The magnificence of the Burgundian Court and the commercial prosperity of the Low Countries led to a continuous demand for fine books among the other productions of luxury. We learn also by the Venetian Archives that throughout the fifteenth century books were being imported into England by the galleys that brought the produce of the East to our merchants in London and Southampton. There were as yet but slight signs of literary activity; but it has been well said that 'the seed was germinating in the ground'; and many foreign works were brought home from time to time by those who had studied or travelled in Italy. It was the fashion of the day to learn under Guarini at Ferrara; the list of his scholars includes the names of Robert Fleming, and Bishop William Gray, and the book-loving John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose virtue and learning became the object of William Caxton's celebrated eulogy. We may commemorate here the earlier labours of Lord Cobham, who caused Wicliffe's works to be copied at a great expense and to be conveyed for safety to Bohemia, and of Sir Walter Sherington, who early in the same century built a library at Glas...o...b..ry, and furnished it with 'fair books upon vellum.' Towards the end of the century learning began to flourish under the patronage of Lord Saye, and the accomplished Anthony Lord Rivers: and its future in this country was secure, when the English scholars began to flock towards Florence to hear the lectures of Chalcondylas and his successor Politian.

Grocyn, our first Greek Professor, had drawn his learning from that source, and Linacre had sat there in a cla.s.s with the children of Lorenzo de' Medici. Cardinal Pole and the Ciceronian De Longueil shared as students in those tasks and sports at Padua which were so vividly described by the English churchman in his record of their life-long friendship. Thomas Lilly, the master at St. Paul's, not only worked at Florence but went to perfect his Greek in the Isle of Rhodes. Sir Thomas More was the pupil of Grocyn, whom he seems to have excelled in scholarship. His affection for books is known by his son-in-law's careful biography. An anecdote cited by Dibdin preserves a record of the fate of his library. When the Chancellor was arrested, the officers were expected to listen to his talk with certain spies, on the chance that the prisoner might be led into a treasonable conversation; but, as Mr. Palmer said in his deposition, 'he was so busy trussing up Sir Thomas More's books in a sack that he took no heed to their talk'; and Sir Richard Southwell on the same occasion deposed, that 'being appointed only to look to the conveyance of the books, he gave no ear unto them.' Erasmus praised More as 'the most gentle soul ever framed by Nature.' He was astonished at his learning, and indeed at the high standard that had already been attained in England. 'It is incredible,' he said, 'what a thick crop of old books spreads out on every side: there is so much erudition, not of any ordinary kind, but recondite and accurate and antique, both in Greek and Latin, that you need not go to Italy except for the pleasure of travelling.' Hallam remarked that Erasmus was always ready with a compliment; but he admitted that before the year 1520 there were probably more scholars in England than in France, 'though all together they might not weigh as heavy as Budaeus.'

CHAPTER IX.

FRANCE: EARLY BOOKMEN--ROYAL COLLECTORS.

We shall take Budaeus as our first example of the French bookmen in the period that followed the invention of printing. Of Guillaume Bude, to give him his original name, it was said that he knew Greek as minutely as the orators of the age of Demosthenes. If there was any real foundation for the compliment it must have consisted in the fact that the Frenchman had more acquaintance with the language than his instructor George of Sparta. Budaeus is said to have paid a very large sum for a course of lectures on Homer, and to have been not a pennyworth the wiser at the end. Erasmus, who also learned of the Spartan, confessed that his tutor only 'stammered in Greek,' and that he seemed to have neither the desire nor the capacity for teaching. It is interesting to see how these students made the best of their bad materials. 'I have given my whole soul to Greek,' wrote Erasmus, 'and as soon as I get any money I shall buy books first, and then some clothes.' Budaeus was known as 'the prodigy of France,' and even Scaliger allowed that his country would never see such a scholar again; and it is rather surprising that Erasmus should have compared his style unfavourably with that of Badius, the printer from Brabant.

