What may be treated as the casual accessories of books of nearly all periods and countries—the autograph inscription testifying to the ownership or signalising a gift from one possessor to another—have manifold and diversified elements of interest and attraction. These features offer a graduated scale of importance, just as it happens. The question depends on the donor, or the recipient, or the article given and received; and where all these combine to augment the charm and to complete the spell, the issue is electrifying. No more impressive corroboration of this truth could well be desired or produced than the Henry VIII. Prayer-Book of 1544 on vellum, from the Fountaine Collection, with the MSS. notes and autographs of the King, the Princess Mary, Prince Edward, and Queen Catherine Parr. It fetched about 600 guineas at Christie's in 1894.

In the Bibliographer, Bookworm, and his own Collections, the writer has formerly assembled together notices of all the most remarkable examples of English books, both printed and in MS., with inscriptions, marginalia, and other records of prior and successive possession, brought within his reach during more than thirty years past. There are not unreasonably people who may not see in an ordinary copy of a volume much tangible interest, yet who are prepared to recognise the value, and even importance, of one with the autograph and memoranda of some illustrious personage, of some great warrior or statesman, or of a famous man of letters, artist, or sculptor. The accidental and secondary feature in the work takes precedence of the rest; he pays for the sentiment and association. The direct human interest resident in such a relic is apt, in the opinion of many, to surpass that of the finest binding; for one has here the very characters traced long ago by the holder; one can imagine him (or her) seated at the table engaged in the task of leaving to the times to come this memento. The book is the casual receptacle; perchance in itself it is of inconsiderable worth; but the manuscript accessions are as an embalmment and a sanctification. The copy is not as others; it has descended to us as a part of a precious inheritance, of which the mere paper and print are the least significant; we are to approach and touch it reverently, as if the individual to whom it appertained were standing by, to reprove an ungentle hand and take back the legacy.

It would be barely possible, were it of essential use, to schedule all the existing presentation or annotated copies of books in our own and other literatures, but we shall here make an effort to offer a general view of what is intended, and what may in some instances become attainable by watching opportunities:—

• Monastic or collegiate literature.
• Editions of the Bible.
• Editions of the New Testament.
• Editions of the Prayer-Book.
• Royal Books:—
  • (i) With autograph notes by the owner.
  • (ii) With inscription by the giver.
  • (iii) With both.
  • (iv) In binding identifiable with a royal personage.
• Books which possess the signatures of noble or illustrious individuals, politicians, statesmen, soldiers.
• The same categories apply.
• Books with literary inscriptions:—
  • (i) Presentation copies with author's inscription.
  • (ii) With his inscription and additional matter by him.
  • (iii) With inscription by recipient.
  • (iv) With autographs and MSS. notes by both.
• Foreign books:—
  • Monastic and mediÆval.
  • With MS. matter of historical or genealogical interest.
  • Books from royal or noble libraries.
  • Books of literary interest.

Monastic inscriptions are generally limited in their interest to casual light shed by them on personages connected with the institution or on some local circumstance.

Of royal books, genuine and otherwise, the number has had a tendency to increase through the successive dispersion of old libraries everywhere, combined with the additional facilities for gaining access to those which still remain intact. The Henry VIII. Prayer-Book on vellum is the only copy known in any state of the edition of 1544, and may not have been publicly issued with this date.

Some of the royal memoranda are of signal interest and curiosity. On the back of the title, under the royal arms, the king himself says: "Remember thys wrighter wen you doo pray for he ys yours noon can saye naye. Henry R." At the passage: "I have not done penance for my malice," the same hand inserts in the margin: "trewe repentance is the best penance;" and farther on he makes a second marginal note on the sentence: "thou hast promysed forgyveness," . . . "repentance beste penance." This was a sort of family common-place book. Inside the cover Prince Edward (afterward Edward VI.) writes: "I will yf you will." The volume, which contains other matter of great historical value, appears to have been given by Henry VIII. shortly before his death to his daughter Mary; for on a small piece of vellum inside the cover he has written: "Myne owne good daughter I pray you remember me most hartely when you in your prayere do shew for grace to be attayned assurydly to yr lovyng fader Henry R." The Princess subsequently gave it to her stepmother, Catherine Parr, and it has a motto and signature of that lady's second husband, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Admiral.

