Prices of Books

Walton’s Polyglot Bible, 6 vols. folio, 1657 (with Castell’s Lexicon), does not keep up its price.

Seaman, 1676, £8, 2s. Bernard, 1698, £10. Duke of Grafton (without Castell), £38, 13s. Edwards, £61. Heath, £73, 10s. (bought by the Earl of Essex). H. Perkins, 1873, £19, 15s. At the Wimpole library sale (Lord Chancellor Hardwicke), 1888, a copy of Walton without Castell fetched £9, 5s. The Ashburnham copy, which had belonged to Henry, Duke of Gloucester, fourth son of Charles I., with his name on the binding, which was in blue morocco, sold in 1897 for £28.

Editiones Principes of the Classics

Æsopus. Fabulæ Latine et Italice. Neapoli, 1485; first edition of Æsop with the Italian version. Hibbert’s, £17; Libri, 480 francs; Earl of Ashburnham, £203.

Anacreon. Lutetiæ, 1554, on vellum. Sunderland, 1881, £221.

Aristoteles. Opera varia. Venetiis, 1483, 2 vols. Earl of Ashburnham, 1897 (printed on vellum), each volume decorated in the highest style of Italian art of the period, fifty-nine beautiful historical and ornamental initials, £800.

Cicero. Opera Omnia Mediolani, per Alex. Minutianum et Gulielmos fratres, 1498-99 [first edition of the collected works], four vols. in two, folio, old yellow morocco. Sunderland, £30, 10s.

–– Epistolæ ad familiares. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1467, folio, the first edition and the first book printed in Rome and in Roman letters. Sunderland, £295.

—– Epistolæ. Venetiis, a Nicolao Jenson, 1471, folio. Mead, £3, 3s.; Askew, £11, 16s.; Sunderland, £12.

–– Orationes. Adam de Ambergau, 1472, folio. Askew gave £3, 5s. for his copy, which was bought by Dr. Hunter at his sale for £12. It is now at Glasgow University. Sunderland, £18.

Claudianus. Opera. Venetiæ, 1482, first edition. Mead, £2, 2s.; Askew, £7, 15s.; Pinelli, £9, 9s.; Sunderland (broken binding), £4.

Gellius (Aulus). Noctes Atticæ. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1469, folio, first edition. Pinelli, £58, 16s. (printed on vellum); Sunderland, £790.

–– Noctes. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1472, folio. Mead, £2, 12s. 6d.; Askew, £11, 10s.; Sunderland, £13, 10s.

Homerus. Opera Omnia. Florentiæ sumpt. Bern. et Nerii Nerliorum, 1488, two vols. folio, first edition. The British Museum copy was purchased for £17; Wodhull, £200; Sunderland, £48.

–– Homeri Odyssea Græce. Florentiæ, 1488, first edition. Duke of Hamilton, 1884, very large and fine copy, red morocco, by Clarke & Bedford, £25.

–– On vellum (one of the four known to exist). Dent, part 1, 1827, £142, 16s.

Horatius. Opera. 1470, small folio, first edition, with a date. Sunderland, £29. The Naples edition of 1474 is called by Dibdin “the rarest classical volume in the world,” and it was chiefly to possess this book that Earl Spencer bought the famous library of the Duke of Cassano.

Justinus. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1470, small folio, first edition. Mead, £3, 3s.; Askew, £13, 13s. (sold to the British Museum); Pinelli, £18, 7s. 6d.; Sunderland, £15.

Juvenalis et Persius. Editio Princeps. Dr. Askew gave £3 for his copy; at his sale it was purchased by the British Museum for thirteen guineas.

Livius. The first edition, printed at Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz, as is supposed, in 1469. The only copy printed on vellum which is known to exist is now in the Grenville Library (British Museum). It was for years in the possession of the Benedictine Library at Milan. It was bought by Sykes at J. Edwards’s sale (1815) for £903. At Sykes’s sale (1824) it was bought by Payne and Foss for £472, 10s. These booksellers sold it to Dent, and at Dent’s sale (1827) bought it again for Grenville for £262, 10s., a remarkable instance of depreciation in price of a unique book.

The editor of this series contributed an article on this copy to The Library (vol. i. p. 106). The arms of the Borgia family are beautifully painted on the first page of the text, and it has usually been supposed that Cardinal Roderigo Borgia (afterwards Pope Alexander VI.), to whom it belonged, was Abbot of the monastery of Subiaco (where the first productions of Sweynheym and Pannartz were executed) at the time the book was printed. It is proved in the article, however, that the abbey was not conferred upon Borgia by Sixtus IV. until 1471, so that the connection is merely a coincidence. This magnificent volume was probably executed for Borgia, whose character, as delineated by Raphael Volaterranus, is evidently imitated from Livy’s character of Hannibal.

–– Venet. Vindelin de Spira, 1470, two vols. folio, printed on vellum. Sunderland, £520.

Lucanus. Pharsalia. Romæ (Sweynheym and Pannartz), 1469, folio; fine edition, of which only 250 copies were printed. Askew gave £6, 16s. 6d. for his copy, which was bought at his sale by De Bure for £16; Sunderland, £38.

Lucianus. Opera. Florentiæ, 1496, folio, first edition. Askew gave £2, 12s. 6d. for his copy, which was sold at the sale of his library for £19, 8s. 6d.; Pinelli, £8, 18s. 6d.; copy on vellum in the Sunderland library, £59.