Budaeus was the first to apply the historical method to the explanation of the Civil Law: with the a.s.sistance of Jean Grolier he brought out a very learned treatise on ancient weights and measures; and in publishing his commentaries on the Greek language he was said to have raised himself to 'a pinnacle of philological glory.' One of the stories about his devotion to books may have been told of others, but is certainly characteristic of the man. A servant rushes in to say that the house is on fire; but the scholar answers, 'Tell my wife: you know that I never interfere with the household.' He was married twice over, he used to say, to the Muse of philology as well as to a mortal wife; but he confessed that he would never have got far with the first, if the second had not commanded in the library, always ready to look out pa.s.sages and to hand down the necessary books.

When Charles VIII. seized the royal library at Naples, a few of the best MSS. escaped his scrutiny, and these were sold by the dispossessed King to the Cardinal D'Amboise. A new school of illuminators at Rouen provided the Cardinal with a number of other splendid volumes. He lived till the year 1510, and was able to collect a second library of printed books. He divided the whole into two portions at his death, the French books pa.s.sing to a relation and afterwards to the family of La Rochefoucauld, and the rest forming the foundation of a fine library long possessed by the Archbishops of Rouen.

The Archbishop Juvenal des Ursins died in the middle of the fifteenth century. He is celebrated as a lover of good books, though only a single example of his choice survived into the present generation. It was a magnificent missal on vellum, filled with the choicest miniatures, and known as the best specimen of its cla.s.s in the possession of Prince Soltikoff. It is only a few years ago that it entered the collection of M. Firmin-Didot, who paid 36,000 francs for it at the Prince's sale: in the year 1861 he gave it up to the City of Paris; but like so many of the great books of France it perished in the fires of the Commune.

Jacques de Pars, the physician to Charles VII., bequeathed his scientific MSS. to the College of Medicine at Paris: and the value of his gift was manifested when the powerful Louis XI. was forbidden to take out a medical treatise for transcription unless he would pledge his silver plate and find collateral security for its safe return. etienne Chevalier was one of the few servants of King Charles who were tolerated by King Louis. He became Chief Treasurer to Louis XI., and built a great mansion in the Rue de la Verrerie in Paris. The walls and ceilings were decorated with allegorical designs in honour of his friend Agnes Sorel, whose courage had led to the expulsion of the English invaders. The library was filled with choice MSS., illuminated for the most part by Jehan Foucquet, the famous miniaturist from Tours. Nicholas Chevalier, his descendant in the sixteenth century, was also ill.u.s.trious as a bibliophile, and amidst his own printed folios and pedigrees rolled in blue velvet could still show the marvellous _Livre d'Heures_, of which all that now remains is a set of paintings hacked out from the text. M. Le Roux de Lincy has compiled a long and interesting list of the French bibliophiles who preceded the age of Grolier. We can only mention a few out of the number.

Of the poets we have Charles, Duke of Orleans, the owner of eighty magnificent volumes preserved in the Castle of Blois, and Pierre Ronsard; and we may add the Abbe Philippe Desportes, renowned not less for a rivalry with Ronsard than for his sumptuous mode of living and the fortune expended on his library. To the statesmen may be added Florimond Robertet, the first of a long line of bibliophiles. Among the learned ladies of the sixteenth century we may choose Louise Labe, surnamed 'La Belle Cordiere,' who made a collection of a new kind, composed entirely of works in French, Spanish, and Italian, and Charlotte Guillard, a printer as well as a book-collector, who published at her own expense a volume of the Commentaries of St. Jerome.

The most important of the private collectors in this period was Arthur Gouffier, Seigneur de Boissy, another of the faithful followers of Charles VII. who were so fortunate as to gain the confidence of his jealous successor.

He was a lover of fine bindings in the style rendered famous by Grolier.

One of his books belonged to the late Baron Jerome Pichon, the head of the French _Societe des Bibliophiles_, and it is admitted that nothing even in Grolier's library could excel it in delicacy of execution. His son, Claude Gouffier, created Duc de Rouannais, was a collector of an essentially modern type. He bought autographs and historical portraits, as well as rare MSS. and good specimens of printing, and was careful to have his books well clothed in the fashionable painted binding. Claude Gouffier was tutor to the young Duc d'Angouleme, who came to the throne as Francis I.; and to him may be due his royal pupil's affection for the books bedecked with the salamander in flames and the silver _fleurs-de-lys_.