The old king, we observe, grew rather nervous about the future just at the last, and he at all events admitted that there was room for contrition.

A companion volume and monument was the copy of the Sarum HorÆ of 1520, printed on vellum, in the second portion of the Ashburnham sale. This precious book belonged to the Parr family, including the mother of Queen Katherine Parr, and at any rate contained an inscription in the hand of the Queen's brother, and of those of members of the Carew, Vaux, Tailboys, Nevill, and other families, besides being in beautiful condition; and the same library yielded a second copy of Hours, 1512, which had passed through the hands of Henry VIII. himself, as attested in one place by his autograph memorandum: "Pray yow pray for me your loving cousin Henry Rex." Such relics appear to bring back before us the dead players on the human stage, divested of all but their more redeeming characteristics.

In the British Museum we have the Great Bible of 1540 on vellum, which enters into the present category by reason of its association with the same prince, though in a different way. On the reverse of the fly-leaf occurs: "This Booke is presented vnto your most excellent highnesse by youre loving, faithfull, and obedient subiect and daylye Oratour, Anthonye Marler, of London, Haberdassher." Truly a gift worthy of a king; and there it remains, a precious link with the past and a splendid memorial of the citizen of London who laid it at his sovereign's feet.

Propriety and sympathy of costume go very far indeed to establish and augment the estimation of printed volumes with manuscript tokens of former proprietorship. The collector who chooses this field of activity has to weigh the correlation and harmony between the volume itself and the individual or individuals to whom it once appertained. We have usually to content ourselves with the interest resident in an autograph, with or without further particulars; it is a book, perhaps, which formed part of the library of a distinguished Elizabethan or Jacobean writer or public character; but, if it were not, its worth might be nominal. Again, the book is possibly one of great value, and exhibits an early autograph and MSS. notes; it would be better without them. Find the copy of Venus and Adonis, 1593, given by Shakespeare to Lord Southampton, the poet's copy of the FaËry Queen, 1590-96, Sir Fulke Greville's copy of Sydney's Arcadia, 1590, or a book of Voyages belonging to Drake or Raleigh, and it is worth a library, and a good one too. The nearest approach we have yet made to this kind of combination is the first folio Montaigne and the original edition of Lord Brooke's works, 1633, with the signature of Jonson, and the Spenser of 1679 with the notes of Dryden, unless the Paradise Lost, 1667, with Milton's presentation to a bookbinder at Worcester be authentic.

We must not omit in the present connection the copy of the prose story-book of Howleglas, given in 1578 with others by Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey. But an almost equally covetable possession was the copy just referred to of Milton's Paradise Lost, 1667, which occurred only the other day at a sale, where it was, as too often happens, mis-described, and brought £70. It bore on a small slip inlaid in a fly-leaf: "For my loving ffreind, Mr. Francis Rea, Booke binder in Worcester these," and on another piece of paper: "Presented me by the Author to whom I gave two doubl sovereigns" = £4, nearly as much as the poet had for the copyright. The story of the book is unknown to us; it seems eminently likely that the first memorandum was written by Milton; but whether it belonged to a wrapper forwarding the gift, or to a letter accompanying it, is problematical.

Rea of Worcester must be the same individual who is described as having re-bound in June 1660 the Jolley and Ashburnham copy of Higden's Polychronicon, printed by Caxton, 1482; but there an earlier owner, Richard Furney, calls him "one Rede of Worcester."

At Trinity, Cambridge, there is the edition of Spenser, 1679, with a memorandum on the fly-leaf by Jacob Tonson, testifying to the MSS. notes in the book being by Dryden, and at Wootton formerly was the FaËry Queen, 1596, John Evelyn's cypher in gold down the back of the cover and seventeen lines in his autograph on the fly-leaf.

