Books and Bookmen - Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

Books and Bookmen

To

PREFACE

The essays in this volume have, for the most part, already appeared in an American edition (Combes, New York, 1886). The Essays on Old French Title-Pages and Lady Book-Lovers take the place of Book Binding and Bookmen at Rome; Elzevirs and Some Japanese Bogie-Books are reprinted, with permission of Messrs. Cassell, from the Magazine of Art; Curiosities of Parish Registers from the Guardian; Literary Forgeries from the Contemporary Review; Lady Book-Lovers from the Fortnightly Review; A Bookmans Purgatory and two of the pieces of verse from Longmans Magazine with the courteous permission of the various editors. All the chapters have been revised, and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for his kind care in reading the proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P., for a similar service to the Essay on Parish Registers.

ELZEVIRS

The Countryman. You know how much, for some time past, the editions of the Elzevirs have been in demand. The fancy for them has even penetrated into the country. I am acquainted with a man there who denies himself necessaries, for the sake of collecting into a library (where other books are scarce enough) as many little Elzevirs as he can lay his hands upon. He is dying of hunger, and his consolation is to be able to say, I have all the poets whom the Elzevirs printed. I have ten examples of each of them, all with red letters, and all of the right date. This, no doubt, is a craze, for, good as the books are, if he kept them to read them, one example of each would be enough.

The Parisian. If he had wanted to read them, I would not have advised him to buy Elzevirs. The editions of minor authors which these booksellers published, even editions of the right date, as you say, are not too correct. Nothing is good in the books but the type and the paper. Your friend would have done better to use the editions of Gryphius or Estienne.

This fragment of a literary dialogue I translate from Entretiens sur les Contes de Fées, a book which contains more of old talk about books and booksellers than about fairies and folk-lore. The Entretiens were published in 1699, about sixteen years after the Elzevirs ceased to be publishers. The fragment is valuable: first, because it shows us how early the taste for collecting Elzevirs was fully developed, and, secondly, because it contains very sound criticism of the mania. Already, in the seventeenth century, lovers of the tiny Elzevirian books waxed pathetic over dates, already they knew that a Cæsar of 1635 was the right Cæsar, already they were fond of the red-lettered passages, as in the first edition of the Virgil of 1636. As early as 1699, too, the Parisian critic knew that the editions were not very correct, and that the paper, type, ornaments, and format were their main attractions. To these we must now add the rarity of really good Elzevirs.

Though Elzevirs have been more fashionable than at present, they are still regarded by novelists as the great prize of the book collector. You read in novels about priceless little Elzevirs, about books as rare as an old Elzevir. I have met, in the works of a lady novelist (but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir Theocritus. The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek Testament, worth its weight in gold. Casual remarks of this kind encourage a popular delusion that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable price. When a man is first smitten with the pleasant fever of book-collecting, it is for Elzevirs that he searches. At first he thinks himself in amazing luck. In Booksellers Row and in Castle Street he picks up, for a shilling or two, Elzevirs, real or supposed. To the beginner, any book with a sphere on the title-page is an Elzevir. For the beginners instruction, two copies of spheres are printed here. The second is a sphere, an ill-cut, ill-drawn sphere, which is not Elzevirian at all. The mark was used in the seventeenth century by many other booksellers and printers. The first, on the other hand, is a true Elzevirian sphere, from a play of Molières, printed in 1675. Observe the comparatively neat drawing of the first sphere, and be not led away after spurious imitations.