Francis I. cared little for printed books in comparison with ma.n.u.script rarities; he added very few to the collection at Fontainebleau beyond what he received as presents from his mother, Queen Louise, and his sister Marguerite d'Angouleme. The royal library owed many of its finest ma.n.u.scripts to the delicate taste of the princess who was compared to the 'blossom of poetry' and praised as the 'Marguerite des Marguerites.' Its wealth was much increased by the confiscation of the property of the Constable de Bourbon; and it should be remembered that among the additions from this source were most of the magnificently illuminated ma.n.u.scripts that had belonged to Jean Duc de Berri.

The King was much attracted by the hope of making literary discoveries in the East; he obtained much information on the subject from John Lascaris, and despatched Pierre Gilles to make purchases in the Levantine monasteries. A similar commission was entrusted to Guillaume Postel, one of the greatest linguists that ever lived, but so crazy that he believed himself to be Adam born to live again, and so unfortunate that he could seldom keep out of a prison.

The reign of Henri Deux is of great importance in the annals of bibliography. An ordinance was made in 1558, through the influence, as it is supposed, of Diane de Poitiers, by which every publisher was compelled to present copies of his books, printed on vellum and suitably bound, to the libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau, and such others as the King should appoint. About eight hundred volumes in the national collection represent the immediate results of this copy-tax; they are all marked with the ambiguous cypher, which might either represent the initials of the King and Queen or might indicate the names of Henri and Diane. Queen Catherine de Medici was an enthusiastic collector. When she arrived in France as a girl she brought with her from Urbino a number of MSS. that had belonged to the Eastern Emperors, and had been purchased by Cosmo de'

Medici. She afterwards seized the whole library of Marshal Strozzi on the ground that they must be regarded as 'Medici books,' having been inherited at one time by a nephew of Leo X. On her death in 1589 she was found to have been possessed of about eight hundred Greek ma.n.u.scripts, all of the highest rarity and value. There was some danger that they would be seized by her creditors; but the King was advised that such an a.s.semblage could not be got together again in any country or at any cost.

The library was made an heir-loom of the Crown: and at De Thou's suggestion the books were stripped of their rich coverings and disguised in an official costume.

Diane de Poitiers, a true _cha.s.seresse des bouquins_, was herself the daughter of a bibliophile. The Comte de St. Vallier loved books in Italian bindings, and there is a _Roman de Perceforest_ in the collection of the Duc d'Aumale, that bears the Saint Vallier arms and marks of ownership, though it was confidently believed to have been bound for Grolier when it belonged to King Louis-Philippe. Henri Deux and the d.u.c.h.esse Diane kept a treasure of books between them in the magnificent castle of Anet: and after they were dead the books remained unknown and unnoticed in their hall until the death of the Princesse de Conde in the year 1723. The sale which then took place was a revelation of beauty. The books were in good condition, and were all clad in sumptuous bindings.

There was a remarkable diversity in their contents, the Fathers and the poets standing side by side with treatises upon medicine and the management of a household, as if they had been acquired in great part by virtue of the tax upon the publishers. Most of them, we are told, were bought by the 'intrepid book-hunter' M. Guyon de Sardieres, whose whole library in its turn was engulphed in the miscellaneous collections of the Duc de la Valliere. An article in the _Bibliophile Francais_ contains a curious argument in favour of Diane de Poitiers, as being one of a band of devoted Frenchwomen who saved their country from foreign ideas. We are reminded of the patriotism of Agnes Sorel, and of the excellent influence of Gabrielle d'Estrees. The d.u.c.h.esse d'Estampes, we are told, preserved Francis I. from the influence of the Italian renaissance, and prevented the subjugation of France 'by a Benvenuto or Da Vinci'; and in the same way, when Catherine de Medici was preparing to introduce other strange fashions, Diane came forward in her 'magical beauty' and saved the originality of her nation.