Among our dramatists, Ben Jonson is conspicuous by the number of copies of his own performances which he presented to royal and noble personages or to private friends. Of three gift-copies of his Volpone, 1607, one has an inscription to John Florio, the other to Henry Lambton of Lambton. The almost unique large-paper one of Sejanus, 1605, in the Huth Collection, was given to the poet's "perfect friend," Francis Crane. In the Museum are the Masque of Queens and the Masque of Blackness and Beauty offered to the queen of James I. But of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and many others, we have not a single memorial of this kind. Of Massinger there is one: the copy of his Duke of Milan, 1623, received from him by Sir F. Foljambe. In the case of Taylor the water-poet, the nearest approach to anything of the sort is the MS. note of the recipient of a copy of his Works, 1630.

Of two equally prominent poets of the same epoch, Daniel and Drayton, the latter seems to have had a partiality for inscribing his autograph in presentation copies of his books, while of Daniel in this way we do not recollect to have met with a single example.

Very engaging, on account of its manly and cordial tone, is the autograph epistle by Sir Richard Fanshawe accompanying an extant copy of his translation of Guarini's Faithful Shepherd, 1648. The whole production may be seen in the Huth Catalogue (p. 633), where we inserted it as a favourable sample of this kind of poetry or verse. The lines are headed: "To my deare friend Mr. Tho. Brooke with Pastor Fido before an entended voyage," and commence:—

The volume belongs to the series of memorials, which we possess in not too ample abundance, of the regard entertained by men of letters of former days for each other, or for their intimates, and ranks with the priceless copies of his own books presented by Jonson to some of his distinguished contemporaries. If he, or any one else, made gifts of such things to the greatest of them all, every trace of such an incident has apparently disappeared.

Rarity of occurrence is not by any means an imperative feature in influencing or determining the value of inscriptions. No examples are probably more abundant than the books of Izaak Walton, either with an ordinary note of presentation, or with MSS. notes in the writer's hand, if not with both; yet they invariably command a liberal price from the admission of Walton by common acknowledgment into the select circle of literary men, whose works we love for the sake of the author. The following inscription in contemporary MS. occurs on the reverse of the Old Testament title to a Cranmer's Bible of 1540: "Thys byble ys John Crogdens, Cytyzen and merchant taylor of London, dwellynge in Wattlynge Street at y^e syne of Y^e Whyte Horse, 1550."

Occasionally more or less curious personal traits or family clues are yielded by the memoranda on fly-leaves. A Latin Testament of 1563 bears: "e libris ThomÆ Northcote e dono Joh. Rolle Armig. de Stephenstone in agro Devoniensi;" a copy of Jewell's Sermons, 1583, has "John Willoughby, 1591," and "Amor vincit omnia." In the Savile copy of Sir Thomas More's Works, 1557, we read: "de dono H. Savile anno 1600; found by Mary Savile, Dec. 12, 1635, amongst other books at Metheby: for my daughter Mary Savile."

If the reader will cross over with us into Scotland for a moment or so, we will introduce him to a very interesting relic in the shape of a Latin Aristotle of 1526, in which a Cistercian monk of Kinloss Abbey, Andrew Langland, has enshrined two metrical compositions from his own pen; an epitaph on the Regent Murray, and an epistle to Joannes Ferrerius, Professor at Kinloss, 1542, and continuator of Hector Boece. The epitaph is dialogue-wise between the Bishop of Orkney, who was absent from the funeral, and Ferrerius, who attended it.

At the sale of the library of the Duke of Leeds, a large-paper copy of Wycherley's Miscellany Poems, 1704, apparently given by the poet to Lord Treasurer Danby, produced the outrageous price of £46. A far more interesting example was that which he presented to Mistress Mary Twysden, as noticed in the Bibliographer. A more important souvenir was the Latin Testament given by Pope to Bolingbroke in 1728 (Christie's, April 3, 1895, No. 339); and a yet stronger sympathy must be felt with the Juvenal and Persius, 8vo, Amsterdam, 1684, which once belonged to T. Killigrew, and subsequently to Pope, whose English version occupies the interleaves, if the description given by Wake of Derby be correct, as the book itself we have not seen.

