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RECOLLECTIONS OF
MR JAMES LENOX OF NEW YORK

AND THE FORMATION OF
r

HIS LIBRARY

A nation's Books are her vouchers ; her
Libraries are her muniments. H. S.

RECOLLECTIONS OF

MR JAMES LENOX

OF NEW YORK

AND THE FORMATION
OF HIS LIBRARY

By HENRY STEVENS of Vermont

Bibliographer and Lover of Books Fellow of the

Society of Antiquaries of Old England and Corresponding

Member of the American Antiquarian Society of New England of the

Massachusetts Historical Society and of the New England Genealo

gical Society Life Member of the British Association for the Advance

ment of Science Fellow of the British Archaeological Association

and the Zoological Society of London Black Balled Athenaeum

Club of London also Patriarch of Skull & Bones of Yale

and Member of the Historical Societies of Vermont

New York Wisconsin Maryland &c &c BA

and MA of Yale College as well as

Citizen of Noviomagus

et cetera

LONDON

HENRY STEVENS & SON 115 ST MARTIN'S LA
Over against the Church of St Martin in the Fields
MDCCCLXXXVI

LIBRARY
SCHOOL

c

TO THE READER

WHO faulteth not, liueth not ; who mendeth
faults is commended : The Printer hath faulted
a little : it may be the author oversighted more.
Thy paine (Reader) is the least ; then erre not
thou most by misconstruing or sharpe censuring ;
least thou be more vncharitable, then either of
them hath been heedlesse : God amend and guide
vs a\\.—Robartes on Tythes 4° Camb. 1613.

COPYRIGHT l886 BY HENRY N. STEVENS

FOR AULD LANG SYNE

THESE pages are inscribed with plea-
sant Recollections of more than forty-
five years to my old and valued friend
DOCTOR GEORGE H. MOORE

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE LENOX LIBRARY.

PETERFoRCE that Eminent Antiquarian of
the American Archives brought us toge-
ther in 1840, and the influence of kindred
tastes and pursuits soon wrought an open
friendship that has stood the test of years.

In the whirligig of time our orbits have
touched but occasionally, yet always with
interest, until now he is in charge of many
thousands of the rare books that passed
through my hands as told in this volume.

LONG MAY HE HAVE CHARGE OF THEM.

Libraries are an index of a nation's, as well as an
individual's, wealth, taste, and character. H, S.

EXPLANATORY.

,N the spring of 1883,
while the Council in
London of the Library
Association of the

United Kingdom were

discussing their programme for their
Annual Meeting at Liverpool to be
held in the fall, I in an unguarded
moment told ' the boys/ that they
might enter me for a Paper of Re-
col ledlions of Mr James Lenox or
Sir Antonio Panizzi. Our nimble
Secretary made a note of it, and ac-
cordingly in the first draft

The foregoing fragment and the Dedica-
tion to Dr George H. Moore, were the
last lines my father wrote, only a day or two
before his lamented decease. The effort of

writing

viii EXPLANATORY

writing was too much for his failing strength,
although he retained his mental faculties to
the end. The night before his death,
he was talking sanguinely of work he pro-
posed to complete in the spring, when he
hoped to be better, and he discussed and
finally approved of the specimen sheet of
this little volume, in the preparation of
which he had taken the greatest interest
during his illness.

The substance of the following pages
formed the subject of a Paper he read with
much success at the Liverpool Meeting of
the Library Association in September 1883.
It was afterwards written out and printed
in the Transactions of the Association for
that year. In response to numerous sug-
gestions of his friends he had designed to
rewrite the Paper on a broader or more
general basis with a title ' Forty Years'
Reminiscences of a veteran Bibliographer,'
or something to that effect. Finding his
failing health would not permit him to
work up so extensive a subject he then pro-
posed to enlarge this Lenox Paper, and I
found in his desk a quantity of memoranda
for that purpose. The effort however prov-
ing too much for his strength, he consented
to let me publish the Paper with only a slight
revision, and he intended to explain in the
preface that he hoped later on to be well
enough to amplify the work in a second
edition. The

EXPLANATORY ix

The Portraits of Mr Lenox and the
later one of himself were in the engraver's
hands when a day or two before his death
he sent for a miniature painted about 1 847,
which stood in another room, and said ' that
portrait should go opposite the chapter on
the young man from Vermont/ In deference
to that expression of his wish, I have had
the earlier portrait engraved as well.

It may not be out of place to mention
here that my father has left several Essays on
important historical and geographical subjefts
which I shall hope to publish in course of
time.

HENRY N. STEVENS

Public Libraries are intellectual lighthouses for the
information and guidance of the people. H. S.

RECOLLECTIONS

OF MR JAMES LENOX OF

NEW YORK AND THE

FORMATION OF HIS

LIBRARY

Brief Biographical Sketch by way of ):%$
Introduction

JR JAMES LENOX
of New York, the
founder of the LENOX
LIBRARY in that city,
was born in 1 800 and
A general biography
is not aimed at, but only such personal
recollections and memoranda respect-
ing him as happen to be in my own
private keeping. It is not within my
plan to pry into the Lenox preserves,
B especially

died in 1880.

2 RECOLLECTIONS OF

especially as it is understood that he
requested on his death-bed that the
private particulars of his life might
not be publicly canvassed. This is
strictly in accordance with the modest
and retiring character of Mr Lenox,
and is fully appreciated. Providence
however set the Lenox beacon on a
hill, and it is too much to expect that
death should not have partially re-
moved the bushel that so long ob-
scured it.

For more than a quarter of a cen-
tury ( 1 845- 1871) our intercourse and
confidential relations as principal and
agent, while he was forming his most
valuable library of rare and costly
books, were of the closest character,
as evidenced by the piles of letters,
lists and invoices that passed between
us, all still carefully preserved.

Mr Lenox was a man of few
words and few intimate friends, but
of varied information, much studious
reading, extensive correspondence
and many books. He was the only

son

MR JAMES LENOX 3

son of Robert Lenox, a Scotch mer-
chant who emigrated to New York
in 1784, and achieved great wealth
during an honourable and long life.
James was educated chiefly at Prince-
ton and became a Presbyterian of the
strictest sect. He nominally joined
his father in business at about the age
of twenty-eight as a foreign or import-
ing merchant. The firm was Messrs
Robert Lenox & Son at 5 9 Broadway,
and was so styled from 1 8 29 to 1 840,
when it was changed to c James Lenox,
Merchant ' at the same address, and
so continued till about 1845. But
with his ample fortune and educa-
tion, Mr James Lenox's mind was
rather on music, gems, engravings,
paintings, fine arts and literature,
than on merchandize. He was most
methodical, and had acquired excel-
lent business habits.

On the death of his father in
1 840, he inherited almost the whole
of the vast Lenox property, in-
cluding a large farm of some 300

acres

4 RECOLLECTIONS OF

acres in the upper part of the City
of New York, which by the year
1865 became surrounded by the
rapidly growing city, and in conse-
quence rose to a value of millions.
About this time he sold off build-
ing lots to the amount of about
$3,000,000, reserving some of the
largest and best lots for an extensive
public hospital, public library and
other public enterprises.

Thus we see Mr James Lenox was
not only born with a fortune, but
Fortune made him her own through
life. He was a pattern of industry,
method, and good management. He
not only himself worked ten hours a-
day, but he managed to make his
property work for him twenty-four
hours daily, accumulating by good
investments like rolling snow- balls.
He could there fore well afford to do
as he liked ; and it is well known that
he liked to do every thing in his own
way, without outside influence, inter-
ference or dictation.

Mr

MR JAMES LENOX 5

Mr Lenox was ever most generous
and charitable, but like my old
friend the late Mr George Peabody,
the founder of sundry public libraries,
he manifested a dislike of being in-
debted to strangers or neighbours
for hints as to his public or private
duties ; nor would he tolerate any
interference in his own charitable
impulses. He staked out his own
course, hoed his own row, paddled
his own canoe and revelled silently
in his own generous suggestions,
which began literally at home in his
own bosom.

He paid his taxes liberally, bore
his share of the public burdens,
pastured figuratively the widow's
cow, helped the needy, but avoided
all public offices and politics. Per-
haps he carried some of these notions
a little too far to be reckoned a good
citizen. Were many others to do the
same the public weal might suffer ;
but that is a circumstance hardly to
be counted on in New York, where

the

6 RECOLLECTIONS OF

the general tendency is rather the other
way : too many citizens giving their
time and attention to public business,
sometimes even to the neglect of their
own.

With all this apparent selfishness,
Mr Lenox was always studying the
welfare of the public, and that of
posterity rather than his own. Yet
with all his set ways he was ever
tolerant in granting to others the
same privileges and pleasures of the
mind- your-own -business principles
and habits which he uniformly as-
sumed and practised for himself.
He thought that more young men
prospered by minding their own
business than by politics or noisy
professions. Hence by some he was
thought proud, aristocratic, distant
and haughty, but those who enter-
tained or expressed such opinions of
him manifestly did not know him.
To me, who was in constant com-
munication with him for more than
a quarter of a century prior to the

founding

MR JAMES LENOX ^

founding by charter of the LENOX
LIBRARY, he always appeared diffi-
dent (almost bashful), simple- hearted,
generous, kind, very pious, very re-
tiring and very close- mouthed to out-
siders, but as communicative as a
child to his intimates ; and especially
to those in sympathy with his projects
and pursuits. With all his amiable
qualities none knew his duties better,
and knowing them, none dared main-
tain them more firmly and consistently
than he.

Mr Lenox shunned notoriety with
the same ardour that others sought
it ; but when it overtook him, as it
frequently did, in spite of his reserve,
or when it was blown upon him by
the breath of the people, he bore it
with Christian fortitude and silence,
even avoiding to read the news-
papers that heralded his praises, know-
ing that in most cases the writers
communicated only fragments of the
truth, often exaggerated and dis-
torted.

His

8 RECOLLECTIONS OF

His love of exactness, or exact
conformity to truth, was sometimes
carried into inconvenient trifles. He
tolerated no interviewers or curiosity
hunters, and his own door was sel-
dom opened to visitors except by
appointment. He was himself not
easily accessible except for good
cause, but the treasures of his library,
however precious, were generally
with great promptitude and courtesy
submitted to the use of scholars on
due and satisfactory application, but
seldom at his own house ; nor was
he (with rare exceptions) willing to
lend his rare books or let them go
out of his possession. His frequent
practice was to deposit his rarities,
when asked for, in the hands of the
librarian of the Astor Library, or
some similar place of safety, and
then by note inform the applicant
that the use of the particular book
required was at his service there.
He was always extremely nervous
and fidgety about the safety of his

treasures

MR JAMES LENOX 9

treasures when out of his own keep-
ing, and uniformly declined applica-
tions to 'see his library/ He even
refused, among a good many others
we know of, Mr Prescott the his-
torian, but at the same time politely
informed that distinguished writer
that any particular book or manu-
script he possessed which Mr Prescott
might name should be forwarded for
his use // possible. The words c if
possible' often used by Mr Lenox
in his replies were sometimes incom-
prehensible, and gave offence to
many whose curiosity to see the
library overbalanced the desire of
access to particular books. The
truth was that from about 1 845 to
1869 Mr Lenox was actively col-
lecting his library so rapidly, and
doing all the work himself, that he
had no time to catalogue or arrange
his accessions, except a few of the
smaller and tidier nuggets which he
could put away in the few book-
cases in his gallery of art which was
c also

jo RECOLLECTIONS OF

also being filled at the same time
with paintings and sculpture. The
great bulk of his book collections
was piled away in the numerous
spare rooms of his large house, till
they were filled to the ceiling from
the further end back to the door,
which was then locked and the room
for the present done with. The
accessions after examination and
careful collation, approval and pay-
ment, were entered or ticked off in
interleaved catalogues of Ternaux-
Compans, Rich, Ebert, Hain, Lea
Wilson, Offor and others, or in small
and special memorandum books,
with sufficient clearness for his own
use but unintelligible to outsiders.
The books were then piled away, or
corded up like wood. c If possible '
therefore was a term which Mr Lenox
might fairly use, but was not called
upon to explain. Indeed I have
heard him say that he had often
bought duplicates for immediate use
or to lend, rather than grope for the

copies

MR JAMES LENOX 1 1

copies he knew to be in the stacks
in some of his store-rooms or cham-
bers, notably c Stirling's Artists of
Spaing a high-priced book. Though
most tidy and methodical himself he
could not permit others to witness
this apparent disorder.

One rainy morning in New York,
when Mr Lenox and I were discuss-
ing c Nuggets' and telling anec-
dotes, chiefly of his father and him-
self, I ventured to ask him if the
story I had often heard of his refusing
Mr Prescott permission to see his
library was true. He replied that
it was painfully true. c I had ac-
quired the Munoz Manuscripts from
Mr Rich and the Lord Steuart de
Rothesay Brazilian papers, with many
valuable Spanish and Portuguese
books from you, and it seemed to be
the fashion of every stranger that
came to New York to see the Lenox
Library. It was very annoying and
I thought that a good opportunity
to declare myself.' He therefore

gave

12 RECOLLECTIONS OF

gave the inquisitive public to under-
stand through Mr Prescott that
though he was forming a library it
would not be accessible, except on
special occasions, till formed. He
relaxed his wholesome rules once or
twice, particularly in the case of Mr
'Ander Schiffahrt/ but the treatment
he received from that distinguished
Frenchman was no encouragement
to continue to submit to this incon-
venience.

As Mr Lenox advanced in years
and took upon his shoulders new re-
sponsibilities, he felt more and more
that his time, his money, and his
brains were all his own, in a lower
but not a higher sense, they being
the three talents specially entrusted
to him by a bountiful Providence for
use and due increase. So with a
conscience as round as his heart, and
with a zeal commensurate with his
diligence and his knowledge, he
plodded on till he had finished all
the work he had begun. Like Noah

Webster

MR JAMES LENOX 13

Webster he was called away in the
ripeness of old age just when he had
done his life's work, leaving nothing
to be finished. A purer, cleaner, and
more finished life it is hardly possi-
ble to conceive.