Beware, too, of the vulgar error of fancying that little duodecimos with the mark of the fox and the bees nest, and the motto Quaerendo, come from the press of the Elzevirs. The mark is that of Abraham Wolfgang, which name is not a pseudonym for Elzevir. There are three sorts of Elzevir pseudonyms. First, they occasionally reprinted the full title-page, publishers name and all, of the book they pirated. Secondly, when they printed books of a dangerous sort, Jansenist pamphlets and so forth, they used pseudonyms like Nic. Schouter, on the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. Thirdly, there are real pseudonyms employed by the Elzevirs. John and Daniel, printing at Leyden (16521655), used the false name Jean Sambix. The Elzevirs of Amsterdam often placed the name Jacques le Jeune on their title-pages. The collector who remembers these things must also see that his purchases have the right ornaments at the heads of chapters, the right tail-pieces at the ends. Two of the most frequently recurring ornaments are the so-called Tête de Buffle and the Sirène. More or less clumsy copies of these and the other Elzevirian ornaments are common enough in books of the period, even among those printed out of the Low Countries; for example, in books published in Paris.

A brief sketch of the history of the Elzevirs may here be useful. The founder of the family, a Flemish bookbinder, Louis, left Louvain and settled in Leyden in 1580. He bought a house opposite the University, and opened a book-shop. Another shop, on college ground, was opened in 1587. Louis was a good bookseller, a very ordinary publisher. It was not till shortly before his death, in 1617, that his grandson Isaac bought a set of types and other material. Louis left six sons. Two of these, Matthew and Bonaventure, kept on the business, dating ex officina Elzeviriana. In 1625 Bonaventure and Abraham (son of Matthew) became partners. The good dates of Elzevirian books begin from 1626. The two Elzevirs chose excellent types, and after nine years endeavours turned out the beautiful Cæsar of 1635.

Their classical series in petit format was opened with Horace and Ovid in 1629. In 1641 they began their elegant piracies of French plays and poetry with Le Cid. It was worth while being pirated by the Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with fleurons and red letters, and a pretty frontispiece. The modern pirate dresses you in rags, prints you murderously, and binds you, if he binds you at all, in some hideous example of cloth extra, all gilt, like archaic gingerbread. Bonaventure and Abraham both died in 1652. They did not depart before publishing (1628), in grand format, a desirable work on fencing, Thibaults Académie de lEspée. This Tibbald also killed by the book. John and Daniel Elzevir came next. They brought out the Imitation (Thomæ a Kempis canonici regularis ord. S. Augustini De Imitatione Christi, libri iv.); I wish by taking thought I could add eight millimetres to the stature of my copy. In 1655 Daniel joined a cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and John stayed in Leyden. John died in 1661; his widow struggled on, but her son Abraham (1681) let all fall into ruins. Abraham died 1712. The Elzevirs of Amsterdam lasted till 1680, when Daniel died, and the business was wound up. The type, by Christopher Van Dyck, was sold in 1681, by Daniels widow. Sic transit gloria.

After he has learned all these matters the amateur has still a great deal to acquire. He may now know a real Elzevir from a book which is not an Elzevir at all. But there are enormous differences of value, rarity, and excellence among the productions of the Elzevirian press. The bookstalls teem with small, cropped, dingy, dirty, battered Elzevirian editions of the classics, not of the good date. On these it is not worth while to expend a couple of shillings, especially as Elzevirian type is too small to be read with comfort by most modern eyes. No, let the collector save his money; avoid littering his shelves with what he will soon find to be rubbish, and let him wait the chance of acquiring a really beautiful and rare Elzevir.

Meantime, and before we come to describe Elzevirs of the first flight, let it be remembered that the taller the copy, the less harmed and nipped by the binders shears, the better. Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is, says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form. The Elzevirs we have may be dear, but they are certainly dumpy twelves. Their fair proportions have been docked by the binder. At the Beckford sale there was a pearl of a book, a Marot; not an Elzevir, indeed, but a book published by Wetstein, a follower of the Elzevirs. This exquisite pair of volumes, bound in blue morocco, was absolutely unimpaired, and was a sight to bring happy tears into the eyes of the amateur of Elzevirs. There was a gracious svelte elegance about these tomes, an appealing and exquisite delicacy of proportion, that linger like sweet music in the memory. I have a copy of the Wetstein Marot myself, not a bad copy, though murderously bound in that ecclesiastical sort of brown calf antique, which goes well with hymn books, and reminds one of cakes of chocolate. But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in height, whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the great Pixérécourt) was at least 130 millimetres high. Beside the uncut example mine looks like Cinderellas plain sister beside the beauty of the family.

Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth collecting. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that his altitude filled the minds of all with awe. Well, the Philistine may think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of little importance. When he comes to sell, he will discover the difference. An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good Elzevir may be worth fifty or sixty pounds or more; an ordinary copy may bring fewer pence. The binders usually pare down the top and bottom more than the sides. I have a Rabelais of the good date, with the red title (1663), and some of the pages have never been opened, at the sides. But the height is only some 122 millimetres, a mere dwarf. Anything over 130 millimetres is very rare. Therefore the collector of Elzevirs should have one of those useful ivory-handled knives on which the French measures are marked, and thus he will at once be able to satisfy himself as to the exact height of any example which he encounters.

Let us now assume that the amateur quite understands what a proper Elzevir should be: tall, clean, well bound if possible, and of the good date. But we have still to learn what the good dates are, and this is matter for the study and practice of a well-spent life. We may gossip about a few of the more famous Elzevirs, those without which no collection is complete. Of all Elzevirs the most famous and the most expensive is an old cookery book, Le Pastissier François. Wherein is taught the way to make all sorts of pastry, useful to all sorts of persons. Also the manner of preparing all manner of eggs, for fast-days, and other days, in more than sixty fashions. Amsterdam, Louys, and Daniel Elsevier. 1665. The mark is not the old Sage, but the Minerva with her owl. Now this book has no intrinsic value any more than a Tauchnitz reprint of any modern volume on cooking. The Pastissier is cherished because it is so very rare. The tract passed into the hands of cooks, and the hands of cooks are detrimental to literature. Just as nursery books, fairy tales, and the like are destroyed from generation to generation, so it happens with books used in the kitchen. The Pastissier, to be sure, has a good frontispiece, a scene in a Low Country kitchen, among the dead game and the dainties. The buxom cook is making a game pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the birds head and tail-feathers, is already made.

Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the Pastissier coveted. In an early edition of the Manuel (1821) Brunet says, with a feigned brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), Till now I have disdained to admit this book into my work, but I have yielded to the prayers of amateurs. Besides, how could I keep out a volume which was sold for one hundred and one francs in 1819? One hundred and one francs! If I could only get a Pastissier for one hundred and one francs! But our grandfathers lived in the Bookmans Paradise. Il nest pas jusquaux Anglais, adds Brunet the very English themselves have a taste for the Pastissier. The Duke of Marlboroughs copy was actually sold for £1 4s. It would have been money in the ducal pockets of the house of Marlborough to have kept this volume till the general sale of all their portable property at which our generation is privileged to assist. No wonder the Pastissier was thought rare. Bérard only knew two copies. Pietiers, writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five Pastissiers, and in his Annales he had found out but five more. Willems, on the other hand, enumerates some thirty, not including Motteleys. Motteley was an uncultivated, untaught enthusiast. He knew no Latin, but he had a flair for uncut Elzevirs. Incomptis capillis, he would cry (it was all his lore) as he gloated over his treasures. They were all burnt by the Commune in the Louvre Library.

A few examples may be given of the prices brought by Le Pastissier in later days. Sensiers copy was but 128 millimetres in height, and had the old ordinary vellum binding,  in fact, it closely resembled a copy which Messrs. Ellis and White had for sale in Bond Street in 1883. The English booksellers asked, I think, about 1,500 francs for their copy. Sensiers was sold for 128 francs in April, 1828; for 201 francs in 1837. Then the book was gloriously bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, and was sold with Potiers books in 1870, when it fetched 2,910 francs. At the Benzon sale (1875) it fetched 3,255 francs, and, falling dreadfully in price, was sold again in 1877 for 2,200 francs. M. Dutuit, at Rouen, has a taller copy, bound by Bauzonnet. Last time it was sold (1851) it brought 251 francs. The Duc de Chartres has now the copy of Pieters, the historian of the Elzevirs, valued at 3,000 francs.