We approach a different class of consideration when we leave behind us the more or less factitious and artificial attractions of early bindings and autograph memoranda, and pass to books which owe their extrinsic interest to a mere signature, as in the case of the copy of Florio's Montaigne, 1603, which belonged to Shakespeare, and possesses his autograph on the fly-leaf, and of which the provenance, as stated by Madden in his pamphlet, 1838, favours the authenticity; and again, in that of Mr. Collier's copy of Drayton's Shepheard's Garland, 1593, which bears on the title-page the signature of Robert, Earl of Essex.

There quite casually fell into our own hands a copy of one of Archbishop Usher's books, a stray from Manchester, with "Humfrey Chetham's Booke, 1644," on fly-leaf, and with it came a MS. on vellum, also formerly Chetham's, of the Stimulus ConscientiÆ in English verse. They long lay in a garret at Pennington Hall, Leigh, Lancashire, the seat of the Hiltons, with whom Chetham was intimate, if not connected.

We meet with a surprise now and then, as when such a work as the English Reynard the Fox of 1681-84 carries on its face a proof of the prior ownership of Beau Nash: "Rich. Nash Arm. BathoniÆ, 1761," but it is quite natural to find the autograph of Sir Joshua Reynolds accompanying a series of French plates illustrative of the Odyssey, 1639.

In old books, and in new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory caveat against the malappropriator, and brings the Almighty without scruple into the witness-box, in case any varlet should make free with his property:—

Of the whimsical entries in old English books the diversity is endless. On the fly-leaf of a copy of Roger Edgworth's Sermons, 4to, 1557, occurs: "Bryen O'rourke his hand and writting by fore God and man." A singular application of the Holy Scriptures presents itself in a couple of IOU's written by James Haig of Prettisides in Longwood, co. Wilts, on the back of the title to a New Testament of 1584. There is a curious, almost pathetic form of this habit of writing in books, practised from very early days down to our own, when we may easily remember how Lamb and Coleridge used to fill the blank leaves of a work of common interest, as it kept passing to and fro like a messenger, till the worth of the manuscript matter left that of the printed far behind indeed. In a mild kind of way this sort of thing was already going on in the sixteenth century. A copy of the English version of the Paraphrase of Erasmus on the New Testament, 1548, passes similarly between two Tudor-period intimates, and there is this: "Mr. Dunes, I woulde wish you to peruse V. chapter of Marke, and there you shall finde great comforte to your soules health. Thus fare you well in the Lorde. Wyllyam Byrde."

In the copy of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, bound up with an early edition of Venus and Adonis, a former owner represents with perfect justice, that although he gave three-halfpence for the two volumes in one, a corner of a leaf was defective; and there has been furthermore a profound arithmetical computation that if this gentleman and his heirs or assigns had invested the amount in good securities, the capital at this moment would have reached the vicinity of £1000. In a copy of Stow's Survey, 1633, which once belonged to Sir Thomas Davies, Lord Mayor of London in 1676, we encounter a memorandum on the fly-leaf: "I pray, put in the loose leaues Carefully. John Meriton. For Mr. Richardson, bookbinder in Scalding Alley." Richardson bound for Pepys. In an odd volume of Sandford and Merton, which fell in Dr. Burney's way, and which he gave to his daughter—Johnson's "little Burney"—he wrote:—

Beauty has been said to depend on Variety, and so we ought not to object to examples selected from widely different sources.

BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS

BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS

From the original Water-colour Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, in possession of Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London

Horace's multa renascentur comes into our mind when we stumble on a remark by Wodhull the collector in an Acta Apostolorum printed at Oxford in 1715: "In May, 1810, Mr. Leigh, auctioneer, told me that a copy of this edition had lately sold for £20, observing, 'these are the times to sell books, not to buy them.'" A more notable man, William Beckford, appears in a copy of the original French Vathek, 1787, as the second person of the drama by reason of the written matter referring to him, and being in the hand of M. Chavannes of Lausanne. The note occupies the whole of the available space on the title, and is as follows:—"A la demande de M. Beckford je me suis chargÉ de corriger son Manuscrit et de le faire imprimer À Lausanne. M. Beckford en quittant Lausanne se hata de le faire imprimer À Paris au Prejudice de l'Imprimeur de Lausanne, et je dus menacer M. Beckford de mettre dans les papiers son infidelitÉ . . . et M. B. se hata de dedomager l'Imprimeur pour Éviter la publicitÉ."