Martialis Epigrammata. Ferrara, 1471, quarto, first edition of Martial, and the first book printed at Ferrara. Mead, £4, 14s. 6d.; Askew, £17; Combes, £60, bought for the Bodleian.

Ovidius. Opera. First edition. Mead, £2, 12s. 6d.; Askew, £10, 15s.

–– Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1471, three vols. folio, probably second edition. Sunderland, £85.

–– Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1502-3, three vols. 8vo, first Aldine edition. Sunderland, £9; copy on vellum (Askew, £63) sold to Lord Spencer.

Plato. Omnia Platonis Opera. Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1513, folio, first edition. Sunderland, £31. Copy on vellum, Lord Orford gave £105 for it; Askew purchased it for one-fifth of that price. At his sale it was bought by Dr. William Hunter for £52, 10s. It is now in the library at Glasgow University.

Plinius. Venetiis, Joannes de Spira, 1469, first edition. The British Museum copy was purchased in 1775 for £43; Sunderland, £82; another copy, £70.

–– Venetiis, Nicolaus Jenson, 1472. The British Museum copy was bought at Askew’s sale for £23; printed on vellum, Sunderland, £220.

–– Parmæ, 1476. Sunderland, £7, 15s. Douce gave Payne & Foss three hundred guineas for his copy on vellum. It is now in the Bodleian Library.

Quintilianus. Institutionum Oratoriarum lib. xii. Romæ, 1470, folio, printed on vellum. Sunderland, £290.

–– Institutiones Oratoriæ. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), circa 1470, folio. Paris library, £26, 5s., now in Cracherode library (British Museum); Sunderland, £26.

Sallustius. Venetiis, Vindelin de Spira, 1470, quarto or folio. Mead, £5, 17s.; Askew, £14, 3s. 6d.; Sunderland, £19, 10s.

Silius Italicus. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1471, folio, first edition. Askew gave three guineas for his copy, which was bought for the British Museum at his sale for £13, 2s. 6d.; Pinelli, £48; Sunderland, £20, 10s.

Valerius Maximus. Moguntinæ, per Petrum Schoyffer de Gernsheim, 1471, folio, first edition, with a date. Askew gave £4, 14s. 6d. for his copy, which sold at his sale for £26; Sunderland, £32.

–– Another copy, printed on vellum, sold at the Sunderland sale for £194.

Virgilius. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1469 (?). Most valuable of all the first editions. Hopetoun House, 1889, slightly damaged and slightly wormed, £2000. The previous occasion on which a copy was sold was at the La Vallière sale, 1784, when an imperfect copy fetched 4101 francs.

–– Venet. Vindelin de Spira, 1470, folio, first edition with a date, printed on vellum. A copy sold for twenty-five guineas at Consul Smith’s sale, 1773; Sunderland, £810. A copy on paper was sold in 1889. Hopetoun, £590.

–– Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1501, 8vo, first Aldine edition, and the first book printed with the italic type invented by Aldus. Sunderland, £65; copy printed on vellum (Askew, £74, 11s.) now in the Althorpe library.

Italian Classics

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso. Ferrara, 1516, with William Cecil’s (Lord Burghley) autograph. Sunderland, 1881, £300.

Boccaccio. In the catalogue of the Sunderland library (1881) eight pages are devoted to the description of various editions of his works. One of these, “De la Ruine des Nobles Hommes et Femmes,” Bruges Colard Mansion, 1476, realised £920. An imperfect copy of the celebrated first edition of the “Decameron” (C. Valdarfer, 1471) fetched £585. This was the copy possessed by Lord Blandford when he bought the complete Roxburghe copy. The imperfect copy was afterwards sold in the Lakelands sale (W. H. Crawford) for £230, and is now in the British Museum.

The latter book will always hold a high position in the annals of bibliography, from the fact that when a perfect copy in the Roxburghe library was sold in 1812, it was bought by the Marquis of Blandford after a hard struggle with Earl Spencer for £2260, the highest price ever paid for a book up to that date, and for many years afterwards. It had originally been added to the Roxburghe library at a cost of one hundred guineas. Seven years afterwards Messrs. Longman bought this same book at the White Knights sale for £918 for Lord Spencer.

Dante. First edition of Landino’s Commentary, Firenze, 1481; very large copy, with twenty rare engravings, purple morocco, by Lewis. Duke of Hamilton, 1884, £380.

W. H. Crawford, 1891, with the engravings by Bacio Baldini from designs of Botticelli, £360.

Petrarca. I Triumphi. Venetia, per Bernardino da Novara, 1488, with two sets of six illustrations, one on metal and one on wood. Sunderland, 1882, £1950.

–– Second Aldine edition, printed on vellum, 1514. Hanrott, £73; Beckford, 1883, £66.

Poliphili Hypnerotomachia. Venetiis (Aldus), 1499. Sykes, part 2, beautiful copy, in yellow morocco by Roger Payne, £21; Watson Taylor (on vellum), £82, 19s.; Sir C. Price, £53, 10s.; Howell Wills, £30; Luke Price, £49; Beckford, 1883 (Crozat’s copy, red morocco, richly tooled), £130; Duke of Hamilton, 1884, £80; Earl of Crawford, 1887, £86; W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891 (some of the woodcuts partially coloured, wanting leaf with imprint), £19; Earl of Ashburnham, 1897 (Emperor Charles V.’s copy, in stamped calf, with his figure in medallion), £151.