The three sons of Catherine were all fond of books in their way. Francis _ii._ died before he had time to make any collection; if he had lived, Mary of Scotland, who shared his throne for a few weeks, might have led him into the higher paths of literature. Some of their favourite volumes have been preserved; the young King's books bear the dolphin or the arms of France; the Queen bound everything in black morocco emblasoned with the lion of Scotland. Charles IX. had a turn for literature, as beseemed the pupil of Bishop Amyot; he studied archaeology in some detail, and purchased Grolier's cabinet of coins. He brought the library of Fontainebleau to Paris, where his father had made the beginning of a new collection out of the confiscated property of the President Ranconnet, and gave the management of the whole to the venerable Amyot. His brother, the effeminate Henri Trois, cared much for bindings and little for books: it is said that he was somewhat of a book-binder himself, as his brother Charles had worked at the armourer's smithy, and as some of his successors were to take up the technicalities of the barber, the cook, and the locksmith. Being an extravagant idler himself, he pa.s.sed laws against extravagance in his subjects; but though furs and heavy chains might be forbidden, he allowed gilt edges and arabesques on books, and only drew the line at ma.s.sive gold stamps. His own taste combined the gloomy and the grotesque, his clothes and his bindings alike being covered with skulls and cross-bones, and spangles to represent tears, with other conventional emblems of sorrow.

Louise of Lorraine, after the King's death, retired to the castle of Chenonceau: and the widowed queen employed her time, in that 'palace of fairy-land,' at forming a small cabinet of books. The catalogue describes about eighty volumes, mostly bound by Nicolas Eve; and the gay morocco covers in red, blue, and green, were decorated with brilliant arabesques, or sprinkled with golden lilies. Hardly any perfect specimens remain, even in the National Library. They were all bequeathed by the Queen to her niece the d.u.c.h.esse de Vendome; but in the hands of a later possessor they were put up for sale and dispersed, and have now for the most part disappeared.

Henri Quatre is said to have fled to his books for consolation when abandoned by Gabrielle d'Estrees. Though no bibliophile himself, he was anxious that everything should be done that could promote the interests of literature. He intended to establish a magnificent library in the College de Cambray, but died before the plans were completed. The books at Blois, however, were brought to Paris and thrown open to deserving students; the library already transported from Fontainebleau and the MSS.

of Catherine de Medici were removed to the College de Clermont, and placed under the guardianship of De Thou.

Marguerite de Valois agreed with the King, if in nothing else, at least in a desire for the extension of knowledge. She was a most learned lady as well as a collector of exquisite books. No branch of science, sacred or profane, came amiss to the 'Reine Margot.' She may be regarded as the Queen of the 'Femmes Bibliophiles' who occupied so important a position in the history of the Court of France. In the domain of good taste she excels all compet.i.tors; as regards intellect we can hardly estimate the distance between Marguerite and the elegant collectors whom we distinguish according to the names of their book-binders. Anne of Austria is remembered for the lace-like patterns of Le Gascon; and Queen Marie Leczinska is famous for the splendour of her volumes bound by Padeloup.

Even the libraries of the daughters of Louis Quinze, three diligent and well-instructed princesses, are only known apart by the colours of the moroccos employed by Derome. The dull contents of the Pompadour's shelves would hardly be noticeable without her 'three castles,' or the 'ducal mantle,' by Biziaux; and no one but Louis Quinze himself would have praised the intelligent choice of Du Barry, or cast a look upon her collection of odd volumes and 'remainders,' if they had not been decorated like the rest of her furniture. In all the lists of these 'ladies of old-time' by M. Guigard, by M. Quentin-Bauchart, or by M.

