Note 377 — The Drawing Room. (continued 3)

There was an amusing little volume, printed in 1782, 8vo., concerning the library of the late King of France; and an equally interesting one might have been composed concerning the Harleian Collection—but who can now undertake the task?—who concentrate all the rivulets which have run from this splendid reservoir into other similar pieces of water? The undertaking is impracticable. We have nothing, therefore, I fear, left us but to sit down and weep; to hang our harps upon the neighbouring willows, and to think upon the Book "Sion," with desponding sensations that its foundations have been broken up, and its wealth dissipated. But let us adopt a less flowery style of communication. Before Harley was created a peer, his library was fixed at Wimple, in Cambridgeshire, the usual place of his residence; "whence he frequently visited his friends at Cambridge, and in particular Mr. Baker, for whom he always testified the highest regard. This nobleman's attachment to literature, the indefatigable pains he took, and the large sums he expended in making the above collection, are too well known to stand in need of any further notice." Masters's life of Baker, p. 107. The eulogies of Maittaire and Hearne confirm every thing here advanced by Masters; and the testimony of Pope himself, that Harley "left behind him one of the finest libraries in Europe," warrants us, if other testimonies were not even yet daily before our eyes, to draw the same conclusion. In a periodical publication entitled The Director, to which I contributed all the intelligence under the article "Bibliographiana," there appeared the following copious, and, it is presumed, not uninteresting, details respecting the Earl of Oxford, and his Library. After the sale of Mr. Bridges's books, no event occurred in the bibliographical world, worthy of notice, till the sale of the famous Harleian Library, or the books once in the possession of the celebrated Harley, Earl of Oxford. This nobleman was not less distinguished in the political than in the literary world; and "was a remarkable instance of the fickleness of popular opinion, and the danger of being removed from the lower to the upper house of parliament." (Noble's Continuation of Granger, vol. ii., 23.) He was born in the year 1661, was summoned to the house of Lords by the titles of Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, in 1711; declared minister and lord high treasurer in the same year; resigned, and was impeached, in the year 1715; acquitted, without being brought to a trial, in 1717; and died at his house in Albemarle Street, in 1724. A character so well known in the annals of this country needs no particular illustration in the present place. The Harleian Collection of MSS. was purchased by government for 10,000l., and is now deposited in the British Museum (vide p. 89, ante). The Books were disposed of to Thomas Osborne, of Gray's Inn, bookseller;—to the irreparable loss, and, I had almost said, the indelible disgrace, of the country. It is, indeed, for ever to be lamented that a collection so extensive, so various, so magnificent, and intrinsically valuable, should have become the property of one who necessarily, from his situation in life, became a purchaser, only that he might be a vender, of the volumes. Osborne gave 13,000l. for the collection; a sum which must excite the astonishment of the present age, when it is informed that Lord Oxford gave 18,000l. for the Binding only, of the least part of them. (From Oldys's interleaved Langbaine. See Brydges's Cens. Literar., vol. i., p. 438.) In the year 1743-4 appeared an account of this collection, under the following title, Catalogus Bibliothecæ Harleianæ, &c., in four volumes (the 5th not properly appertaining to it). Dr. Johnson was employed by Osborne to write the preface, which, says Boswell, "he has done with an ability that cannot fail to impress all his readers with admiration of his philological attainments." Life of Johnson, vol. i., 81, edit. 4to. In my humble apprehension, the preface is unworthy of the doctor: it contains a few general philological reflections, expressed in a style sufficiently stately, but is divested of bibliographical anecdote and interesting intelligence. The first two volumes are written in Latin by Johnson; the third and fourth volumes, which are a repetition of the two former, are composed in English by Oldys: and, notwithstanding its defects, it is the best catalogue of a large library of which we can boast. It should be in every good collection. To the volumes was prefixed the following advertisement: "As the curiosity of spectators, before the sale, may produce disorder in the disposition of the books, it is necessary to advertise the public that there will be no admission into the library before the day of sale, which will be on Tuesday, the 14th of February, 1744." It seems that Osborne had charged the sum of 5s. to each of his first two volumes, which was represented by the booksellers "as an avaricious innovation;" and, in a paper published in "The Champion," they, or their mercenaries, reasoned so justly as to allege that "if Osborne could afford a very large price for the library, he might therefore afford to give away the catalogue." Preface to vol. iii., p. 1. To this charge Osborne answered that his catalogue was drawn up with great pains, and at a heavy expense; but, to obviate all objections, "those," says he, "who have paid five shillings a volume shall be allowed, at any time within three months after the day of sale, either to return them in exchange for books, or to send them back, and receive their money." This, it must be confessed, was sufficiently liberal. Osborne was also accused of rating his books at too high a price: to this the following was his reply, or rather Dr. Johnson's; for the style of the Doctor is sufficiently manifest: "If, therefore, I have set a high value upon books—if I have vainly imagined literature to be more fashionable than it really is, or idly hoped to revive a taste well nigh extinguished, I know not why I should be persecuted with clamour and invective, since I shall only suffer by my mistake, and be obliged to keep those books which I was in hopes of selling."—Preface to the 3d volume. The fact is that Osborne's charges were extremely moderate; and the sale of the books was so very slow that Johnson assured Boswell "there was not much gained by the bargain." Whoever inspects Osborne's catalogue of 1748 (four years after the Harleian sale), will find in it many of the most valuable of Lord Oxford's books; and, among them, a copy of the Aldine Plato of 1513, struck off upon vellum, marked at 21l. only: for this identical copy Lord Oxford gave 100 guineas, as Dr. Mead informed Dr. Askew; from the latter of whose collections it was purchased by Dr. Hunter, and is now in the Hunter Museum. There will also be found, in Osborne's catalogues of 1748 and 1753, some of the scarcest books in English Literature, marked at 2, or 3, or 4s., for which three times the number of pounds is now given.