BOOK II, Chap. IV. THE KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. D'Arblay, Diary, vol. ii, pp. 395-398. GEORGE THE THIRD'S SERIES OF BOOKS FROM CAXTON'S In the last-mentioned conversation, the King evinced considerable acquaintance with French literature. He shared, to some extent, the then very general admiration for RousSEAU, on whom he had bestowed more than one act of kindness during the brief English exile of the author of Emile. He shared, also, the common impression as to the absence of gratitude in the brilliant Frenchman's character. When Miss BURNEY told him that his own portrait had been seen to occupy the most conspicuous place in ROUSSEAU's livingroom after his return to France, the King was both surprised and touched. Next after the large and choice acquisitions made for the King's Library on the Continent, some of its most conspicuous and valuable literary treasures were acquired at the several sales, in London, of the Libraries of James WEST (1773), of John RATCLIFFE (1776), and of Richard FARMER (1798). It was at the first of these sales that GEORGE THE THIRD laid the foundation of his unequalled series of the productions of the father of English printing. The Caxtons bought for the King at West's sale included the dearly prized Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (14721474?), the Booke of the Chesse (1476 ?), the Canterbury Tales of CHAUCER (1478?), the Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers (1480), the Mirrour of the World (1481), the Godfrey of Bologne (1482), the Confessio Amantis (1483), the Paris and Vienne (1485), and the Royal Booke (1487 ?). Of these, the lowest in price was the Confessio of 1483, which the King acquired for nine guineas, and the highest in price was the Chaucer of 1478, which cost him fortyseven pounds fifteen shillings. At the same sale, he also acquired another Caxton, which has a peculiar interest. The King's copy of the Troylus and Creside (probably printed in the year 1484) formerly BOOK II, belonged 'To Her, most gentle, most unfortunate, Crowned but to die-who in her chamber sate And every ear and every heart was won, And all, in green array, were chasing down the sun;' and it bears her autograph. Three years after the dispersion of WEST's Library came that of the extraordinary Collection which had been made by a Bermondsey ship-chandler, John RATCLIFFE by name. This worthy and fortunate Collector has been said, commonly, to have amassed his black-letter curiosities by buying them, at so much a pound, over his counter. * But of such windfalls no man has ever been so lucky as to have more than a few. John RATCLIFFE was, like his King, a large buyer at WEST's sale, and at many other sales, upon the ordinary terms. By pains and perseverance he had collected of books printed by CAXTON the extraordinary number of fortyeight. No Collector ever surpassed, or even reached, that number, except Robert HARLEY, in whose days books that are now worth three hundred pounds could, not infrequently, be bought for much less than the half of three hundred pence. RATCLIFFE'S forty-eight Caxtons produced at his sale two hundred and thirty-six pounds. The King bought twenty of them at an aggregate cost of about eighty-five pounds. Amongst them were the Boethius, of 1478; the Reynarde the Foxe, of 1481; the Golden Legende, and the * The story, I observe, has been endorsed in Mr. Blades' excellent Life of Caxton (see part 2, p. 268), but it is undoubtedly a distortion or exaggeration of some chance occurrence. No such series could have been formed otherwise than, in the main, by systematic research. Chap. IV. KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. JOHN Rat- CLIFFE OF SEY AND HIS BRARY. BOOK II, Chap. IV. THE KING'S OR LIBRARY. GIFTS TO Curial, both of 1484; and the Speculum Vitæ Christi, probably printed in 1488. The Boethius is a fine copy, and was obtained for four pounds six shillings. A few years ago an imperfect copy of the same book brought more than sixteen times that sum. The other This last Two others of the King's Caxtons were the gift of Jacob BRYANT. One of these is Ralph LEFEVRE'S Recueil des histoires de Troye, printed, probably, in 1476. is the Doctrinal of Sapience, printed in 1489. named volume is on vellum, and is the only copy so printed which is known to exist. A third Caxton volume was bequeathed to GEORGE THE THIRD by Mr. HEWETT, of Ipswich. This is the Esop of 1484, and is the only extant copy. It was delivered to the King by Sir John HEWETT GEORGE GEORGE III and Mr. Philip BROKE, the legator's executors. AND THE BIBLIO MANIA. THE THIRD was very sensitive to the special