Uzanne, it is difficult to find one who preferred the inside to the outside of the book. M. Uzanne, indeed, has contended that no female bibliophile ever felt the pa.s.sion that inspired a Grolier or a De Thou: that Marie Antoinette herself may have caged thousands of books at the Trianon like birds in an aviary, without any real regard to their nature or the right way of using them; that these devotees of the book-chase were like an invalid master of hounds, keeping the pack in a gilded kennel without any exercise or any chance of practical work. We think that something perhaps might be said on the other side. The d.u.c.h.esse de Berry in our own time possessed a serious collection, made under her own direction, in which might be found the _Livre d'Heures_ of Henri Deux, the prayer-book of Joanna of Naples, the best books of Marguerite de Valois and Marie Leczinska. The Princess Pauline Buonaparte was the owner of a well-selected library. But our best example is Madame Elisabeth, the ill-fated daughter of France, who was dragged from her books at Montreuil in the tumults of 1789. Only a short time before she had been absorbed in her simple collection. In the spring of 1786 she gave up her mornings to its arrangement. 'My library,' she wrote, 'is nearly finished: the desks are being put up, and you cannot imagine the fine effect of the books.' On September the 15th she writes to her friend again: 'Montreuil and its mistress get on as well as two sweethearts. I am writing in the small room at the end; the books are settled in their shelves, and my library is really a little gem.' On the 5th of October she was standing on the terrace by the library-window, when she saw a crowd coming along the Sevres road, and heard the noise of pipes and drums; and on the same day she was forced to leave Montreuil, and never saw her books again.

CHAPTER X.

THE OLD ROYAL LIBRARY--FAIRFAX--COTTON--HARLEY--THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

Henry VII. was the founder of a royal collection which in time became a const.i.tuent portion of the library at the British Museum. Careful as he was of his money, the King endeavoured to buy every book published in French, and he acquired the whole of Verard's series of cla.s.sics, printed on vellum with initials in gold and gorgeous illuminations, in some of which the printer is shown presenting his books to the royal collector.

Henry VIII. established the separate library which was long maintained at St. James's; he intended it mainly for the education of princes of the blood royal, and supplied it with a quant.i.ty of early-printed books and a miscellaneous gathering of wreckage from the monasteries. During several succeeding reigns there were 'studies' and galleries of books at Whitehall and Windsor Castle, at Greenwich and Oatlands, or wherever the Court might be held. It is said that in the time of Henry VIII. the best English collection belonged to Bishop Fisher. 'He had the notablest library,' said Fuller, 'two long galleries full, the books sorted in stalls, and a register of the name of each book at the end of its stall.' This great storehouse of knowledge the Bishop had intended to transfer to St. John's College at Cambridge; but on his disgrace it was seized by Thomas Cromwell and dispersed among his greedy retainers.

Under the Protector Somerset the Protestant feeling ran high. Martin Bucer's ma.n.u.scripts were bought for the young King; and the Reformer's printed books were divided between Archbishop Cranmer and the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset. About the same time an order was issued in the name of Edward VI. for purging the King's library at Westminster of missals, legends, and other 'superst.i.tious volumes'; and their 'garniture,' according to the fashion of the time, was bestowed as a perquisite upon a grasping courtier.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BINDING EXECUTED FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH.]

Queen Elizabeth was naturally fond of fine books. She had a small collection before she reached the throne, and became in due course the recipient of a number of splendid presentation volumes. There is a copy of a French poem in her praise in the public library at Oxford: its pages are full of exquisite portraits and designs, and on the sides there are 'brilliant bosses composed of humming-birds' feathers.' As a child she had bound her books in needle-work, or in 'blue corded silk, with gold and silver thread,' in the style afterwards adopted by the sisters at Little Gidding in the time of Charles I. Her Testament, most carefully covered by her own handiwork, contains a note quoted by Mr. Macray in his 'Annals of the Bodleian Library'; it refers to her walks in the field of Scripture, where she plucked up the 'goodlie greene herbes,' which she afterwards ate by her reading, 'and chawed by musing.' Her gallery at Whitehall made a gallant show of MSS. and cla.s.sics in red velvet, with gilt clasps and jewelled sides, and all the French and Italian books standing by in morocco and gold. Archbishop Parker tried to induce her to establish a national library; but the Queen seems to have cared little about the plan. She allowed the Archbishop on his own behalf to seek out the books remaining from the suppressed monasteries: at another time he obtained leave to recover as many as he could find of Cranmer's books. He tracked some of them to the house of one Dr. Nevinson, who was forced to disgorge his treasures. Parker kept a staff of scribes and painters in miniature, and had his own press and fount of type. He published many scarce tracts to save them from oblivion. Others he ordered to be copied in ma.n.u.script, and these and all his ancient books he caused to be 'trimly covered'; so that we may say with Dibdin, 'a more determined book-fancier existed not in Great Britain.' He gave some of his books to 'his nurse Corpus Christi' at Cambridge, and some to the public library; and his gift to the College was compared to 'the sun of our English antiquity,' eclipsed only by the shadow of Cotton's palace of learning.