Such was JAMES LENOX of New
York, who died on the i jth of Feb-
ruary 1880, at the age of eighty,
the bibliographer, the collector, the
founder of one of the most valuable
public libraries in the New World,
the philanthropist, the builder of
churches, the establisher of a large
public hospital, the giver to New
York of a Home for Aged Women,
the dispenser of untold silent charity,
and the benefactor of his native city
and his honoured country. With all
this outcome of a quiet and unosten-
tatious life Mr Lenox was rarely
seen of men, and few there be who
can from experience divulge the un-
told particulars of any of his achieve-
ments ; especially as to how, when
and where he accumulated the trea-
sures

14 MR JAMES LENOX

sures of the extraordinary library he
bequeathed to the public. He was
himself content to labour and to wait
under the wide-spreading shadow of
oblivion, his many virtues bringing
to him their own sufficient reward.

This was the man with whom I
had the good fortune to exchange
commodities for a continued period
of twenty-five years. He gave me
his money and his friendship, and I
sought the world over to supply him
with books and manuscripts. If you
will overlook the apparent egotism
I will now briefly relate how our
good genii brought it all about with-
out any fault on the part of either

of us. It was to be, and so I

suppose it was. I therefore

tell the story as

history.

II

UK

A young man from Vermont pros-
pefteth in Europe

July 1 845, a young
man from Vermont,
at the age of twenty-
six, I found myself
in London, a self-ap-
pointed missionary, on an antiquarian
and historical book-hunting expedi-
tion, at my own expense and on
my own responsibility, with a few
Yankee notions in head and an
ample fortune of nearly forty sove-
reigns in pocket. I had contrived
by the light of pine knots and dips
to pick up some education among
the Green Mountains, with a little
Latin and less Greek; had passed

the

1 6 RECOLLECTIONS OF

the year 1839 in Middlebury Col-
lege ; 1 840 at Washington as a well-
paid clerk in the Treasury Depart-
ment and Senate; 1841-43 in Yale
College, where a B.A. degree was
won ; 1 844 in Harvard Law School
under Story ; all the while dabbling
in books and manuscripts by way
of keeping the pot boiling. During
vacations and holidays I had for
five years scouted through the New
England and Middle States pro-
specting in out-of-the-way places for
historical nuggets, mousing through
public and private libraries and old
homestead garrets, chiefly on behalf
of Peter Force and his American
Archives. From Maine to Virginia
many a disused churn, old cradle,
dilapidated hencoop, and empty flour
barrel had yielded rich harvests of
old papers, musty books and sallow
pamphlets. These were bought or
borrowed and skimmed for Col.
Force, while many collectors and
librarians enjoyed some pickings. In

this

MR JAMES LENOX 17

this way the acquaintance of many of
the chief authors and book lovers of
the country was made ; and sufficient
experience it was thought had been ac-
quired to try the happier hunting-fields
of the Old World, its libraries, its ar-
chives, its bookstalls and its old home-
steads. It was a wild-goose chase, but
as the goose was caught some details
may be worth repeating. Those were
indeed happy days, when on a July
morning one might run down a hun-
dred brace of rare old books on
America in London at as many shil-
lings a volume as must now be paid
pounds. The shops of Rich, Rodd,
Thorpe, Pickering and others were
looked through the first fortnight, and
books to the amount of more than
£ i ,000 ' turned down ' and reported to
American clients. They were scram-
bled for in Boston and New York like
hot buck-wheat cakes at a College
breakfast. It was hardly possible to
sweep them together fast enough.
The books were sorted, invoiced,
D packed

1 8 RECOLLECTIONS OF

packed and shipped at Mr Rich's or
Mr G. P. Putnam's, and paid for by
drafts attached to the bills of lading.
One day in the early autumn of
1845, frien<i Putnam told me of his
executing some orders for a Mr James
Lenox of New York, who had re-
cently begun collecting old Bibles,
chiefly from Thorpe's catalogues, and
said he had bought a few lots in April
before from Bright's sale, among them
notably a fine copy of Hakluyt, with
the rare Molly neux map, for £251 os.
He suggested my offering Mr Lenox
some of the nuggets of American his-
tory I was collecting. An invoice of
about £200 was therefore made by
me to Messrs Wiley and Putnam, to
which they added a commission of i o
per cent and sent the original direct
to Mr Lenox € on approval.' By re-
turn of post every book was ordered
except < Hakluyt's Divers Voyages,'
1582, 4°, at ten guineas, worth £200
now. Mr. Lenox wrote that this was
not required, as he already possessed

it.

MR JAMES LENOX 19

it This was his first great mistake in
book collecting, which he mourned
for many a day. Though he wrote by
the next fortnightly post to re-order
the book, it had been sold and he was
years in running down another copy.

The correspondence through Put-
nam arising out of this blunder led up
to other matters. More invoices { on
approval ' were sent in the form of
' Messrs Wiley and Putnam, bought
of Henry Stevens/ always through
Mr Putnam to Mr Lenox, and he
ordered almost all lots not duplicate,
so that by the end of the year many
hundreds of pounds worth had been
sent to him, and so a new collector of
Americana was launched.

At length, at the beginning of
1846, came a complimentary note
from Mr Lenox addressed to me,
stating how much pleased he was with
these books, and that he was disposed
to go on in this new line of collecting,
as well as that of Bibles, and inquired
if I could not as well ship the books

direct

20 RECOLLECTIONS OF

direct to him without the intervention
of Mr Putnam, and so save the 10
per cent commission. This was the
ostensible reason for the change, but
he afterwards told me that a stronger
reason for the change with him was
not so much the commission, as the
fact that the books imported through
a large establishment were seen and
commented upon by the book fancy-
ing gossips of New York, 'who knew
so much about his business as no man
knew more/ The letter was at once
handed over to Mr Putnam with a
request to read and answer it, at the
same time enclosing my acknowledg-
ment and another invoice. Mr Put-
nam was of course desirous of retain-
ing so valued a correspondent, ex-
plained the situation, and setting forth
the advantages of his London and
New York agency, solicited a con-
tinuance of the triangular arrange-
ment.

During this correspondence I of
course remained loyal to friend Put-
nam

MR JAMES LENOX 21

nam, and continued to send reports
and bibliographical notes through
him, until finally Mr Lenox, finding
that there was an unpleasant leakage
in New York, wrote me again and di-
rect, intimating his dissatisfaction at
the roundabout and expensive mode
of proceeding, and declared that he
did not at all consider himself tied to
Messrs Wiley and Putnam's or any
other house as his exclusive London
agents ; that if I was inclined to con-
tinue to correspond with him direct
and confidentially, consigning my
shipments to himself, I might do so,
otherwise the correspondence must
cease. As a matter of course Mr
Lenox had his own way, as it was his
nature to and he could afford to have.
For a time this created a shade of cool-
ness between Mr Putnam and my-
self, but the extent and cordiality of
our other relations soon extinguished
it. Besides, it was a revelation of a
new kind of business with him of
which he knew little or nothing.

Thenceforward

22 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Thenceforward for nearly a quar-
ter of a century all Europe was ran-
sacked for bibliographical rarities for
Mr Lenox, who indulged in the pleas-
ing satisfaction of being his own con-
fidential importer without feeling
called upon to let his intelligent neigh-
bours know how deeply he was put-
ting his hands into his own pockets,
orwhat particular books he was bring-
ing together for the use of their and
his own posterity. Our correspon-
dence with lists, invoices and biblio-
graphical notes was frequent and con-
stant, indeed something passing be-
tween us by almost every steamer for
full fifteen years, until the commence-
ment of the Civil War, when there was
a partial suspension of book-hunting
on his part for a time.

In thus becoming a correspondent
of Mr Lenox it did not square with my
notions of fairness to abate a jot of
loyalty to Mr John Carter Brown and
others who had either given me their
orders, or what was more common,

had

MR JAMES LENOX 23

had indicated in a general way their
lines of collecting and desire to parti-
cipate in the ad vantages of my oppor-
tunities and proclivities. The conse-
quence was that Mr Lenox at first used
to complain that he was compelled to
submit to a second choice. But he
soon learned to appreciate and honour
the motives of a foreign agent on
whose adlions he could count and rely.
The truth was that the larger part of
the books, maps, prints and manu-
scripts collected and shipped by me
were either c reported ' or sent out ' on
approval,' passing round from one
client to another till exhausted or re-
turned. Mr Carter Brown for some
years in this way enjoyed the first pick,
with which he was contented, seldom
ordering a book except from a report
or auction catalogue. This pre-emp-
tion of desiderata was considered of
much consequence, but by degrees
Mr Lenox got round this difficulty of
secondary choice, partially by study-
ing out the bibliography of the sub-
jects

24 RECOLLECTIONS OF

jects most interesting to himself, and
ordering in advance what he required.
But this could not always be done,
because new rarities were constantly
turning up that had not been recorded
by previous bibliographers. This cir-
cumstance added vastly to the interest
and importance of my historical and
bibliographical mission to the Old
World. These remarks, by the way,
apply mainly to the materials of the
early history and literature of the
New World. Other departments
further on.

From my knowledge of the general
run of the rapidly accumulating col-
ledtionsof Mr Brown, Mr Lenox, and
several other less hungry American
collectors, I always knew almost to a
certainty where to place any c nugget*
that turned up. The world outside of
book-hunting may smile at this eager-
ness for the first choice, but such a
smile of pity will most likely vanish
away into complaisance on becoming
acquainted with the fact that after

forty

MR JAMES LENOX 25

forty years' experience in sighting and
chasing book-rarities, I found that a
very large number of the choicest his-
torical and bibliographical nuggets
relating to the 'Age of Discovery/
with the exploration and development
of the New World, occurred but once
in my time, in the market for sale.
Happy he who became the win-
ner in such a chase !

Ill

Ill

The ' Mazarine ' Bible

[S a book collector Mr
Lenox was original
and peculiar, but no-
thing could exceed his
promptitude, punctu-
ality, energy, exactness, frankness,
truthfulness, simplicity and courtesy.
He was painfully just and even exact-
ing in having everything in which he
participated done in his own way, and
when he found himself mistaken, as he
not unfrequently did, he always owned
up like a man. He used to complain
of the hard work of book collecting,
and sometimes prayed me not to send
him too many books at a time, be-
cause it kept him up nights collating,

examining,

MR JAMES LENOX 27

examining, passing and entering, or
ticking them off in his various lists.
His interest in every new consignment
was intense, and there was no rest
until he had cleared his office of every
book and remitted a draft in payment.
At first he was rather careless about
the condition of the copies and cared
very little for fine bindings, but by
degrees he became acutely quick as to
the completeness and purity of his
books, until the best bindings that
Bedford and Pratt could turn out were
not too good or too dear for him.
The little plain morocco quartos of
Hayday at eight shillings in 1846
grew into works of art eight or ten
years later at twenty to forty shillings
each. He was an ingrain biblio-
grapher, but his early experience in
collecting was not always according
to knowledge. He had an eye like
a hawk for rare books when he saw
them, but was timid in ordering from
mere titles in catalogues or reports.
It soon therefore grew into a cus-
tom

28 RECOLLECTIONS OF

torn between us that no bargain was
complete until he had seen and ac-
cepted the book, except when ordered
from auction or booksellers' cata-
logues. This was sometimes rather
hard on me, because by far the greater
proportion of the many books sent
him in this way on approval had to
be collected from all parts of Europe,
collated, completed if necessary,
bound, invoiced and shipped to New
York, to await his decision and remit-
tance, consuming in many instances
half a year. The disappointments
were sometimes as amusing as vexa-
tious, but generally were amicably
settled by correspondence. For in-
stance, in early times he ordered from
a proof sheet of a Berlin catalogue a
tract in German, priced at 1 1 5 francs.
On receiving it with the price cor-
rected to 1 5 francs he returned it as
' not wanted/ because he had ordered it
under the impression that it was a * rare
book/ as the former price indicated.
Again, when his tastes had grown

into

MR JAMES LENOX 29

into the mysteries of uncut leaves, he
returned a very rare early New Eng-
land tract, expensively bound, because
it did not answer the description of
' uncut ' in the invoice, for the leaves
' had manifestly been cut open and
read.' When it was explained to him
that in England the term c uncut ' sig-
nified only that the edges were not
trimmed, he shelved the rarity with
the remark that he c learned something
everyday/ On the other hand he kept
a great Spanish rarity with margins
cut close, because a German youth
who desired to practice writing Eng-
lish to me had described it as c perfect
although very closely circumcised/
Our correspondence and intercourse
were full of innocent surprises of this
sort, but perhaps showing too much
frankness and simplicity to be re-
peated in print.

Mr James Lenox was always libe-
ral and even willing if necessary to pay
a high price for a very rare book, pro-
vided he was sure the transaction was

open

30 RECOLLECTIONS OF

open and perfectly fair, but he was ever
suspicious of paying more than the
market value. A curious case occur-
red in 1847, some eighteen months
after I had begun supplying him with
Americana and occasionally with
other rare books. I had announced
to him among other bibliographical
gossip that a fine and perfect copy of
the forty- two line Latin Bible of 1 450-
1455, usually but unjustly called the
1 Mazarine ' Bible, was soon coming
on for sale by auction at Sotheby's,
and, though a copy had been sold as
high as^ 1 90, suggested that he should
go in for it at that or even a higher
price if necessary. I gave a careful
collation and description of the two
volumes, and stated that though both
Mr Putnam and I would probably be
absent in Paris at the time of the sale,
his order would be attended to by the
house of Messrs Wiley and Putnam,
to whom he was requested to address
his orders and instructions. His or-
der came during our absence, with a

simple

MR JAMES LENOX 31

simple request to the manager to buy
the Bible for him, without any par-
ticular instruction or limit as to price.
Mr Davidson the manager was thus
unexpectedly thrown on his ' discre-
tion/ and he, it seemed to me after-
wards, wisely decided to exercise that
virtue by buying the book against all
comers, and accordingly he attended
the sale personally and ran the book
until it was knocked down to Messrs
Wiley and Putnam at £500, at that
time pronounced to be a cmad price/
though other copies have since been
sold by auction at from £1,600 to
near ^4,000.