So far as books with the autographs and MSS. notes of men of the modern school, such as Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, and Shelley, are concerned, the opportunities for securing specimens have certainly grown more numerous. We have already in the places specified above furnished many illustrations of this section, and they might be readily extended.

In the foreign department there is a perfectly inexhaustible store of material under a variety of heads: evidences of ownership and descent, biographical suggestions, historical links and side-lights, dated armorial ex libris. In 1869 the author met with a thick 4to volume, including the Cologne edition of the Legenda Sancti Albani Martyris, printed about 1475, on the fly-leaf or cover of which was a list of contents made in 1475; and in the Hopetoun copy of the Ethica of Aristotle the original owner had established the place of printing, otherwise unspecified, by a MS. note, dated 1469, in which he stated that the book was presented to him by its typographer, "Johannes Mentelin Argentin."

In a copy of the works of Petrarch in Latin, folio, 1501, occurs on the title: "Liber Antonij kressen juris vtriusq. doctoris emptus venecijs ligatus nurenberge Mcccccv;" and the noble old volume (now in the British Museum) is accompanied by a memoir of Kressen, printed about 1600, of uniform size, with a splendid portrait of the interesting NÜremberger.

A copy of the Vulgate of 1484 commands attention from the presence of a coeval MS. note pasted on the first leaf: "Hec Biblia est Petri Dominici Boninsegnis qui a fratre Cosmo empta fuit Anno mcccclxxxu. xviii. die Februarii." A Latin HorÆ of the fifteenth century contains on a fly-leaf the ensuing little family story: "Ces Heures apartiennent a Damoyselle Michelle Du DerÈ Femme de M. Loys Dorleans Advocat en la Court du Parlement et lesquelles luy sont echeuÉs par la succession de feu son pÈre M. Jehan DuderÈ Conseiller du Roy & Auditeur en sa chambre des comptes 1577. Amour & HumilitÉ sont les deux liens de nostre mariage." A St. Jerome's EpistolÆ, printed at Mainz about 1470, is accompanied by the dated book-plate, 1595, of Christophorus Baro À Wolckhenstain.

In the French series the number of interesting items from a personal or historical point of view, if not both, is of course great, although, as a rule, French collectors have been rather sparing as annotators of their literary possessions. In a copy of De Bure's Sale Catalogue, 1786, now in the Huth Library, occurs a peculiarly striking exception, however, in the shape of a MS. note in the handwriting of Louis XVI., only three years prior to the fall of the Bastille, "Marquer les livres que je desire pour moi."

In the Duke of Sussex's Library was a New Testament in French presented by Josephine before her second marriage to Napoleon. She had inscribed on the spare leaf preceding title: "Au General Bonaparte ce Testament Lutherain est presentÉ de part la veuve Beauharnois," and below occurs in the illustrious recipient's hand, Buonaparte. An association fully as historically and personally significant appertains to the Voltaire's Henriade, 1770, in one of the volumes of which the to-be Empress writes: "DonnÉ part Madame la Viscontesse de Beauharnois: pensez À elle, aimez-la, n'oubliez jamais qu'elle est vÔtre amie la plus attachÉe." Was this an oblation at the same shrine? But this is a slight digression, warranted by the twofold circumstance that all these examples have belonged to English collectors, and are of a class quite as interesting to us as to those with whom they are more immediately associated by origin. The same may perhaps be said of the MS. sold in London in 1899, formerly belonging to two persons so widely different as Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, of the latter of whom it possessed the autograph. The interest seemed to centre in the signature of the Revolutionary leader.