One would like to fancy a symposium of the great men talking over their books, in the room where Ben Jonson was king, and where

'Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and pa.s.sion, was but Will.'

Jonson's books, as was said of himself, were like the great Spanish galleons, bulky folios with '_Sum Ben Jonson_' boldly inscribed. We know little about Shakespeare's books, except that they probably went to the New Place and pa.s.sed among the chattels to Susanna Hall and her husband.

His Florio's version of Montaigne is in the British Museum, if the authenticity of his signature can be trusted. His neat Aldine Ovid is at the Bodleian, inscribed with his initials, and a note: 'this little booke of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakspere's.'

We would call to our meeting Gabriel Harvey with his new Italian books and pamphlets; and Spenser, if possible, should be there; Dr. Dee would tell the piteous story of his four thousand volumes, printed and unprinted, Greek, in French, and High-Dutch MSS., etc., and of forty years spent in gathering the books that were all on their way to the p.a.w.nshop. He might have told the fortunes of all the books with the help of his magical mirrors and crystals. Francis Bacon's store was to increase and multiply, to adorn the library at Cambridge and fill the shelves at Gray's Inn; Lord Leicester's books, with their livery of the 'bear and ragged staff,' were to freeze for ages in the galleries at Lambeth. We should have Ascham inveighing against the ancients and their idle and blind way of living: 'in our father's time,' he says, 'nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry'; but Captain c.o.x would come forth to meet him, attired as in the tournament at Kenilworth, or in the picture which Dibdin has extracted from Laneham. 'Captain c.o.x came marching on, clean trussed and gartered above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap: an odd man, I promise you: by profession a mason, and that right skilful and very cunning in fence.... As for King Arthur and Huon of Bourdeaux, ... the Fryar and the Boy, Elynor Rumming, and the Nut-brown Maid, with many more than I can rehea.r.s.e, I believe he has them all at his fingers' ends.'

James I., as became a 'Solomon,' was the master of many books; but not being a 'fancier' he gave them shabby coverings and scribbled idle notes on their margins. He is forgiven for being a pedant, since Buchanan said it was the best that could be made of him; it is difficult to be patient about his hint to the Dutch that it would be well to burn the old scholar Vorstius instead of making him a professor at Leyden. He seems to have done more harm than good to the libraries in his own possession. We know how he broke into a 'n.o.ble speech' when he visited Bodley at Oxford, with the librarian trembling lest the King should see a book by Buchanan, who had often whipped his royal pupil in days gone by: 'If I were not a King I would be an University-man, and if it was so that I must be a prisoner I would desire no other durance than to be chained in that library with so many n.o.ble authors.'

The King gave Sir Thomas Bodley a warrant under the Privy Seal to take what books he pleased from any of the royal palaces and libraries; 'howbeit,' said Bodley, 'for that the place at Whitehall is over the Queen's chamber, I must needs attend her departure from thence, whereof at present there is no certainty known: how I shall proceed for other places I have not yet resolved.'

Prince Henry had a more refined taste. The dilettanti of the Prince's set took no part in the drunken antics of the Court, where Goring was master of the games, but Sir John Millicent 'made the best _extempore_ fool.'

The Prince bought almost the whole of the monastic library originally formed by Henry Lord Arundel: about forty volumes had already been given by Lord Lumley to Oxford.