This c mad price ' was at once he-
ralded as such in the London papers,
and the book was stated to have been
bought by a well-known American
collector against Sir Thomas Phillipps,
under exciting circumstances. Sir
Thomas had arranged with Messrs
Payne and Foss, after his peculiar
manner, to buy the Bible for him at
an agreed limit of £300. But Sir

Thomas

32 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Thomas was so anxious about the
result that he committed the indis-
cretion of going to the sale rooms
himself to witness the competition.
When the biddings between Mr
Davidson and Mr Foss had ex-
ceeded £300, Sir Thomas, when he
could not induce Mr Foss to go on,
took up the competition himself, and
ran his American opponent up to
£495, when Mr Foss arrested his
mad career, and the hammer fell at
Mr Davidson's final bid of £500 for
Messrs Wiley and Putnam,

That sale was a bibliographical
event, and was greatly talked and
written about both in London and
New York, insomuch that Mr Le-
nox, whose name as that of the un-
lucky purchaser had been freely used,
declined to clear the book from the
New York Custom House, and pay
for it. The cost, including the com-
mission, expenses and the customs
duty, amounting to about $3,000,
was deemed by him an amount of

indiscretion

MR JAMES LENOX 33

indiscretion for which he could not
be responsible. However, after some
reflection and a good deal of corre-
spondence, he took home the book,
and soon learned to cherish it as a
bargain and the chief ornament of his
library. Mr Putnam soon after re-
turned to America, and the result of
this campaign was all in my favour.
Mr Lenox used often to pay an un-
precedentedly high price for a prime
rarity, with the remark that he c could
at present find the five pound notes
more easily than such books, but you
must not tell anybody how much I
have paid/ A few years later, when
I quoted the same books at two
to four times the prices he paid,
he willingly removed the in-
junction of secrecy.

IV

IV

The Wicked

R LENOX was so

strict an observer of
the Sabbath that I
1 never knew of his
writing a business let-
ter on Sunday but once. In 1855,
while he was staying at Hotel Meu-
rice in Paris, there occurred to me
the opportunity one Saturday after-
noon, June 1 6y of identifying the
long lost octavo Bible of 1631,
which has the negative omitted in
the Seventh Commandment, and
purchasing it for fifty guineas. No
other copy was then known, and the
possessor required an immediate an-
swer. However I raised some points
of inquiry and obtained permission to

hold

>

MR JAMES LENOX 35

iold the little sinner and give the an-
swer on Monday. By that evening's
post I wrote to Mr Lenox and pressed
for an immediate reply, suggesting
that this prodigal though he returned
on Sunday should be housed. Mon-
day brought a letter £to buy it/ very
short but tender as a fatted calf. On
June 2 1 I exhibited the volume at a
full meeting of the Society of Anti-
quaries of London, at the same time
nicknaming it c The WICKED BIBLE,'
a name that has stuck to it ever since
though six copies are now known.

In the Proceedings of the Society,
vol. iii. page 213, appeared this re-
cord : 'Henry Stevens, Esq. F.S.A.
exhibitedan octavo Bible of the autho-
rized version, called "The Wicked Bi-
ble " from the circumstance of its being
filled with gross and scandalous typo-
graphical errors, not the least remark-
able of which is the omission of the
important word not in the Seventh
Commandment, leaving it to read
Thou shalt commit adultery. Upon

Charles

36 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Charles I. being made acquainted with
the fad: by Archbishop Laud, the
King's printers, Robert Barker and
Martin Lucas, were summoned be-
fore the Star Chamber, and on the
fact being proved were fined in the
sum of ^300, and the entire edition
of 1,000 copies was ordered to be de-
stroyed. Although the book has been
diligentlysought after for the last hun-
dred years, no copy has hitherto been
known to have been discovered ; and
though many writers have told the
story for the last two hundred years,
no one identified the edition or indi-
cated the year in which it was printed.
The present volume settles the ques-
tion. It was printed by the Royal
Printers in 1631, in odlavo. The pre-
sent copy is believed to be unique.
It came from Holland within the
last few days and is on its way to
America. It cost its present owner
fifty guineas.'

In the discussion that followed I
ventured to assure the Society that

though

MR JAMES LENOX 37

though the Commandment was aclu-
ally so printed by the King's printers,
I felt sure that it was not now binding
on the Fellows of the Society of Anti-
quaries. Lord Macaulay was present
at that meeting, but did not at first
credit the genuineness of the typo-
graphical error. Lord Stanhope how-
ever, on borrowing the volume, con-
vinced him that it was the true wicked
error.

As this < WICKED BIBLE 'has at-
tracted a good deal of attention since
1855, and has led certain serious and
learned critics called divines into his-
torical and bibliographical errors, it
may not be uninteresting to name a
few particulars respecting it. The
volume,comprising the Book of Com-
mon Prayer, the Genealogies, the Bi-
ble and the Psalms in Metre, all bound
in one and as clean and fresh as new,
had been the property of the celebra-
ted John Canne while he resided in
Holland, and was left in a library
founded by him. It was offered to

me

38 RECOLLECTIONS OF

me as £ unique ' and priced accord-
ingly, with the assurance that no
abatement would be made. On tak-
ing it home to my house in Camden
Square that Saturday night and over-
hauling my pile of octavo Bibles laid
aside for collation and binding, I was
both delighted and disappointed to
find that I was already the possessor
of a ' Wicked Bible/ an overlooked
duplicate of the copy offered, though
not so c unique as my other copy/ as
my old American friend Dowse used
to say, for it contained the Bible only,
in inferior condition and wanting
twenty-three leaves in the Psalms.

On Monday morning, when the
owner came for his Bible or the fifty
guineas, I showed him my copy in
triumph, to convince him that his
was not unique and hence was not
worth the price asked. He at once
admitted my plea and accepted £25.
My junior copy, after being done up
in forel, was sold in the autumn of
1855 to Mr Panizzi for eighteen

guineas,

MR JAMES LENOX 39

guineas, and is now in the British
Museum, locked up in Case 24. a.
41, bearing the stamp of Jan. 3
1856, when paid for. Mr Winter
Jones was afterwards fortunate
enough to procure the twenty-three
missing leaves for five guineas from
the Rev Mr Jennings, who had
picked up a copy wanting three
leaves for which he asked twenty
guineas, so that the Museum copy is
also complete. Mr Jennings sold the
remainder of his copy, which then
wanted twenty-six leaves, for fifteen
guineas to Mr Francis Fry of Bris-
tol, who I believe succeeded in com-
pleting it and sold it to Dr Bandinel
for the Bodleian Library. It was lent
to the Caxton Exhibition of 1877,
where it attracted more attention
than any honest Bible of the Collec-
tion. A fourth copy is preserved in
the Euing Library in Glasgow, and a
fifth fell into the hands of Mr Henry
J. Atkinson of Gunnersbury, in
1883. In the autumn of 1 8 84 a sixth

copy,

40 RECOLLECTIONS OF

copy, which might be designated the
Godiva copy, was brought to me for
identification by a gentleman of
Coventry, who said it had recently
been picked up in Ireland. Thus
you see in less than thirty years this
unique has increased and multiplied
like lost sinners.

The truth seems to be that few
books remain ' unique ' long, when
their attractions have been once
noised abroad. Immediately on com-
pleting the purchase I wrote to Mr
George OfFor announcing my biblio-
graphical luck, and he replied the
next day, June 18, c What a world
this would be if such Bibles aboun-
ded ! Thank goodness they are so
rare that their existence has been
doubted and disbelieved. I and my
father before me sought it for sixty
years diligently as Herod sought the
young Child, and like him could not
find it. Nor can I yet fully believe
its genuineness, but hope soon to
be cured of my unbelief, for seeing

is

MR JAMES LENOX 41

is believing/ A sight of the volume
was his c convincement/

Like the early translators this
Bible sought a refuge in Holland,
where it escaped the flames, more
fortunate than Tyndale or Rogers.
Of the six copies now known, this
one preserved in the c Lenox Li-
brary/ New York, is by far the purest
and finest, if not the wickedest of
all; and I never heard that Mr
Lenox ever felt or expressed any
compunctions of conscience for
having ordered it on a Sunday. It
should perhaps be stated that the
Germans have also their 'Wicked
Bible ' of precisely like tenor, only as
in many other things the Germans are
a hundred years behind the English.
They are however, I believe, as yet
limited to the possession of a single
copy, which is carefully guarded in
the quaint old library of Wolfen-
buttel, where I recently had the sin-
ful pleasure of seeing, handling and
collating it. The wicked typographi-
G cal

42 MR JAMES LENOX

cal error consists as in its English
namesake in dropping the negative.
It is a little decimosexto volume in
small German black letter, double
columns, in a form not quite so large
as the English, and has this title : —
' BIBLIA/ Dasist/ Die gantze/ Heil
Geschrift/ Altes und Neues/ Testa-
ments./ Nach der Teutschen Uber-
setzung/ D. Martin Luther/ ....
Nebst der Vorrede/ Des. S. Her
Baron E. H. von Caustein./ Die
xxxiv Auflage./ Halley Zu finden in
Maysenhause MDCCXXXI* Exodus
xx. 14. c Du solt ehebrechen/
We are not aware if the French
have a like authority.

Voyages and Travels. Eunyans. Mil-
tons. Shakespeares

LENOX excelled all
men I ever knew for
sei zing ideas and perse-
veringly running them
out to the end. He
possessed an extraordinary aptitude
for sticking to and finishing up any
work he had in hand. This however,
I fancy, was one of the virtues that
was not in all cases its own reward.
His first absorbing penchant was for
collecting early editions of the Bible
and parts thereof in all languages.
Then he took to books relating to
North and South America, including
all the great collections of voyages
and travels, as well as the prior or

original

44 RECOLLECTIONS OF

original editions of which they were
composed. This soon led to collect-
ing everything pertaining to the great
c Age of Discovery/ whether in Span-
ish, Portuguese, English, French,
Dutch, Italian or German. In this
way he soon had more pet-lambs than
he could well watch, such as De Bry,
Hulsius, Ramusio, Purchas, Thev-
enot, Haertgerts, Saeghman, etc.
Then there were all the editions, trans-
lations, and variations of Columbus,
Vespucci, Marco Polo, Mandeville,
Varthema, Peter Martyr, Enciso,
Las Casas, Cortes, Oviedo, Gomara,
Cieza, Xeres, etc., etc.

Besides these he took very early to
his favourite author John Bunyan,
and not only edited an edition of the
( Pilgrim's Progress/ but undertook
to collect all editions and translations
of it. In this he was particularly suc-
cessful, having eventually acquired
nearly every one of the early English
editions of parts I, II, and III, as
numbered from the ist to the 32nd.

No

' MR JAMES LENOX 45

No collection known can be compared
with his, that of the late Mr Offor
being in no way equal to it. Indeed
for nearly twenty years I carried in
my pocket lists of the editions of the
P.P. he had, as well as those known
ones he wanted, and in that way ca-
tered earnestly, allowing nothing to
slip through my fingers that it was
possible to secure for him. In reading
catalogues and reports from all parts
of the world, one eye at least was al-
ways kept peeled for his desiderata.
In the same manner he undertook
to bring into his net all the editions
of Milton, and succeeded in acquir-
ing it is believed nearly all the
known editions, as well as many not
previously recognized, of the early
separate pieces in both prose and
verse of the author of c Areopagitica'
and c Paradise Lost.' Indeed his col-
lection of Miltons excels that of the
British Museum and that of the Bod-
leian put together, rich as those
libraries are in Miltons.

This

46 RECOLLECTIONS OF

This mode of collecting has cer-
tainly its advantages, but it can
hardly be denied that it is attended
with serious disadvantages. The
result of all Mr Lenox's enormous
study and labor, to say nothing of
his vast expenditure, it must be con-
fessed is a ' patchy library' as he left
it. H is favorite subjects and authors
he rendered astonishingly rich for a
period of only thirty-five years re-
search ; but the subjects and authors
he totally neglected at the same time
are also astonishingly numerous. The
verdict of posterity however will
probably be that he ad:ed well his
part, leaving to others the others'
parts. Three or four more lives like
his would render the Lenox Library
an all-round public library.

It is impossible in these brief re-
collections to go over regularly the
records of our correspondence from
1845 to 1873, but I may say that
1 854 and 1855 were very busy years
with both of us. As caterer for him

I

MR JAMES LENOX 47

I expended in these two years alone
more than fifty thousand dollars ;
many opportunities occurring then
that can hardly ever occur again for
any collector of Mr Lenox's tastes.
On reviewing the invoices of these
two years, I am confident that if the
same works were now to be collected,
they would cost more than two hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars. But
can such and so many rare books
ever be collected again in that space
of time ? A large part of 1 855-56
Mr Lenox spent in Europe and
picked up rare books wherever he
met with them, but I speak only of
my own relations with him, though
he generally kept me posted in his
accessions, especially in those sub-
jects already mentioned.

He had set his heart on c the four
folios/ and by changing and chop-
ping about, besides having secured
the famous Baker copy, he had se-
cured nearly all the variations known,
including all the variations of the

third

48 RECOLLECTIONS OF

third folio of 1 6 63 . But I could never
induce him to invest in the Shake-
speare quartos until December 1855.
I then offered him, while he was still
in Paris, in one lump about forty of
the quartos, all in good condition
and some of them very fine, for
£500, or including a fair set of
the four folios, for j£6oo. This offer
upset his previous resolutions, and
he bought the whole, thus becom-
ing at one step, the possessor of
perhaps the finest Shakespearian col-
lection then in private hands.

An exact list of the quartos will
enable an expert to judge of the
prices compared with what such a
collection would bring now. They
were, Merry Wives, 2nd and 3rd
editions, 1619 and 1630 ; Mid-
summer Night, 2nd, Roberts 1600;
Love's Labor's Lost, 2nd, 1631 ;
Merchant of Venice, ist, 2nd, 3rd
and 4th editions, 1 600, 1 600 Roberts,
1637, 1652; Taming of the Shrew,
ist edition, 1631; Richard II,

4th

MR JAMES LENOX 49

4th and 5th editions, 1615, 1654;
Henry IV, 2nd, 5th and 8th editions,
1599, 1613, 1639; Henry V, 3rd
edition, 1608 ; Richard III, 4th,
7th and 8th editions, 1612, 1629,
1634; Romeo and Juliet, 5th edition,
1637; Macbeth, ist edition, 1674;
Hamlet, 4th and 7th editions [i 607],
1637 ; Lear, ist and 3rd editions,
1608, 1655 ; Othello, ist, 2nd and
3rd editions, 1622, 1630, 1655;
Pericles, 3rd and 5th editions, 1619,
1635; Henry VI, 2nd part, 4th

edition [1619], and 3rd part, 3rd
edition [1619]; Sir John Oldcastle,
1600; Lord Cromwell, 1 60 2, unique;
Yorkshire Tragedy, 1619; Rape of
Lucrece, 1 6mo, 1 6 1 6 ; Birth of Mer-
line, 1662; The Puretaine, 1607;
The London Prodigal, 1605 ; and
two or three others, besides the four
folios, all for £600 ! He was greatly
pleased with his bargain, but I
could never tempt him to
go further in the Shake-
speare quartos.