triumphs of collectorship, and would be sure to prize the Esop all the more for its attribute of uniqueness. A story in illustration of this specific tinge of the bibliomania in our royal Collector was wont to be told by Sir Walter SCOTT, and is mentioned in his interesting obituary notice of the King, printed in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal immediately after the King's death. According to SCOTT, GEORGE THE THIRD was fond of crowing a little over his brother-collector, the Duke of ROXBURGHE, on the score that the royal copy of the famous Recuyell of the Histories of Troye had a pre-eminence over the Roxburghe copy. The pre-eminence was of a sort, indeed, to which no one but a thorough-paced Collector would be sensible. For it consisted in the 'locking,' or wrong imposing, of certain pages, afterwards corrected at press. The fault, therefore, *Edinburgh Weekly Journal, Feb. 1820. The article is reprinted in Miscellaneous Prose Works, Edition of 1841, vol. ii, p. 184. Chap. IV. 'GEORGIAN' indicated priority of working off. But I do not find in BOOK II, the King's Recuyell-which now lies before me-the THE peculiarity spoken of in the poet's story. Such a fault KING'S OR does exist in the Roxburghe copy, which now belongs to LIBRARY. the Duke of DEVONSHIRE. Other and authenticated anecdotes, however, are abundant, which suffice to show the close knowledge of, and the keen interest in, his books, by which GEORGE THE THIRD was characterised. It was a still better trait in him that he found real pleasure in knowing that the treasures and rarities of his Library subserved the inquiries and studies of scholars. Nor did he make narrow limitations. Men like JOHNSON and Bishop HORSLEY profited by the Collection. So, too, did men like GIBBON and PRIESTLEY. The total number of Caxton prints amassed by GEORGE III was thirty-nine. Of these three are in the Royal Library at Windsor-namely, the Recueil (1476 ?), the Esop (1484), and the Doctrinal (1489). THIRD'S AS AN To a keen enjoyment of the pleasures of collectorship, GEORGE THE the King added, in 1787, a passing taste of those of au- APPEARANCE thorship. As a Collector, the bibliomania did not engross AUTHOR. him. He had a delight in amassing fine plants as well as fine books. The Hortus Kewensis (in both applications of the term) was largely indebted to his liberality of expenditure and to his far-spread research. He sent botanic missionaries to the remotest parts of Asia, as well as to Africa. He took the most cordial interest in those varied voyages of discovery which-as I have observed in a former chaptercast so distinctive a lustre on his reign, and in consequence of which such large additions were made to our natural history collections, public and private. And he did much to promote scientific agriculture, both by precept and by BOOK II, KING'S OR LIBRARY. example. It was as It was as a practical agriculturist that the King (under a slight veil of pseudonymity *) made his bow to the reading public by the publication of seven articles in Arthur YOUNG's useful and then well-known periodical, the Annals of Agriculture. Those articles have a threefold aim. They inculcate the wisdom, for certain soils, of an intermediate system of treatment and of cropping, midway between the old routine and the drill-husbandry, then of recent introduction; they describe several new implements, introduced by DUCKET of Esher and of Petersham; and they advocate an almost entire rejection of fallows. They further describe a method, also introduced by Farmer DUCKET, and then peculiar, of destroying that farmer's pest, couch-grass (triticum repens), by trench-ploughing it deep into the ground, and contain many other practical suggestions, some of which seem to have been empirical, and others so good that they have become trite. But the best service rendered by GEORGE THE THIRD to the agricultural pursuits, of which he was so fond, was his introduction of the Merino flocks, which became conspicuous ornaments to the great and little parks at Windsor. Part of the success which, for a time, attended the importation. of those choice Merino breeds was due to the zealous cooperation of Lord SOMERVILLE and of Sir Joseph BANKS [see the next chapter], but the King himself took a real initiative in the matter; acquired real knowledge about it; and deserved, by his personal efforts, the cognomen given him (by some of those worthy farmers who used to attend the annual sales at Windsor) of the Royal Shepherd.' *Ralph Robinson' is the name signed to the communications to the Annals of Agriculture, but they are dated from Windsor. (See Annals, vol. vii, 1787.) |