There was some danger that the books at Whitehall would be destroyed in the fury of the Civil War; but almost all of them were saved by the personal exertions of Hugh Peters, when Selden had told him that there was not the like of these rare monuments in Christendom, outside the Vatican. Whitelocke was appointed their keeper, and to his deputy, John Dury, we owe the first English treatise on library management. Thomas, Lord Fairfax, did a similar good service at Oxford. When the city was surrended in 1646 the first thing that the General did was to place a guard of soldiers at the Bodleian. There was more hurt done by the Cavaliers, said Aubrey, in the way of embezzlement and cutting the chains off the books, than was ever done afterwards. Fairfax, he adds, was himself a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care the library would have been destroyed; 'for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been content to have it so.' As a rule, we must admit that the Puritans were friendly to literature, with a very natural exception as to merely ecclesiastical records. Oliver Cromwell gave some of the Barocci MSS. to the University of Oxford; and the preservation of Usher's library at Trinity College, Dublin, was due to the public spirit of the Cromwellian soldiers, officers and men having subscribed alike for its purchase 'out of emulation to a former n.o.ble action of Queen Elizabeth's army in Ireland.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR ROBERT COTTON.]

Sir Robert Cotton began about 1588 to gather materials for a history of England. With the help of Camden and Sir Henry Spelman he obtained nearly a thousand volumes of records and doc.u.ments; and these he arranged under a system, by which they are still cited, in fourteen wainscot presses marked with the names of the twelve Caesars, Cleopatra, and Faustina. He was so rich in State Papers that, as Fuller said, 'the fountains were fain to fetch water from the stream,' and the secretaries and clerks of the Council were glad in many cases to borrow back valuable originals.

Sir Robert was at one time accused of selling secrets to the Spanish amba.s.sador, and various excuses were found for closing the library, until at last it was declared to be unfit for public use on account of its political contents. He often told his friends that this tyranny had broken his heart, and shortly before his death in 1631 he informed the Lords of the Council that their conduct was the cause of his mortal malady. The library was restored to his son Sir Thomas: and in Sir John Cotton's time the public made a considerable use of its contents; but it seems to have been still a matter of favour, for Burnet complains that he was refused admittance unless he could procure a recommendation from the Archbishop and the Secretary of State. Anthony Wood gives a pleasant account of his visit: 'Posting off forthwith he found Sir John Cotton in his house, joining almost to Westminster Hall: he was then practising on his lute, and when he had done he came out and received Wood kindly, and invited him to dinner, and directed him to Mr. Pearson who kept the key.

Here was another trouble; for the said Mr. Pearson being a lodger in the shop of a bookseller living in Little Britain, Wood was forced to walk thither, and much ado there was to find him.' The library was afterwards moved to Ess.e.x Street, and then to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard, where the great fire took place in 1731, which some attributed to 'Dr. Bentley's villainy.' Dean Stanley has told us how the Headmaster of Westminster, coming to the rescue, saw a figure issue from the burning house, 'in his dressing-gown, with a flowing wig on his head, and a huge volume under his arm.' This was Dr. Bentley the librarian, doing his best to save the Alexandrian MS. of the New Testament. Mr. Speaker Onslow and some of the other trustees worked hard in the crowd at pumping, breaking open the presses, and throwing the volumes out at a window. The destruction was lamentable; but wonders have been done in extending the shrivelled doc.u.ments and rendering their ashes legible. The public use of the collection had been already regulated by Parliament when a comprehensive Act was pa.s.sed in 1753, and the nation acquired under one t.i.tle the Cottonian Library, Sir Hans Sloane's Museum, the Earl of Oxford's pamphlets and ma.n.u.scripts, and all that remained of the ancient royal collections.

Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, made a great purchase in 1705, and spent the next twenty years in building on that foundation. His son, Earl Edward, threw himself with zeal into the undertaking, and left at his death about 50,000 books, besides a huge body of ma.n.u.scripts and an incredible number of pamphlets. We shall quote from the sketch by Oldys, who shared with Dr. Johnson the task of compiling the catalogue. 'The Earl had the rarest books of all countries, languages, and sciences': thousands of fragments, some a thousand years old: vellum books, of which some had been sc.r.a.ped and used again as 'palimpsests': 'a great collection of Bibles, and editions of all the first printed books, cla.s.sics, and others of our own country, ecclesiastical as well as civil, by Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Berthelet, Rastall, Grafton, and the greatest number of pamphlets and English heads of any other person: abundance of ledgers, chartularies, etc., and original letters of eminent persons as many as would fill two hundred volumes; all the collections of his librarian Humphrey Wanley, of Stow, Sir Symonds D'Ewes, Prynne, Bishop Stillingfleet, John Bagford, Le Neve, and the flower of a hundred other libraries.'