H VI

VI

Mr Lenox buy 3 a c Turner '

is to be borne in
mind that Mr Lenox
was not merely a book
collector. He was a
good citizen and ex-
cellent neighbour, fulfilling his duties
in all situations. The large hall in
his new house, 53 Fifth Avenue, was
constructed rather as a Gallery of Art
than a Library, though adapted to
both. This brings to mind a cha-
racteristic anecdote, which I often
heard Mr C. R. Leslie, the Royal
Academician, relate of his two friends
Mr Lenox and Mr Turner his
brother Academician. Mr Leslie,
about 1 847 I think, received a letter
covering a sight draft on Barings,

requesting

MR JAMES LENOX 51

requesting him to be so good as to
purchase of his friend Mr Turner
the best pidhzre by him he could get
for the money, giving directions for
the shipment to New York.

With draft in pocket Mr Leslie
called on the distinguished artist, and
told him frankly that he had called
to purchase one of his pictures for an
American friend. * I have no pic-
ture to sell to your American friend/
was the grumpy reply. c But surely/
answered Mr Leslie, who understood
the humour of the artist, € out of so
many one might very well be spared
for New York/ * No, my pictures
are not adapted to American taste
or American appreciation of Art.
You had better apply to Mr Soand-
so, if you require a picture suitable
for the gallery of an American,' and
then commented severely on America
and Americans, their refinement,
their money-grubbings, and their
knowledge of Art. Finally MrrLes-
lie, all the while well knowing that

Mr

52 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Mr Turner at that time was desirous
of selling his pictures and at reason-
able prices too, said, ' Well, Mr Tur-
ner, you are in this matter mistaken
I assure you, for I have been con-
nected as an Art teacher with the
Military Academy of West Point,
and am tolerably well acquainted
with the Art characteristics of that
growing country. Besides I well
know Mr Lenox, and am sure a
picture of yours could not find a
better home on either side of the
Atlantic. You are too suspicious;
you need run no risk from him or
me, I have nothing more to say or
do. Here is Mr Lenox's letter and
draft for ^800 which you may en-
cash at Barings to-day. Pray select
such a picture as will in your own
judgment do yourself the most credit
in the Art-benighted country you
decry/

This speech or the letter or the
draft fetched up the artist, and he
promptly confessed that some good

might

MR JAMES LENOX 53

might come even out of New York ;
so he at once turned round a small
picture standing on the floor against
the wall and said, f There, let Mr
Lenox have that, one of my favor-
ites ; he is a gentleman, and I retract :
will that suit you, Mr Leslie ? ' c I
am unwilling to take any responsi-
bility, Mr Turner, in the selection ;
if the painting satisfies you, and you
recommend it at that price, I will en-
dorse the draft to you and take the
picture away with me/ And that
was the way Mr Lenox won his first
< Turner/

But this is not the end of the
story. The painting soon after ar-
rived in New York, was cleared from
the Custom House and delivered in
Fifth Avenue only a few minutes
before the closing of the fortnightly
mail for England. Mr Lenox there-
fore had time only to hastily ac-
knowledge its receipt safe and in
good condition. He had, he wrote,
caught only a glance 'at the pidlure,

but

54 MR JAMES LENOX

but he could not help adding that
that glance disappointed him. On
receiving this curt and scarcely cour-
teous letter, Mr Leslie said he resol-
ved thenceforward to abstain from
executing responsible commissions
for friends. By the following mail
two weeks later came a second letter
from Mr Lenox, the substance of
which was, c Burn my last letter, I
have now looked into my " Turner"
and it is all that I could desire. Ac-
cept best thanks/ In telling the
story Mr Leslie used sometimes pa-
renthetically and facetiously to re-
mark, CI suppose Mr Lenox, like
some others who view " Turners " for
the first time, somehow got the
picture bottom side up/

VII

VII

c The Bay Psalm Book '

our pecuniary re-
lations Mr Lenox
was so methodical,
prompt and perfectly
honest that I grew
into the habit of relying too much
upon his statements and c footings '
of our accounts. He made mistakes
as well as I, but in his case, as he used
to say, they were fortunately almost
wholly against himself. He had a
particular horror of any blunder that
was in his own favour. Once in New
York, after we had settled up a long
and intricate account with many ex-
changes and choppings, which could
not be settled by letter, and I had

received

56 RECOLLECTIONS OF

received a pretty large cheque and
invested it in a bill of exchange on
London at a time when I was hard
pressed for ready money, I was sur-
prised one morning before breakfast
by receiving a note from him an-
nouncing that he had discovered a
dreadful mistake in our settlement,
and requesting me to call upon him
at nine o'clock. It spoiled my break-
fast, for I felt sure that I should
be called upon to disgorge. While
the clock was striking nine I pulled
his bell and was promptly admitted.
cOh,' said he, 'I thought of that
horrid mistake in bed last night, and
have hardly been able to sleep since ;
pray pardon me, I cannot think how
I came to do so stupid a thing ; here
is another cheque for five hundred
dollars for that Bible/ I was relieved
and could have hugged him, but as
that was not his way I quietly ob-
served that I had not yet noticed the
error, simply adding, after the man-
ner of Mr Toots, that it was ' of no
consequence/

MR JAMES LENOX 57

consequence/ I promised to forgive
him, and returned to the Clarendon
with an improved appetite for break-
fast.

For nearly ten years Mr Lenox
entertained a longing desire to pos-
sess a perfect copy of e THE BAY
PSALM BOOK/ the New England
metrical version of the Psalms prin-
ted by Stephen Daye at Cambridge,
N.E. 1640, the first book printed in
what is now the United States. He
gave me to understand that if an op-
portunity occurred for securing a
copy for him I might go as far as one
hundred guineas. Accordingly from
about 1 847 till his death, six years
later, my good friend William Pick-
ering and I put our heads and book-
hunting forces together to run down
this rarity.

The only copy we knew of on this
side the Atlantic was a spotless one
in the Bodleian Library, which had
lain there unrecognized for ages, and
even in the printed catalogue of 1 843
i its

58 RECOLLECTIONS OF

its title was recorded without dis-
tinction among the common herd of
Psalms in verse. The book bears no
name of place or printer, the imprint
being simply c Imprinted 1640.' I
had handled it several times with
great reverence and noted its many
peculiar points, but, as agreed with
Mr Pickering, without making any
sign or imparting any information to
our good and obliging friend Dr
Bandinel, Bodley's Librarian. We
thought that when we had secured a
copy for ourselves, it would be time
enough to acquaint the learned Doc-
tor that he was entertaining unawares
this angel of the New World.

Under these circumstances, there-
fore, only an experienced collector
can judge of my surprise and inward
satisfa&ion, when on the I2th Janu-
ary 1855, at Sotheby's, at one of the
sales of Pickering's stock, after un-
tying parcel after parcel to see what
I might chance to see, and keeping
ahead of the auctioneer, Mr Wil-
kinson,

MR JAMES LENOX 59

kinson, on resolving to prospect in
one parcel more before he overtook
me, my eye rested for an instant only
on the long lost Benjamin, clean and
unspotted. I instantly closed the
parcel, (which was described in the
Catalogue as Lot < 53 1 Psalmes other
Editions, 1630 to 1675 black letter,
a parcel,' ) and tightened the string,
just as Alfred came to lay it on the
table. A cold-blooded coolness
seized me, and advancing towards
the table behind Mr Lilly I quietly
bid in a perfectly neutral tone 'six-
pence/ and so the bids went on in-
creasing by sixpences until half-a-
crown was reached and Mr Lilly had
loosened the string. Taking up this
very volume he turned to me and
remarked that ' This looks a rare
edition, Mr Stevens, don't you think
so ? I do not remember having seen
it before,' and raised the bid to five
shillings. I replied that I had little
doubt of its rarity, though compara-
tively a late edition of the Psalms,

and

60 RECOLLECTIONS OF

and at the same time gave Mr Wil-
kinson a sixpenny nod. Thence-
forward a c spirited competition ' arose
between Mr Lilly and myself, until
finally the lot was knocked down to
'Stevens' for nineteen shillings! I
then called out, with perhaps more
energy than discretion, 'delivered/
On pocketing this volume, leaving
the other seven to take the usual
course, Mr Lilly and others inquired
with some curiosity, 'What rarity
have you got now ? ' c Oh nothing/
said I, < but the first English book
printed in America/ There was a
pause in the sale, while all had a good
look at the little stranger. Some said
jocularly, * there has evidently been
a mistake, put up the lot again/
Mr Stevens, with the book again
safely in his pocket, said, c Nay, if
Mr Pickering, whose cost mark of y
[3/j did not recognize the prize he
had won, certainly the cataloguer
might be excused for throwing it
away into the hands of the right per-
son

MR JAMES LENOX 61

son to rescue, appreciate and pre-
serve it. I am now fully rewarded
for my long and silent hunt of seven
years/

On reaching Morley's I eagerly
collated the volume, and at first
found it right with all the usual sig-
natures correct. The leaves were
not paged or folioed. But on fur-
ther collation I missed sundry of the
Psalms, enough to fill four leaves.
The puzzle was finally solved when
it was discovered that the inexpe-
rienced printer had marked a sheet
with the signature w after v, which
is very unusual.

This was a very distressing dis-
appointment, but I held my tongue,
and knowing that my old friend and
correspondent, George Livermore of
Cambridge, N.E., possessed an im-
perfect copy, which he and Mr
Crowninshield, after the noble ex-
ample of the c Lincoln Nosegay/ had
won from the Committee of the * Old
South/ in Boston, together with an-
other

62 RECOLLECTIONS OF

other and perfect copy, I proposed
an advantageous exchange, and ob-
tained the four missing leaves. Mr
Crowninshield strongly advised Mr
Livermore against parting with his
four leaves, because, as he said, c they
would enable Stevens to complete
his copy, and place it in the library
of Mr Lenox, who would then crow
over us because he also had a perfect
copy of the Bay Psalm Book.'

Having thus completed my copy
and had it bound by Francis Bedford
in his best style, I sent it to Mr
Lenox for £80. Five years later I
bought the Crowninshield Library in
Boston for $10,000, mainly to ob-
tain his perfect copy of the Bay Psalm
Book, and brought the whole library
to London. This second copy, after
being held several months, was at
the suggestion of Mr Thomas Watts,
offered to the British Museum for
£150. The Keeper of the Printed
Books however never had the cou-
rage to send it before the Trustees

for

MR JAMES LENOX 63

for approval and payment ; so after

waiting five or six years longer the

volume was withdrawn, bound by

Bedford, taken to America in 1868,

and sold to Mr George Brinley for

150 guineas. At the Brinley sale

in March 1878, No. 847, Part I, it

was bought by Mr Cornelius Van-

derbilt for $1,200, or more than

three times the cost of my first copy

to Mr Lenox. The British Museum

still lacks the first book

printed in New

England.

VIII

VIII

The Drake Map. Aratus Phaeno-

mena. The Forged ^Tyndale

Manuscript

October 1849, there
occurred for sale at
Sotheby's a very rare
copper-plate map of
the World, repre-
sented in two hemispheres, engraved
by Hondius, and published by him
at Amsterdam about 1595. On each
side and below it were pasted broad
columns of text in Dutch, taken
chiefly from Hakluy t and Linschoten.
There were also inserted in the text
fine copper-plate portraits of Drake
and Cavendish, and on the map were
traced the routes of those two cele-
brated

MR JAMES LENOX 65

brated circumnavigators. The whole
sheet measured about 3 7 by 25 inches.
I had resolved to secure this unique
geographical gem for Mr Lenox,
and, as was my general custom at
that time, gave my order, under a
mistaken notion of economy, to a
celebrated bookseller who undertook
to buy for me at sales at a small
commission, drawing upon me at
short sight as fast as the purchases
amounted to £50 or so, he paying
the auctioneers, as he could arrange,
sometimes months later. For this
map I gave a limit of 50 guineas. It
was however bought by him for
another order for something under
30 guineas, and immediately deli-
vered. When I came to enquire
into the matter a cock-and-bull story
was told me about a mistake between
his clerk and the auctioneer, which
on being run out proved to be not
so much the truth as the other thing.
So after that I kept my auction orders
to myself and executed my own com-
ic missions,

66 RECOLLECTIONS OF

missions, greatly to my own advan-
tage. In this way Mr Lenox and I
lost the Drake, but we gained in
confidence and experience. I was
afterwards glad to find that the map
was bought for the British Museum,
where one could use it as freely as
if it were his own. This proved a
valuable lesson, both to self and cor-
respondents, having taught me se-
verely while acting as confidential
agent never to intrust important, or
even trifling, commissions to a third
party, however honest and plausible.
' Close mouths catch no flies/ It is
a great mistake to imagine you are
going to get your books cheaper in
the long run by intrusting your
commissions to a bookseller who
threatens to oppose you unless you
buy off his opposition by giving him
your orders. Thorpe failed in this
manoeuvre as others have conspicu-
ously done since. They may get the
lots, but are pressed in the chase into
giving often more than necessary.