The interest and respect with which the presence of handwriting in books is regarded are indefinitely varied. But the preponderance of worshippers is no doubt on the side of those who have shone in the belles lettres and in society. Sovereigns, unless it be Frederic the Great or Napoleon, Mary of Scotland or Marie Antoinette, generals, politicians, professional men, do not go for much. The competition is for the poet, the novelist, the newsmonger, or some enfant terrible, whose autograph is rare to excess. To be on thoroughly good posthumous terms with collectors, one has no need to have been respectable, sober, benevolent, or pious; these are rather in the nature of draw-backs; but one must have possessed a strong personality. That is the secret. Personality. Schedule the illustrious of the past on this guiding principle, and you cannot err. Men and women without infirmities, without vices, why, ask any dealer of repute and experience, and he will tell you that there is no call for their signatures or for their correspondence. They have too much character in one sense and too little in another. An autograph of Dick Turpin or Claud Du Val would be worth a dozen of Archdeacon Paley or even of Archbishop Tillotson.

The autograph collector certainly forms a separate genus. He does not buy books. He does not affect MSS. where they exceed the limits of a fly-leaf or title-page entry. We are accustomed to criticise Master John Bagford unkindly because he stripped the volumes of their titles and then cast them away. But he lived a long while ago, when the value and rarity of many of these things were not so generally understood, and there were not customers all over the Old and New Worlds as many as one can tell on one's fingers to take an early book, if it was offered to them. Even now it not seldom happens that an exceedingly interesting signature or note accompanies an item worth only so much per lb., and your connoisseur in the autograph surrenders all but his portion to its destiny. Who can gainsay him? He shrugs his shoulders; he is no bookworm; he wants autographs alone.

Exceptions to the governing principle arise, however, and sometimes they are recognised, sometimes not. The most beautiful examples for internal condition, binding, even intrinsic interest, are occasionally sacrificed to this Procrustes—this case-hardened Bagford of our own day. Not so long since we remarked as a treasure beyond our purse a copy of Donne's Sermons, with a brilliant portrait of the author, and a long inscription by Izaak Walton presenting the volume to his aunt. It was in the pristine English calf binding, as clean as when it left Walton's hands en route for his kinswoman, and such a delightful signature. What has become of it? It is sad even to commit to paper the story—one among many. An American gentleman acquired it, tore the portrait and leaf of inscription out, and threw the rest away! Why, forsooth, should he keep a folio volume against his inclination? He left that to whomsoever it might chance to fall—a mangled corpse!

It is not peremptorily necessary, however, that there should be witness in black on white to the prior holder of a literary bijou; for the external evidence may prove abundantly adequate to the satisfaction of the most sceptical. A binding is quite capable of serving as a voucher and guarantee for the provenance of a printed book or manuscript, provided that all the links in the chain are sound. The Prayer-Book of Queen Henrietta Maria, the Fables of La Fontaine with the arms of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, an unquestioned Grolier or Maioli, and still more such a bibliographical phoenix as that volume bound in gold of Lady Elizabeth Tyrrwhit's Prayers, formerly belonging to Queen Elizabeth, which the late Sir Wollaston Franks purchased at an incredible price and presented to the British Museum—these, and many more, speak for themselves. Yet where a royal or noble personage is not in the case, when it is only some Shakespeare or some Milton who is concerned, let us preferably have the written internal passport. We would barter all the books which we have indicated for the Florio's Montaigne with the poet's signature on the fly-leaf, albeit it is in no better a covering than its Shakespearian jacket of shabby old calf.

More than one volume in the earlier range depends very disproportionately for its interest on the preliminary matter in the form of a Preface or Dedication. In Prefaces, Dedications, Epistles, 1874, the writer drew attention to this point, and furnished a considerable series of such prolegomena in illustration of the fact. But there are cases, of course, where the inscription is of a piece with the book, as in Davenant's Madagascar, 1638, where the poet wrote and printed on the leaf following the title: "If these Poems live, may their Memories, by whom they were cherish'd, End. Porter, H. Jarmyn, live with them."

The Imprimatur, or License to the Printer, occasionally supplies a curious literary or biographical side-light. That to Davenant's play of the Witts, 1636, runs: "This Play, called the Witts, as it was Acted without offence, may be Printed, not otherwise, 19 Ianuary, 1635. Henry Herbert;" and before Blount's Jocular Tenures, 1679, we find: "I well knowing the Learning and industry of the Author, do allow the Printing of this Book. Fra. North." Once more there is Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, 1687, with "Imprimatur. S. Pepys."