A few of these collections ought to be separately mentioned. Stow had died in great poverty, and indeed had been for many years a licensed beggar or bedesman; but in his youth he had been enabled by Parker's protection to make a good collection out of the spoils of the Abbeys; during the Elizabethan persecution he was nearly convicted of treason for being in possession of remnants of Popery, and found it very hard to convince the stern inquisitor that he was only a harmless antiquary. Sir Symonds D'Ewes had endeavoured by his will, which he modelled upon that of De Thou, to preserve undispersed through the ages to come the 'precious library' bequeathed in a touching phrase 'to Adrian D'Ewes, my young son, yet lying in the cradle.' Notwithstanding all his bonds and penalties the event which he dreaded came to pa.s.s. Harley had advised Queen Anne to buy a collection that included so many precious doc.u.ments and records: the Queen, wishing perhaps to rebuff her minister, said that it was indeed no merit in her to prefer arts to arms, 'but while the blood and honour of the nation was at stake in her wars she could not, till she had secured her living subjects an honourable peace, bestow their money upon dead letters'; and so, we are told, 'the Earl stretched his own purse, and gave 6000 for the library.' Peter Le Neve spent his life in gathering important papers about coat-armour and pedigrees. He had intended them for the use of his fellow Kings-at-Arms; but it was said that he had some pique against the Heralds' College, and so 'cut them off with a volume.' The rest went to the auction-room: 'The Earl of Oxford,' said Oldys, 'will have a sweep at it'; and we know that the cast was successful. As for John Bagford, the scourge of the book-world, we have little to say in his defence. In his audacious design of compiling a history of printing he mangled and mutilated about 25,000 volumes, tearing out the t.i.tle pages and colophons and shaving the margins even of such priceless jewels of bibliography as the Bible of Gutenberg and those of 'Polyglott' Cardinal Ximenes. He cannot avoid conviction as a literary monster; yet his contemporaries regarded him as a miracle of erudition, and Mr. Pollard has lately put in a kindly plea in mitigation. We are reminded that Bagford made no money by his crimes, that he took walking-tours through Holland and Germany in search of bargains, and that he made 'a priceless collection of ballads.' It might be said also for a further plea that what one age regards as sport another condemns as butchery. The Ferrar family at Little Gidding were the inventors of 'pasting-printing,' as they called their barbarous mode of embellishment; and Charles I. himself, in Laud's presence, called their largest sc.r.a.p-book 'the Emperor of all books,' and 'the incomparablest book this will be, as ever eye beheld.' The huge volume made up for Prince Charles out of pictures and sc.r.a.ps of text was joyfully p.r.o.nounced to be 'the gallantest greatest book in the world.' The practice of 'grangerising,'

or stuffing out an author with prints and pages from other works, was even praised by Dibdin as 'useful and entertaining,' though in our own time it is rightly condemned as a malpractice.

Next to Harley's library in importance was that of John Moore, Bishop of Ely, of which Burnet said that it was a treasure beyond what one would think the life and labour of a man could compa.s.s. Oldys has described it in his notes upon London libraries, which it is fair to remember were based on Bagford's labours, as regards the earlier entries. 'The Bishop,'

he says, 'had a prodigious collection of books, written as well as printed on vellum, some very ancient, others finely illuminated. He had a Capgrave's Chronicle, books of the first printing at Maintz and other places abroad, as also at Oxford, St. Alban's, Westminster, etc.' There was some talk of uniting it with Harley's collection; but in 1715 it was bought by George I. for 6000 guineas, and was presented to the Public Library at Cambridge.

The University had possessed a library from very early times. It owed much to the liberality of several successive Bishops of Durham. Theodore Beza and Lord Bacon were afterwards among its most distinguished benefactors. Bishop Hacket made a donation of nearly fifteen hundred volumes: and in 1647 a large collection of Eastern MSS., brought home from Italy by George Thomason, was added by an ordinance of the Commonwealth. But, until the royal gift of the Bishop of Ely's books, the University received no such extraordinary favour of fortune as came to the sister inst.i.tution through the splendid beneficence of Bodley.