Shortly

MA JAMES LENOX 67

Shortly after, in 1850, there oc-
curred for sale at the same auction
rooms a copy of c Aratus' Phaeno-
mena/ Paris 1559, in 4° with a few
manuscript notes and this autograph
signature on the title " Jo. Milton,
Pre is 6d 1631." This I thought
would be a desirable acquisition for
Mr Lenox, and accordingly I ven-
tured to bid for it as far as ^40
against my late opponent for the
Drake Map, but he secured it at
£40 iOJ, remarking that c Mr. Pa-
nizzi will not thank you for thus
running the British Museum/ 'That
remark/ I replied, f is apparently one
of your gratuities. Mr Panizzi is,
I think, too much a man of the
world to grumble at a fair fight. He
has won this time, though at con-
siderable cost, and I am sure Mr
Lenox will be the first to congratu-
late him on securing such a prize for
the British Museum/ ( I did not
know that you were bidding for Mr
Lenox/ * It was not necessary that

you

68 RECOLLECTIONS OF

you should/ * Perhaps at another
time/ said he, c we may arrange the
matter before-hand so as not to op-
pose each other/ c Very well/ I re-
plied, c if you will bring me a note
from Mr Panizzi something to this
effect : " Mr Stevens, please have a
knock-out with the bearer, the agent
of the British Museum, on lot * *
and greatly oblige Mr John Bull and
your Obd* Servant, A. P.," I will
consider the proposition, and if Mr
Lenox or any other of my interested
correspondents is not unwilling to
combine or conspire to rob or cheat
the proprietors, the " thing " may
possibly be done. Meanwhile until
this arrangement is concluded let us
hold our tongues and pursue an
honest course/ That man never
again suggested to me to join him in
a 'knock-out/

On the 27th of June 1865, there
was sold at Sotheby's, in Mr George
Offer's sale, lot c 1 93 Portions of the
New Testament, translated from the

Greek

MR JAMES LENOX 69

Greek into English by that noble
and venerable martyr William Tyn-
dale, in his own handwriting, and
accompanied by his own drawings in
1502.' This handsome volume,
elaborately bound by C. Murton, had
often been shown to me by Mr Offor
as the 4 Pearl of his Collection.' He
apparently himself had no doubt of
its genuineness and authenticity, and
in the prolegomena of Bagster's
Hexapla had himself so described it.
Anderson however in his Annals,
II, Appendix iii, ridiculed this idea,
and suggested 1562 instead of 1502
as the date of the MS. In the auc-
tion catalogue nearly a page is de-
voted to the volume, setting forth
Mr Offor's claims and the various
reasons why it should be regarded
a forgery, with this caveat emptor the
lot 'must be purchased on the buyer's
own judgment as to its being genuine
or not/ The paper is undoubtedly
older than 1502, but the 27 draw-
ings are copies, some of them, of

well-known

70 RECOLLECTIONS OF

well-known pictures of later date.
Mr Offor valued the volume at
£300, a considerable price in his
day. It was bought in for the Offor
family for £31.

After the first two out of the
eleven days' sale, and before scarcely
any of the lots had been cleared,
Sotheby's premises were burnt out,
including, among many other col-
lections, the whole of the Offor
Library. The Offor salvage, burnt,
wet and scorched, was bought by me
for £300, including this c Tyndale'
little damaged, except that the c an-
tique oak cover' was somewhat
smoked, warped and injured, but all
was easily restored. On careful and
critical examination the volume was
pronounced and treated as a forgery,
not of 1562 but of the present cen-
tury. What then was to be done
with it ? The MS. had got itself
into history, and had become an
authority, spurious or genuine. To
destroy it would only be lending aid

to

MR JAMES LENOX 71

to those who believed in its genuine-
ness, while its opponents would be
deprived of the best evidence of the
forgery, the book de visu.

Under these circumstances, after
having offered it at a small price to
the British Museum, the Bodleian
and Mr Francis Fry without success,
I sent it to Mr Lenox as a rank
forgery, and submitted to him the
necessity, for the sake of truth, of
preserving it carefully as a warning.
He agreed with me in this suggestion
and purchased the volume for the Le-
nox Library at £25. It was agreed
that it should be branded for ever as
a forgery, of no historical or critical
value whatever. Now what is the
subsequent history of that remark-
able volume? Mr Lenox died in
1 880, having apparently forgotten to
brand the outcast. More recently a
German scholar, now residing in
New Jersey, while searching for ma-
terials respecting William Tyndale
has turned up this rejected but pre-
served

72 RECOLLECTIONS OF

served pretender, and in his new
edition of Tyndale's Pentateuch, pp.
Ivi-lix, has very minutely described
it in four large pages, thus giving it
an importance and prominence it has
no right to, and which abler, honester
and more accurate writers will find it
hard hereafter to combat.

Dr Mombert, it is true, in quoting
Anderson and Westcott snowing that
these writers regarded the work as
spurious, casts a doubt over its au-
thenticity, making a fair show of re-
search, but he fails altogether to put
his foot firmly down on the imposi-
tion. He ought in my judgment to
have omitted noticing it altogether,
or have pronounced the verdict of
a scholar and historian. He has
merely scotched the serpent and not
strangled it, a great injustice to Mr
Lenox and the Lenox Library. This
slip-shod bibliography in history is,
I am sorry to say, becoming the
fashion in New York and Boston.
Would-be historians and 'narrative'

writers

MR JAMES LENOX 73

writers are industriously picarooning
and compiling c history ' by stringing
together an ostentatious show of dis-
cordant authorities, relevant, irre-
levant and contradictory, leaving the
victimized reader to draw his own
conclusions, because as historians
they either are not able to form
a sound opinion, or dare
not express it.

IX

IX

The Dati Columbus and Harlot's
Virginia

ITHIN two years of
his entering on the
great project of col-
lecting rare books re-
lating to America, Mr
Lenox became very desirous of pos-
sessing a good and perfect copy of
'Virginia's First Folio/ that is,
Thomas Hariot's 'Briefe and true
Report of the new found land of
Virginia/ published in English, with
copper- plate engravings by Theodore
De Bry at Frankfort in 1590, after
John White's drawings* I had al-
ready provided Mr John Carter
Brown with a fine copy, but led Mr

Lenox

MR JAMES LENOX 75

Lenox to believe that even London
could not be relied upon for another
copy of so rare and important a book
in the same decade.

But an opportunity occurred
sooner than could have been counted
on. One morning in June 1847,
while walking down the King's Li-
brary, I saw approaching, MrPanizzi
with his friend Sir David Dundas.
When we approached within about
ten yards, Mr Panizzi stopped and
said, with arms a-kimbo and a most
quizzical face, ( Tell me Mr Stevens,
have you seen Mr Libri's catalogue ? '
' Yes/ I replied. * Are you going to
buy for your friend Mr Lenox the
Dati Columbus ? * c Yes, since you
ask me the direct question, that is my
intention, and I answer you frankly ;
though I am not in the habit of tell-
ing my right hand what my left is
going to do. I have not yet received
a specific order, but I know Mr Le-
nox's drift/ 'Very well/ he said.
'It is between us three, and you may

speak

76 RECOLLECTIONS OF

speak frankly ; but you really must
not buy that Columbus Letter in
Italian against the British Museum.
Now that we have the Grenville
Columbuses, with the others we had
before, the library possesses, I believe,
all the known editions except the
Paris one you showed me before you
sent it to your friend Mr Brown. I
ought not to miss acquiring this for
many reasons, and therefore I ven-
tured to put this blunt question in
the presence of Sir David/ Then
Sir David said, ' Certainly the British
Museum ought to secure this little
book at any price in reason. What
do you think it will go for ? * I re-
plied, c Probably from £ 50 to £ i oo,
perhaps more, it being four leaves,
unique, and well bound/ c I am
afraid/ said he, c one hundred pounds
is too much for the Trustees to pay
openly for only four leaves; still,
they ought to have it at that price if
necessary, or even more/ ' Now,
Mr Stevens,' said Mr Panizzi, ccan

you

MR JAMES LENOX 77

you help us to the book without any
injustice to Mr Lenox ? ' I replied,
* Yes, I can do it in this way. The
library possesses an imperfect dupli-
cate, cc Hariot's History of Virginia,"
in folio, 1590, wanting the last three
leaves. I have those leaves, and am
able therefore to make the book
perfect. I offer you then to go or
send to Paris and bid for this " Dati
Columbus " in Mr Libri's sale at the
end of July or early in August, to the
extent of £100 (subsequently raised
to £ 1 20), and if I purchase it at any
sum within this limit, I will give it to
the British Museum in exchange for
the Hariot in the condition it is now
in/ They both said that this was
fair and liberal, and Mr Panizzi
added, c Now let us keep our own
counsel and say nothing to anybody.
I will at once reduce the proposition.
to writing and lay it before the
Trustees at their next meeting, and
if they approve, it is a bargain/
The following extract of a long

letter

78 RECOLLECTIONS OF

letter to my father in Vermont, dated
London, July 3 1847, continues the
story as it was written at the time :
— ( I expect to go to the Continent
again this month. The Trustees of
the British Museum meet to-day.
There is before them a proposition
for purchasing a rare little book to
be sold soon by auction in Paris.
The Museum is very desirous of
having it, but they wish to avoid the
notoriety of paying an extravagant
price for it. It is a little Italian poem
by Dati, giving an account of Co-
lumbus's first voyage. It is a tract
of only four leaves, and was printed
at Florence in 1493. Well, I have
proposed to the librarian, Mr Panizzi,
to go to Paris myself and bid for the
book in my own name, to the extent,
if necessary, of ^100 or $500, and
if I get it for that amount or under,
I am to give it to the Museum in
exchange for Hariot's account of
Virginia, printed in English for
Theodore De Bry, Frankfort 1

MR JAMES LENOX 79

a book of the greatest rarity, the first
English account of Virginia/

The Trustees 'approved,' and at
the end of July, instead of going over
to Paris myself, I entrusted all my
commissions to Messrs Payne and
Foss, with a limit on the cDati' of
£120. On the 9th of August Mr
Foss handed me the book and his
bill, with the remark, c I have no
doubt your friend Mr Lenox will be
pleased with his bargain and his
unique Italian Columbus/ The bill
was for No. c 1253 Lettera di Co-
lomb. fr. 1700. Frais 4e la Vente,
10 per cent. 170. Fr 1870, a *5/50
£73 6s %d.' The same day, taking
the precious little waif to the British
Museum, I handed it to Mr Panizzi,
and there was far more rejoicing over
it than over the ninety and nine larger
books that were rapidly coming into
the Museum under the then new
£10,000 annual parliamentary grant.

In the presence of Mr Winter
Jones and Mr Watts, Mr Panizzi

at

So RECOLLECTIONS OF

at once delivered into my hands the
duplicate Hariot, for which I gave
him this acknowledgment : — ' British
Museum, August 9 1 847. Received
this day of Mr Panizzi a copy of
Hariot' s Virginia in English, printed
at Frankfort, by Wechel, at the cost
of Theodore De Bry in 1590, in
exchange for Dati, La Lettera, etc.,
Columbus's letter in Italian, entitled
La Lettera di Colomb and printed
at Florence 1493, said book being
No. 1253 of Libri's sale at Paris, in
July- August 1847. Henry Stevens/
Thus I won that brush for Mr
Lenox, and thus Mr Lenox missed
securing the Dati, a loss he ever
mourned, though he fully approved
of the negotiations with Mr Panizzi.
That Dati was then, and still is be-
lieved to be, unique, though another
copy was said to be in the Trivulzio
Library in Milan. Immediately on
returning to Morley's with Hariot
under my arm, I added my three end
leaves to complete the volume, and

alone

MR JAMES LENOX 81

alone in my own mind and room,
there was yet more rejoicing over the
acquisition of this prince of American
rarities, and its fortunate completion,
than over the ninety and nine other
rare books I had already procured
for Mr Lenox. He willingly paid
me one hundred guineas for the
volume when I sent it to him with
a history of its capture. The whole
transactions from beginning to end
were, it seemed to me, a good illus-
tration of Adam Smith's idea of free
trade — a good bargain for all
parties engaged in it.

X

Further Exchanges with the British
Museum

UT of this transaction
as a precedent grew
another, in which both
Mr Lenox and Mr
^ Panizzi were again
victorious, each having made the best
bargain in his own estimation. A
few weeks after winning the Hariot
I went for a month's tour through
France and Germany, and in No-
vember 1847, went to America, all
the time in active correspondence
with Mr Brown and Mr Lenox, but
often through my good old friend,
Mr Obadiah Rich, the bibliographer.
Mr Rich had in contemplation a re-
print

MR JAMES LENOX 83

print of Hakluyt's ' Divers Voyages '
1582, 4to, but his own copy was
very imperfect. He knew of my
transactions with Mr Panizzi about
the Dati-Hariot exchange, and during
my absence called on Mr Panizzi
on my affairs, and incidentally pro-
posed an exchange of some rare
book for the Museum duplicate
Hakluyt. Mr Panizzi told him that
his attention had lately been called to
No. 5731 of Bonn's Guinea Cata-
logue of 1841, ( Ames's Typogra-
phical Antiquities, or an Historical
Account of the Origin and Progress
of Printing in Great Britain and
Ireland, containing memoirs of our
Antient Printers, and a Register of
Books printed by them from 1471
to 1 600 ; considerably augmented
by William Herbert, 3 vols, 1785-
1790, on large paper, interleaved
and bound in 6 royal quarto volumes,
containing a vast quantity of Manu-
script Additions and corrections by
Herbert himself, prepared for a new

edition,

84 RECOLLECTIONS OF

edition, neat in russia,uncut,^i 5 1 $s.
A portion only of the first volume
of this collection has been used by
Dr Dibdin in his new edition. The
remainder has not been used by any
bibliographer/

On enquiry of Mr Bohn, some
six or seven years after the issue of
his catalogue, Mr Panizzi was told
that the work had just before been
ordered from New York through
Mr Rich. On applying to Mr Rich
Mr Panizzi received this note : —
c 12 Red Lion Square, October 4th
[1848]. — Mr Rich presents his re-
spects to Mr Panizzi, and begs leave
to inform him that he sent Herbert's
own copy of his edition of Ames, with
additions to New York ; but believes
that the person to whom he sent it
[Mr Lenox] would have no objection
to part with it, particularly in ex-
change for some of the Museum
duplicates ; and Mr Rich would en-
gage at once to give it for the copy
of Hakluyt's ' Divers Voyages/ 4to,

1582,

MR JAMES LENOX 85

1 5 82, notwithstanding that the Mu-
seum duplicate wants the two maps."
Mr Panizzi was agreeable to this
proposal, but Mr Lenox was not.
Having lost this work of Hakluyt
in my first invoice at ten guineas by
a blunder of his own, as already
mentioned, and the Herbert with
commission, Customs duty and ex-
penses having cost him about £20,
he was not disposed to sanction Mr
Rich's proposal, but was willing to
give the Herbert for another little
Museum duplicate of which I had
written him, viz. c Hernando de
Sou to [or So to], Relac^am verdadeira
de la Florida/ Evora, en Casa de
Andree Burgos, 1557, small 8vo,
the original edition in Portuguese.
Mr Panizzi jumped at Mr Lenox's
offer (there being another fine copy in
theGrenville Library under SOUTO),
and laid it before the Trustees for
approval. The exchange was com-
pleted in March 1 849 ; but I believe
that the Trustees at that time put a

stopper

86 RECOLLECTIONS OF

stopper on any further exchanges of
duplicates.

