from sixpence to a sovereign; if it bears the imprint of Boston, Cambridge (N.E.), New York, Philadelphia, or New London, its value may be computed in bank-notes. The Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, was lately sold for £109, and the Papers Relating to Massachusetts Bay, 1769, for £8, the latter in boards. The reason (so far as there is any) for this inflation is twofold: the patriotic sentiment which leads American amateurs to desire the oldest and most precious typographical and historical monuments of their country, and, secondly, the perhaps less justifiable enthusiasm of some Englishmen for books which, as they may plead, are the offspring of the States while they were still English settlements. A copious and fairly contemporary view of the extensive family of works belonging to the earlier Anglo-American library may be found in the bibliographies of Stevens, Sabin, and Harrisse, and in the Grenville, Huth, Lenox, and Tower catalogues. There is not only no line of collecting which is more difficult and more costly than the present, but none which, within the last twenty years, has, so far as first-rate rarities are concerned, more seriously advanced, even inferior copies of certain books fetching at times five times as much as good ones did in the seventies. Just lately the call appears to come from the other side of the Atlantic. There are two or three new bidders. That is sufficient.