Mr Lenox was so well pleased
with his bargain that it went far to
reconcile him to the loss of the Italian
Columbus by Dati, which by the
way he had never positively ordered,
and could have had no just claim
upon me for it. Herbert's Ames,
the Great National work of English
bibliography, thus found its way
back from America into the National
Library, the last enterprise of its
kind which Mr Panizzi was per-
mitted to effect, where its existence
is now silently recorded in the newly
printed catalogue under AMES (Jo-
seph) as ' Another copy/ with the
press mark, 824. k. 31, but placed
in the Keeper's room, shelved behind
the door, where it has quietly re-
mained some thirty-five years, a mine
of pure English bibliography unde-
filed, f lost upon earth/ still almost
if not quite unknown to outsiders,
and altogether forgotten or seldom

if

MR JAMES LENOX 87

if ever consulted by insiders. One
of these days however I have little
doubt some prowling bibliographer
will ' discover ' it, and perhaps quar-
rel with a brother mouser about who
was first in the discovery, as two of
them did in 1875 respecting Poe's
unique pamphlet entitled ' Tamer-
lane and other Poems. By a Bos-
tonian. Boston, 1827/1 2mo, which
I bought of Mr Samuel G. Drake
as one of that poet's pieces, in Bos-
ton in 1859. It was sent into the
Museum in 1860 with many other
Boston tracts, and was paid
for in 1867 one
shilling !

XI

XI

The Columbus Letters and the Ver-

monters views as to the editio

princefs

OTH Mr Brown and
Mr Lenox, my two
chief correspondents
in early days, were
exceedingly sweeten
everything relating to Columbus, and
sometimes I found it very difficult to
prevent their colliding. Mr Brown
had the start, and secured the first
choice in 1845 and 1846. Notably
among the four editions of 1493 at
seven to ten guineas each, he secured
the unique Paris edition with the
colophon line, not in the (Rawlinson)
Bodleian or Gottingen examples of

that

MR JAMES LENOX 89

that edition. But in the first Libri
sale in London at Sotheby's, Feb-
ruary 19 1849, there occurred a
copy of the small octavo Latin edition
of the Columbus Letter in eight
leaves, with two leaves for the cover
on the same paper, in all ten leaves,
with seven different woodcuts.

Mr Brown ordered this lot with
a limit of 25 guineas, and Mr Lenox
of £25. Now as my chief corre-
spondents had been indulged with a
good deal of liberty, scarcely ever
considering their orders completely
executed till they had received the
books and decided whether or not
they would keep them, I grew into
the habit of considering all pur-
chases my own until accepted and
paid for. Consequently when posi-
tive orders were given, which was
very seldom, I grew likewise into the
habit of buying the lot as cheaply as
possible, and then awarding it to
the correspondent who gave the high-
est limit. This is not always quite
N fair

90 RECOLLECTIONS OF

fair to the owner, but in my case it
would have been unfair to myself to
make my clients compete, as not un-
frequently the awarded lot was de-
clined and had to go to another.

Well, in the case of this Columbus
Letter, though I had five or six
orders, I purchased it for £16 IQJ,
and accordingly, as had been done
many times before within the last
five or six years without a grumble,
I awarded it to the highest limit, and
sent the little book to Mr John
Carter Brown. Hitherto in cases
of importance, Mr Lenox had gene-
rally been successful, because he
usually gave the highest limit. But
in this case he rebelled. He wrote
that the book had gone under his
commission of ^25, that he knew
nobody else in the transaction, and
that he insisted on having it, or he
should at once transfer his orders to
some one else. I endeavoured to
vindicate my conduct by stating our
long-continued practice, with which

he

MR JAMES LENOX 91

he was perfectly well acquainted, but
without success. He grew more
and more peremptory, insisting on
having the book solely on the ground
that it went under his limit.

At length after some months of
negotiation Mr Brown, on being
made acquainted with the whole cor-
respondence, very kindly, to relieve
me of the dilemma, sent the book to
Mr Lenox without a word of com-
ment or explanation, except that
though it went also below his higher
limit, he yielded it to Mr Lenox for
peace. Mr Brown was exceedingly
vexed with Mr Lenox, and pro-
nounced the demand selfish, and
under all the circumstances both il-
liberal and unbusinesslike. They
were both old bachelors, and I sup-
pose found it unpleasant to be crossed ;
while I found it sometimes difficult
to navigate between them without
giving offence to one or the other.

However,from that time I resorted,
in cases of duplicate orders from them,

to

92 RECOLLECTIONS OF

to the expedient of always putting
the lot in at one bid above the lower
limit, which after all, I believe, is the
fairer way in the case of positive
orders. This sometimes cost one of
them a good deal more money, but
it abated the chafing and generally
gave satisfaction. Both thought the
old method the fairest when they
got the prize. But I was obliged on
the new system of bidding to insist
on the purchaser keeping the book
without the option of returning it.
A case in point occurred shortly after
at Messrs Puttick and Simpson's,
when the German Columbus Letter
of 1497 occurred for sale. This time
the limits were reversed, Mr Lenox's
being 25 guineas and Mr Brown's
£25. I bought the lot for Mr Le-
nox at one bidding of £26, and
shortly after secured another copy for
Mr Brown for less than half that price.
These specimens however were
of small account, the ordered books
always being but a very small percen-
tage

MR JAMES LENOX 93

tage of the rarities colle&ed and sent
out on approval. But to this little oc-
tavo Columbus hangs a bibliographi-
cal tale which may perhaps as well
be noticed here as anywhere, espe-
cially as I have kept my discovery a
dozen years, and the revelation of it
now may possibly aid in clearing up
the entangled question of the editio
princeps of this most important pub-
lication respecting the discovery of
the New World.

Mr Lenox greatly rejoiced in the
acquisition of this octavo Columbus
Letter, placing it as the FIRST EDITION
in his bibliography of the Letter sub-
joined to his translation of c Nicolaus
Syllacius de Insulis Meridiani atque
Indici Maris Nuper Inventis,' pri-
vately printed at New York in 1 860,
in quarto, Appendix p. xxxv. It is
well known to the cognoscenti, that
the numerous writers on the voyages
of Columbus and the discovery of
America are by no means agreed as
to which of the many editions in Latin

of

94 RECOLLECTIONS OF

of the first letter of Columbus, on his
return from his first voyage in March
1493, is the original or editio frin-
ceps. It is a question of no little im-
portance, as evidenced by the warm
discussions of Bossi, Morelli, Navar-
rette, Humboldt, Brunet, Major, Le-
nox, Harrisse,Varnhagen, Gayangos,
and others. My own forty years' bib-
liographical studies have led me to
differ from the reasonings and con-
clusions of all these writers.

It was the discovery of the origin
of this little octavo edition that has
I think become the key to the mys-
tery. In 1873, while at Basle, I
visited the public library, and was in-
formed by the accomplished librarian,
who is well up in the history of Basle
printing and printers, among other
important bibliographical matters,
that the celebrated printer Froben,
who began printing at Basle in 1491,
bequeathed his very nearly complete
collection of the books printed by
himself, well and carefully bound, to

the

MR JAMES LENOX 95

the library of a monastery over the
river opposite the town, and that this
extremely valuable collection had re-
cently been transferred to the Public
Library of Basle. I then, by a sort
of inspiration, inquired if there was
any connection between Bergman de
Olpe and Froben, when it appeared
that Olpe was at first a bookseller or
publisher, and that some if not all of
his early books of 1491-94 were
printed for him by Froben, including
the quarto Verardus-Columbus. In
running out this idea, I was rejoiced
to find among the Froben books a
thick, dumpy volume of tracts in
small octavo, among which was a fine
and clean copy of this Libri- Stevens-
Brown- Lenox octavo Columbus let-
ter, without the two leaves of cover
(the first and tenth), but with the
identical woodcuts that are found in
the quarto Olpe of 1494. Thus both
the octavo and quarto editions were
proved beyond a doubt to have come
from the press of Froben.

Now

96 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Now this important point being
established, no one will I suppose
for a moment contend that Froben
at Basle had the honour of thus issu-
ing the editio princeps in April or
May 1 493, but rather received a copy
of the original impression from Rome
in eleven or twelve days (the then
usual time of transit) after publica-
tion, say about the middle of May.
We know that another edition was
issued in Paris by Guio Marchant in
two forms, exactly alike, except that
one has a colophon line and the other
is without it. Besides these reprints
in Latin there were two editions of
Dati's translation into Italian pub-
lished at Florence, October 25th and
26th 1493, all following one and
the same prototype, probably the 34-
line, Gothic letter edition without
date, name of printer or place, but
generally attributed to the press of
Stephen Planck of Rome, at the end
of April or beginning of May 1493,
when Pope Alexander's 'demarca-
tion '

MR JAMES LENOX 97

tion' bull of the 4th of May was
printed and published. All these re-
prints alike follow certain charac-
teristics that are unmistakable.

The announcement of so great a
discovery would spread like wild-fire
throughout Christendom, and hence
the prompt reprints of Basle and
Paris, and the poetic translation of
Florence. Is it at all likely that these
reprinters would delay a day for a
new and revised edition ? Certainly
not. Ergo, I think that both the
Basle and the Paris editions, as well
as the work of Dati, followed the
original announcement. Now from
certain points in the title (which was
added by the translator intoLatin), and
certain specimens of bad grammar or
typographical errors or false read-
ings, etc., which appear alike in all
these reprints, it is not difficult in
my judgment to trace the parent
edition. The Latin of the first edi-
tion is crude and puerile, and hence
probably the much changed edition
o of

98 RECOLLECTIONS OF

of Eucharius Silber,Rome 1493, and
the one of 33 lines with similar read-
ings, generally attributed to the press
of Stephen Planck, without date or
names of place and printer, are both
subsequent to the original issue.

This original, as well as the Basle
and Paris reprints, all have the name
of Ferdinand only in the title, with
Aliander of Cosco as the translator
the 29th of April 1493, while the
two other Rome editions have Fer-
dinand and Isabella with Leander. It
is very likely that a young gentleman
of extraordinary precocity in lan-
guages, named Aliander, then at-
tached to the Vatican Library, and
subsequently a sort of Mezzofanti,
was the puerile translator for the
Pope. These facts and suggestions,
submitted to Mr Lenox in the autumn
of 1 873, shook his faith in his octavo
editio princeps. These points in-
terested him very much, and will be
worked out more fully in another
place.

Mr

MR JAMES LENOX 99

Mr Lenox was a great stickler for
naked truth, and seldom expressed
positive opinions except when he had
formed them. When therefore he
had booked an opinion he was very
tenacious of it, though he might have
forgotten the particular process on
which it was based. It was there-
fore sometimes a little pleasant to
show him that somebody else as well
as myself sometimes made mistakes
or arrived at wrong conclusions.
This editio frinceps of Columbus's
Letter was a case in point. He de-
sired to possess it above all things
because he then believed it to be the
first edition. He was thus uncon-
sciously led into a selfish argument
that would not hold water. He sub-
sequently abandoned that idea,
though he was less positive

about the original.

XII

XII

Washington's Farewell Address

BOUT 1847 or 1848
it was announced by
the administrators of
the late David C.
Claypoole of Phila-
delphia, proprietor and editor of the
' Daily Advertiser/ that they were
about to sell by auction in that city
the original autograph manuscript
of Washington's Farewell Address,
given to Claypoole by Washington
himself in September 1 7 96. Mr Le-
nox bought it against the Congress
Library for $2,200 I think, while
some blamed him for competing
against the Government Library,
where such a national relic ought to

find

MR JAMES LENOX 101

find a resting-place. He however
offered the library committee not to
compete under their limit, if they
would tell him how far they intended
to go. They declined to tell him their
limit, or even if they intended to buy
it, so he very properly disregarded
them. There is probably no class of
appointed men so often called upon
to decide without experience as li-
brary committees, whose chief delight
seems to be to sit on librarians dis-
posed to independent decisions.

Mr Lenox all his life was his own
library committee. In 1 850 he pri-
vately printed this -precious manu-
script with variorum notes and other
illustrative papers in one of the most
sumptuous volumes ever issued in the
United States up to that time, * 54
copies folio, 175 copies quarto.
Printed for Presents only/ He had
most of the copies expensively and
appropriately bound in morocco
extra, with emblematic toolings in
gold. On coming to Europe in May

1852,

102 RECOLLECTIONS OF
1 8 5 2, he brought several copies with
him for distribution among libraries
and friends. In June he brought to
my office at Morley's about a dozen
copies inscribed to libraries and indi-
viduals, with a view of my having
them done up, addressed and dis-
tributed free of cost to the recipients.
On looking over the copy inscribed
to me, I complimented him on the
beauty, taste and finish of the volume.
* Yes/ said he, c until I undertook to
print that work, I never knew the
difficulty of printing without typo-
graphical errors. The whole book
was read over many, many times,
both by myself and several literary
friends, but never without discover-
ing some provoking blunder. But
we persevered, having it all in type,
until after a dozen or more revises,
no one of us could find another mis-
print, and so I then gave orders for
it to go to press. It is said that the
Oxford University Press offers a
guinea for every typographical error

in

MR JAMES LENOX 103

in its Bibles. I should not fear to
make a similar offer respecting this
book, for I am thoroughly convinced
that the printing is absolutely correct.'
c Yes, Mr Lenox/ I replied, c the
book at sight appears perfect. The
leaves as you turn them over seem to
talk to you, but this one I am now
looking at appears to grumble, I sup-
pose, because of the words " three
drafts of such a papar." Why " pa-
par" instead of "paper"?' He cast his
quick eye on the page. It was even so.
His £ pride of accuracy' evaporated
in a moment, and he wilted into my
arm-chair as if he had been shot. It
was I believe his first book, and he
was ill prepared for such a calamity.
I pitied his distress. « Well/ at last
he said, 'it is my own fault, <cand pity
'tis, 'tis true." What in the world am
I to do ? I much dislike an erratum
note, and it is a great deal of trouble
to cancel the leaf and rebind the
volume. I am distressed beyond
measure.' 'Nevermind,' said I, c we'll

fix

104 RECOLLECTIONS OF
fix it. Leave the books with me, and
come here to-morrow at this hour.
In all these copies the error shall be
made to disappear/ c I am/ said he/ so
helpless and reckless now, that I shall
do as you say, for I can never present
the copies with the knowledge that
they contain such a blunder/

He went away despondent, and I
immediately sent to my old friend,
John Harris senior, to come with his
tools to my office at once for a few
hours' work. On examining the
stout, well-sized paper, Harris im-
mediately comprehended the remedy,
and placing a thick lignum vitte round
ruler under the word c papar/ with a
keen razor carefully shaved off the
ink from the letter c a ' without hardly
touching the fibre underneath. Hav-
ing done the same to all the copies,
he next with a fine camel-hair pencil
replaced it with an £ e * with ink
coloured to match the surrounding
letters, in an inimitable manner, as
John Harris alone could do it. When

Mr

MR JAMES LENOX. 105

Mr Lenox called the next day the
old artist was there to show him his
handy work. The restoration was
perfect, and not to be detected by Mr
Lenox, who was if possible more
delighted than he was despondent the
day before. After thanking Harris,
he inquired how much he was to be
paid. c Well/ said Harris, c since you
appear to be so well pleased with my
work, and I have had to do it here,
I shall venture to ask you fifteen
shillings for the twelve copies/ c And
cheap enough too/replied Mr Lenox,
handing him a sovereign ; c and pray
take this too, besides my best thanks,
as a mark of my appreciation/ hand-
ing him another sovereign. My own
copy of the book was not so corrected,
I preferring to keep it as a memorial
of the fallibility of one of the most
exact and conscientious men I
ever knew. See Preface,
page iv line 9.

XIII

XIII

The Collection of Hulsius. The Wyc-
liffe manuscripts. Washing-
ton's Library

UT ' Finis' beckons,
while there is room
left to only summarize
a few of the many
remaining jottings of
my reminiscences of Mr Lenox. Per-
haps some of these dropt stitches
may be picked up in another place.
I intended to speak of our luck, perse-
verance and hairbreadth escapes, in
bringing together his extraordinary
collections of De Bry ,Hulsius,Theve-
not, Haertgerts, Saeghman, Colyn,
Hakluyt, Purchas, etc. The news-
paper stories of the extent and cost

of

MR JAMES LENOX 107

of the Lenox De Bry are wild and
bottomless, yet it is one of the best
and most comprehensive sets known.
His Fiulsius it is believed was with-
out a rival at the time of his death.
In 1847 I provided him with a com-
plete set, mixed editions, of the 27
parts (counting part eleven as two)
for £25 ! after having supplied the
Ternaux-Compans set to Mr Brown
at the same price. Then commenced
his more than thirty years* struggle
for all the other editions, cancels,
variations, etc., which resulted in his
marvello us set. At everything known
he aimed, and acquired much hitherto
unknown, but he was finally obliged
to submit to the humiliation of know-
ing of three important variations
which he never could win, and was
therefore forced to supply them in
facsimile. All these editions and varia-
tions,picked up separately from many
sources, cost him much research over
a long time, besides many hundreds
of pounds. Since his death in 1 880,

my

io8 RECOLLECTIONS OF
my long watchfulness in his behalf
has been rewarded by finding, at con-
siderable cost, all these three deside-
rata. But they came into my net,
alas! too late for Mr Lenox, and
therefore now go to adorn my own
matchless set of Hulsius, which in the
various editions extends to over
sixty volumes. I meant also to have
spoken of the five Caxtons and the
block books to which I helped him,
besides the two early manuscript New
Testaments by Wy cliffe, one of which
in octavo, about 1410, has the long
Prologue to the Romans, not in-
cluded in the 4-volume Oxford edi-
tion of 1850, and though known to
Sir Frederick Madden, was never
seen by him until I lent him this
MS., before sending it to Mr Lenox
in August 1859 for £ 1 88 6.r. It was
bound by F. Bedford in brown mo-
rocco, antique pattern, and protected
in a suitable morocco pull-off case,
and is still one of the pearls of the
Lenox Library.

MR JAMES LENOX 109

I have left no room to speak of
the extraordinary American collection
of Mr Ternaux-Compans, he of the
Merino-sheep's head, bought at a
bargain by Mr Rich in 1844, and
mostly distributed by me in 1 845 to
Mr Carter Brown and Mr Lenox,
and a few other clients, at prices
that were then fairly remunerative,
but which now seem ridiculously low.
In 1848 I bought Washington's Li-
brary of about 3,000 volumes, for
$3,000, to secure about 300 volumes
with the autograph of the c Father
of his country ' on the title-pages,
some rarities for Mr Lenox, and
many tracts andmiscellaneous Ameri-
can books for the British Museum.
Mr Lenox declined the books with
autographs, and there being a great
hue and cry raised in Boston against
my sending them out of the country,
I sold the collection to a parcel of
Bostonians for $5,000, but after
passing that old Boston hat round
for two or three months for $50 sub-
scriptions,

no MR JAMES LENOX

scriptions, only $3,250 could be
raised, and therefore, as I had used
a few hundred dollars of the money
advanced to me by the promoters
and was in a tight place, I was com-
pelled to subscribe the rest myself to
make up the amount of the purchase.
I reserved to myself five volumes
with choice autographs, two of which
were sold to Mr Lenox, one for £20
and the other for £50, the remain-
ing three being presented to the
British Museum, the Bodleian,
and the Royal Library
of Berlin.

XIV

XIV

"The Asfinwall, Drake, Crownin-

shield and Humboldt Libraries.

Tyndales Pentateuch. 'The

Juan de la Cosa Map

YEAR or two later,
while in treaty for the
whole of the Aspin-
wall Library for Mr
Brown, Mr Lenox,
Dr Cogswell, and for the British
Museum, I catalogued the whole col-
lection, putting an agreed price on
every book, satisfactory to Colonel
Aspinwall and myself. But on sum-
ming up the total it came to a little
over £ i ,200, some £ 800 less than he
expected ; so the Colonel flew off the
bargain and I escaped a lot of fool-
ishness.

H2 RECOLLECTIONS OF
ishness. Mr Lenox and Mr Brown
thought my prices for the rarities
they wanted too high, and one of Dr
Cogswell's library committee finding
one of his own tracts priced at half-
a-crown, said, what was perhaps quite
true, that the work was over-priced ;
that he would present a copy to the
library, but he wanted nothing more
to do with the Aspinwall Collection
or Mr Stevens's prices. Thus this
wiseacre on the committee of trus-
tees of the Astor Library sat on Dr
Cogswell, and rendered him power-
less to complete any part of the pur-
chase. ( 'Twas ever thus/ wrote Dr
Cogswell, c one committee-man, stiff
in his ignorance, may thwart the best
schemes of an intelligent librarian
who understands his business- and
comprehends the wants of the com-
munity/

In 1858 I bought MrS.G. Drake's
library, and in 1859 Mr E. A.
CrowninshiekTs, each for $10,000,
having in my eye in both cases cer-
tain

MR JAMES LENOX 113

tain choice c Historical Nuggets ' for
Mr Lenox, who was ever ready to
pay good prices for an early choice.
In 1 8 60 1 paid £4,000 for the Hum-
boldt Library, but the war coming
on after I had got the immense bulk
in London, I was crushed by the
weight of it. Dr Cogswell had en-
couraged me to the venture, by giv-
ing me to understand that the trus-
tees of the Astor Library would se-
lect at once between £2,000 and
£3,000 worth, and Mr Lenox had
intimated that he should be glad to
secure as usual certain of the rarities.
On the first gun of Fort Sumter all
these and many other clients shut up
like clam shells, and began to practise
those beautiful virtues of prudence
and economy which protected them-
selves and at the same time ruined
me.

I ought to have mentioned the well-
known sales of Libri, Payne & Foss,
Pickering, Lord Stewart de Rothesay,
Dr Hawtry, Dun Gardner, Offor,
c and

iH RECOLLECTIONS OF
and many others, at which I bought
largely for Mr Lenox. At one of
these sales Mr Lenox sent an order
for Tyndale's Pentateuch 1 530, with
a limit of ^50, or more if I thought
it desirable after inspection. I had
to pay j£i 59 for it, which with com-
mission and expenses, cost Mr Lenox
£175. The day after the sale Lord
Ashburnham offered me 200 guineas
for the volume, but it was Mr Le-
nox's. The volume was bound in
morocco with heavy boards, and cost
the purchaser more than three times
its weight in sovereigns. The book
had three interior leaves in facsimile
by the elder Harris, which in my
humble judgment very much de-
preciated its value, though otherwise
the largest, purest and finest copy
known. Subsequently, at infinite
pains, I had another copy through
my hands, and arranged to supply
the originals of these three leaves for
^20, and sent them by post to Mr
Lenox for the purpose of completing

his

MR JAMES LENOX 115

his volume. But he was not of my way
of thinking. The three leaves were
three-eighths of an inch shorter than
his, and therefore as they would not
grow, he returned them to me !
That same copy, with those same
three leaves, would now produce
probably not less than 500 guineas.
A similar copy, wanting the whole
of the Book of Genesis with the
date, was sold by auction at Sotheby's
in 1884 for ^200, and is now one
of thechiefest ornaments of theAstor
Library.

In May 1853 the Walckenaer
sale took place in Paris. I ordered
many books from it for Mr Brown
and Mr Lenox on my own responsi-
bility, they not having received the
catalogue in time. In this sale No
2904 was the large manuscript map
of the wor'd by Juan de la Cosa, exe-
cuted at Santa Maria in Spain in the
year 1 500, rendered famous by Hum-
boldt, altogether then and even now
the most precious cartographical

document

u6 RECOLLECTIONS OF
document relating to the New World.
Mr Brown turned up in London just
as I was ordering it, but had no ap-
preciative fancy for it. So I deter-
mined to go it alone, and sent my in-
telligent and reliable agent in Paris a
limit of 1,000 francs for it. He re-
plied confidentially that he was aware
of an order in town from a great
foreign public library with a limit con-
siderably exceedingmine,which I took
to be the British Museum. Wishing
very much to secure the prize, I at
once replied requesting him to double
my limit. The next post brought
me another letter that 2,000 francs
was not yet enough, for he was assured
that MJomard,of the Royal Library,
would outbidme. As time was getting
short, and my anxiety to win was in-
creasing, I wrote him the evening be-
fore the sale to again double my limit,
if that in his judgment was not sheer
folly. So I left my limit to him any-
where under 4,000 francs. The Queen
of Spain won the chase at 4,020 francs

and

MR JAMES LENOX 117

and I had the honour of coming in the
loser by a neck, but with nothing to
pay ; and so also Mr Lenox escaped.
The Naval Museum at Madrid (Cata-
logue No. 553) is said now to hold
this precious geographical document,
worth cartloads of the Portuguese
Cantino map lately brought to light,
with its duplicate Cuba and purely
bogus and conjectural geography,
based on Portuguese misreadingsand
misunderstandings of the exag-
gerated geographical accounts
of the first and second

voyages of Columbus.

xv

XV

The Vermonter dabbleth in Nineveh
Marbles

.N 1858 Mr Lenox, at
an expense of $3,000,
presented to the(New
York Historical So-
ciety a large collection
of Nineveh sculptures, which the
Council of the Society, in gratitude
for the highly valued collection, voted
should be named and thenceforward
be known and styled the { Lenox
Marbles/ My notes and reminis-
cences of that collection may perhaps
be recorded here. After Mr Layard
and Colonel Rawlinson had completed
their researches, and shipped their
selected discoveries to the British

Museum,

MR JAMES LENOX 119

Museum, many duplicates were re-
buried to preserve them from the na-
tives. Mr Williams the American
missionary, made great efforts to have
these valuable duplicates secured for
America, and wrote to Mr Abbot
Lawrence, the United States Minister
in London. This correspondence I
caused to be laid before the Trustees
of the Museum, who promptly re-
plied that early in 1852 they had in-
structed Colonel Rawlinson to facili-
tate others in removing such sculp-
tures as were not required for the
British Museum. Mr Lawrence's
application to the Smithsonian Insti-
tution through me, and to the au-
thorities of Washington direct, were
permitted to slumber in the mighty
limbo there of such expensive ven-
tures, and nothing was done.

Meanwhile two English merchants,
one a consul, residing at Bagdad or
Mosul, who had been friends of
Layard and Rawlinson during their
excavations, obtained permission to

remove

120 RECOLLECTIONS OF
remove thirteen large slabs, and in
1852 floated them 800 miles down
the Tigris to the Persian Gulf, and
thence shipped them to the Mauritius,
and thence trans-shipped them to
London, where they lay stored in the
East India Docks many months, like
many other speculative adventures,
eating their heads off. Some changes
having occurred in the plans or pros-
peels of the proprietors, their London
agent came to me with a note of in-
troduction from Barings, with a view
of transferring their hungry charge
to the Smithsonian Institution or to
Uncle Samuel. But neither Professor
Henry nor my Uncle made any sign
or sent any ship for them. Finally,
a little later, when the news of the
unfortunate loss of the vessel contain-
ing the entire excavations of the
French reached this country, I at once,
after consulting my friends Dr Birch
and Mr Vaux of the British Museum
as to their genuineness and archaeo-
logical value, determined to purchase

the

MR JAMES LENOX 121

the whole collection on my own ac-
count. They were offered to me, if
I would pay all the bills of charges
on them from Mosul to the East India
Docks, including the dock charges
and storage, in all amounting to only
£300, receiving them then and there
accoutred as they were. In October
1853 I shipped the whole in their
original bulky log fastenings by the
good ship ( Nabob J direcl: to Boston,
consigning them, with insurance and
freight paid to destination, to Messrs
Hubbard Brothers.

With head full of Layard's books,
I had golden dreams about these
Nineveh sculptures, 3,000 years old,
landing at Boston only 245 years
after John Winthrop ; and about
their reception at the Hub of the
universe. The first reality I ex-
perienced when fully awake was that
the expenses were running up very
fast, and that I was compelled to
disregard the ' ancient art ' and pay
for the sculptured marbles, in their
R bulky

122 RECOLLECTIONS OF
bulky protections, as goods of 30
tons measurement, though the acftual
weight was only about 17 tons.
They consisted of 13 slabs, about a
foot thick, with sculptures in bas-
relief, generally about 7^ feet high,
and averaging 6 feet in width, the
whole, ranged side by side, measur-
ing 72 feet 2 inches. I wrote fully
to Mr Edward Everett, Mr George
Sumner, Mr George Livermore and
others about the consignment, and
at the request of Mr Joshua Bates
I wrote out a full statement, with
vouchers from men in the British
Museum as to their value and genu-
ine character, which documents Mr
Bates sent to Mr George Ticknor,
President of the Trustees of the Free
Public Library.

At first all wrote encouragingly,
and the c ancients ' were favourably
greeted on their being landed and
stored on Long Wharf. Eventually,
after some months, with fresh ex-
penses for storage, the public-spirited

citizens

MR JAMES LENOX 123

citizens had them removed to the
Boston Athenaeum at their own cost,
and set up for profitable exhibition.
Here they stood many more weary
months, like Barnum's wax figures,
until they and I were tired.

Finally in 1858, when I was in
New York, I related the history of
my patriotic adventure in the Nine-
veh fine arts line, to my old and
valued friend Mr George H. Moore,
of the New York Historical Society.
He at once appreciated the situation
in all its bearings, and with an en-
thusiasm akin to that of the Green
Mountain Boy who captured them in
the East India Docks, said, ' By
thunder, Henry, wouldn't it be a
mighty fine thing to transfer them to
the ground floor room in our His-
torical Society! What'll you take
for the lot, delivered free on the
railway trucks in Boston ? ' c Do you
mean it, George ? ' f Yes, honour
bright/ 'Well/ said I, 'they have
cost me during the last five years

well

124 RECOLLECTIONS OF
well nigh $3,000, and though earn-
ing nothing now, they are costing me
nothing where they are, excepting the
interest on the outlay. You may
now have them, as I had them, by
paying the bills. The Athenaeum
has had two annual exhibitions out
of them, and as they stand there sub-
ject to my order, I should have no
hesitation in ordering them away at
once in case the Bostonians are not
disposed to complete the purchase
without further delay.'

George was in earnest, and I sent
a confidential friend, well posted in
such matters, to inquire into the facts,
and ascertain if the authorities were
disposed to buy the lot. If so, they
of course had the pre-emption, other-
wise the 'goods' would be speedily
removed to be sold elsewhere. The
report was that there was little in-
clination in the parties interested in
Boston to purchase, and 4 that Mr
Stevens of course could remove his
" Nineveh Marbles " whenever he

pleased,

MR JAMES LENOX 125

pleased, and he would be entitled to
our thanks for lending them to us
for so long a time/ All appeared per-
fectly fair, serene and friendly ; but
one high-minded Beacon Streeter, a
little more frank than the others,
obligingly communicated to my
friend, not knowing that he was also
my agent, the important fact c that
it was wholly unnecessary for us to
buy those ponderous sculptures, for
they will cost Mr Stevens as much
as they are worth to remove them to
another town/ On further inquiry
he found that this Fabian policy of
masterly inactivity pervaded all the
interested brain-carriers of the modern
Athens.

After conning over this intelli-
gence and report together, George
said, c Well, Henry, this is Boston
all over, and another piece of your
Washington Autograph-Book busi-
ness a few years ago. If you wish
the thing to go through you will
have to subscribe for the lion's share

of

126 RECOLLECTIONS OF
of the stock yourself. " Three thou-
sand ducats — 'tis a good round sum,"
but we'll remove our neighbour's
Nineveh marble landmarks to New
York. Come and see me to-morrow,
after I have seen Mr Lenox and told
him the story.' The next day when
we met George said, c Well Henry,
it is o.k. ; let us go on to Boston
and see those Sennacherib men with
their stone carpet-bags. Mr Lenox
says that if I find all things correct
he will give us a cheque for $3,000
as soon as the goods reach New York
to my satisfaction.' So the business
was accomplished in a few days, and
so the c Stevens marbles ' became the
' Lenox marbles,' and at last found
a permanent resting-place ; and thus
it was that I recouped my money,
and exercised my patience in per-
forming another patriotic deed for a
naughty New World. The next
time I saw Mr Lenox I congratulated
him on his successful play at marbles,
and hoped he would be luckier than

MR JAMES LENOX 127

I had been with those men and me-
morials of old. He replied that the
venture formed a part of his * Bible
Collection,' but the Historical So-
ciety had to pasture them.

XVI

XVI

Cromwell's Letter to John Cotton. G.

M.B.'s first interview with Mr Lenox.

The Coverdale Map of 1 574. The

1 6 1 1 unique Testament in 1 2°.

c La Cart a universale delle

terra fir me' of 1 534

AM obliged to omit
3 the story of the curious
and most valuable au-
tograph letter of Wash-
ington to his London
tailor, in which he described minutely
the dimensions and proportions of his
figure, even to the number of inches
in his waist, the length of his legs and
arms, as well as the circumference of
his chest,knees and thighs ; which let-
ter I procured and sent to Mr Lenox

in

MR JAMES LENOX 129

in April 1852 for the very moderate
sum of three guineas. What would
it bring now ? Nor is there room to
just more than mention the particu-
lars of a long autograph letter of
Oliver Cromwell to John Cotton of
Boston in N.E., dated Odtober 2d
1651, which I procured and induced
him to purchase for ^40 in February
1854. Oliver addressed his letter
* For my esteemed freind, Mr Cot-
ton, Pastor to the church att Bos-
ton in New England, theise,' and be-
gins c Worthye Sr. and my Christian
freind, I received yours a few dayes
sithence, it was welcom to mee, be-
cause signed by you, whome I loue
and Honour in the Lord but more to
see some of the same grounds of our
Adinges Stirringe in you, that haue
in vs, to qviet vs to our worke, and
support vs therein, wch hath had
greatest difficultye in our engagement
in Scotland, by reason wee haue had
to doe wth some, whoe were (I verily
thinke) Godly, but thorough weake-

rso RECOLLECTIONS OF
nesse, and the subtiltye of Sathan in-
uolved in interests against the Lord,
and his people . . . [ending] I tooke
this liberty e from businesse to salute
you thus in a word, trulye I am ready
to serue you and the rest of our
brethren, and the churches wth you.
I am a poore weake creature, not
worthye the name of a worme, yett
accepted to serve the Lord and his
people, indeed my deare freind be-
tweene you and mee you knowe not
mee, my weaknessees, my inordinate
passions, my vngratefullnesse, and
euery way vnfitness to my worke,
yett, yett the Lord whoe will haue
mercye on whom He will, does as
you see. Pray for mee, salute all
Christian freinds though vnknown,
I rest Your affectionate freind to
serve you O. CROMWELL/ Mr Le-
nox printed this letter as No. 4
of his * Curiosities of " American "
Literature.'

A paragraph might be made re-
specting our first interview in New

York

MR JAMES LENOX 131

York in the late autumn of 1847,
when we saw each other for the first
time after more than two years of
active correspondence, and when by
comparing notes, we were both very
much mistaken in the portraits our
fancies had painted of each other.
On arriving at the Astor House I
dropped Mr Lenox a line to say I
was in town, and would be glad to
see him at any time and place most
convenient to himself. By return of
boy, the answer came, c To-morrow
morning at nine o'clock at my house/
During the day all my gossiping and
bookish friends greeted me cordially,
and said, c Now we shall hear and
know something of Mr Lenox, his
library and new house/

The next morning, on the stroke
of nine, I mounted the broad stone
steps and rang the bell. A maiden
servant opened the door on the chain
six or eight inches, and asked, ' Are
you Mr Stevens ? ' c Yes/ c Mr
Lenox is in his office below ; you can

enter

132 RECOLLECTIONS OF
enter by the door under the steps/
Down I went and again rang a bell,
when Mr Lenox himself unlocked a
door and an iron gate and gave me
a warm welcome. We talked and
rambled about for four hours and
made each other's personal acquaint-
ance pretty fast, while I saw him, his
library, gallery and a room or two
besides the hall, and many closed
doors. My impression of him was
altogether favourable, but by his man-
ner, more than by anything he said,
I came to the conclusion that the
treasures of his mind, as a matter of
habit, like his front door, always £ had
the chain up/ He was frank, open
and serene to me, but without his
saying it in so many words I came to
the conclusion that my future policy
was to < put up my chain ' also so far
as any personal gossip of and about
him was concerned.

Thenceforth Mr Lenox was always
allowed to have his own way, with-
out any dictation or strong argument

from

MR JAMES LENOX 133

from me. He had a mind of his own
and a fortune to back it. My gos-
siping friends the next day and often
afterwards sat on me in Bartlett and
Welford's store, where they used most
to congregate, but they were welcome
to all the interior news they extracted.
I had already learned to put up my
Lenox chain. Mr Lenox and I stood
on a level, as far as I could see, he a
buyer and I a seller ; he collecting to
shelve, I collecting to disperse — one's
calling necessary to the other's. If
there were any real difference of rank,
it is not likely either of us ever saw
or thought of it. We often saw each
other for the next eighteen months,
but never except by appointment.
This mutual courtesy and equality
always continued between us, though
he bought while I sold.

Some years later he said to me,
£ As you seem to find everything you
want sooner or later, I wish you would
find me a copy of the Coverdale
woodcut map of the Holy Land with

the

134 RECOLLECTIONS OF
the date 1574, from the identical
block with that of the 1535 Bible,
having only the date and certain in-
scriptions altered/ c I will try,' was
my reply. Two or three weeks later,
while travelling up Connecticut River,
I stopped a day or two at Charles-
town, New Hampshire, and calling
on Mr Silvester there, I saw a very
imperfect copy of the folio Bishops'
Bible of 1574 with this very map,
fine and perfect. By a little nego-
tiation, after the true Yankee style,
I became possessed of the volume,
and took it back to Mr Lenox in
triumph. <I never!' said he; and
he paid me fifty dollars for the map.
I have never since been able to pro-
cure another copy.

During the war Mr Lenox sus-
pended generally his ardent foraging
for rare books, and only occasionally
had an intermittent attack of his old
bibliographical fever. Early in 1 866,
after I had sent him some extraordi-
nary historical nuggets that he could

not

MR JAMES LENOX 135

not resist buying, he wrote me on
Shakespeare's birth and death day,
April 23, a long letter, in which was
contained this announcement : c Your
best plan, as far as I am concerned,
will be to let me have a memoran-
dum beforehand of what you suppose
I may take, and I will let you know
immediately what you shall forward
to me. In fact, unless it be some
volume like the Vesputius, or De
Bry, or Hulsius, or Jesuit Relation,
I have almost made up my mind to
stop purchasing/ Such hints between
1865 and l%75 I n°t unfrequently
had from him in his numerous let-
ters on bibliographical subjects, while
sometimes an amusing commentary
on these incipient resolutions was
found in a postscript, in which he
inquired anxiously for some nugget
that he had passed or missed when
under his eye, but now desired me to
re-offer or procure for him.

There were some books which Mr
Lenox bought with reluctance, being,

he

136 RECOLLECTIONS OF
he thought, c too dear/ but which he
soon learned to appreciate and value
as historical pearls of great price.
Among these was the Barker, Lon-
don 1 6 1 1, 12° long-line, small black
letter first edition of the New Testa-
ment of the 161 1 version, then con-
sidered unique, as described by Lea
Wilson under his No. 57, and in
Pickering's auction catalogue, part 2
No. 3534, in 1854. The cost to
him including my commission, was
£37 2s. 6d.> besides freight, insurance
and the Customs duty. That pre-
cious little volume, after forty years'
bibliographical research by Bible stu-
dents and collectors, still remains
unique. Were it now to come into the
market again, how it would open the
eyes of bibliographers, and empty the
pockets of some lucky collector ! No
historian has as yet told us why that
pocket edition was printed by Robert
Barker, the King's printer, and pro-
bably never published. Why and for
what reason was it suppressed ?

Another

MR JAMES LENOX 137

Another book, sent him in April
1852, about which he hesitated on
account of the price of eighteen
guineas but afterwards held as price-
less, was e Libro primo, secondo &
ultimo/ by Peter Martyr, Oviedo
and Xeres, edited by Ramusio, and
printed at Venice in 1534, with the
usual map of c Spagnvola/ and the
large and unique map entitled c La
carta universale della terra firme.'
This latter, the largest and perhaps
the most important of the early wood-
cut maps of the New World, has to
this day remained unique. Mr Pa-
nizzi tried very hard to induce me to
let him have this map for the British
Museum, and offered me for it my
price for the book and map ; but I
told him that it had been reported
to Mr Lenox, but if declined the
Museum should have it. At Mr
Panizzi's suggestion, I employed the
elder John Harris to make a careful
fac-simile tracing of it for me, which
was thrown on to stone, and some
T copies

138 MR JAMES LENOX

copies published by me. See * Nug-
gets/ No. 1808, and my ( Geogra-
phical Notes ' for a reduced copy of
it. No second copy of the original,
as far as I can learn, has as yet been
brought to light. The fac-simile has
erroneously been quoted as Mr Har-
ris's publication. I have several
copies still on hand.

XVII

XVII

The fac-simile leaves in the quarto
Harlot. The true history of the c Hunt-
Lenox Globe' John White s Virginia
Drawings. Ludd's c Speculi
Or bis Descriptio '

R LENOX was prin-
cipled against raffles,
wagers, lotteries and
games of chance gene-
rally, but I once led
him into a sort of bet in this way, by
which I won from him £4. I had
acquired a fair copy of that gem of
rare books, the quarto edition of
c Hariot's briefe and true report of
the new found land of Virginea, Lon-
don, Feb. 1588,' wanting four leaves
in the body of the book. These I

had

140 RECOLLECTIONS OF
had very skilfully traced by Harris,
transferred to stone, printed off on
old paper of a perfect match, the
book and these leaves sized and co-
loured alike, and bound in morocco
by Bedford. The volume was then
sent to Mr Lenox to be examined by
him de visu^ the price to be £2 5 ; but
if he could detect the four fac-simile
leaves, and would point them out to
me without error, the price was to be
reduced to ^21. By the first post
after the book was received he re-
mitted me the twenty guineas, with
a list of the fac-similes. But on my
informing him that two of Ms fac-
similes were originals, he immedi-
ately remitted the four pounds and
acknowledged his defeat.

In 1870, while residing at the
'Clarendon' in New York, I dined
one evening with Mr R. M. Hunt,
the architect of the Lenox Library,
a son of my father's old friend Jona-
than Hunt, who represented the State
of Vermont in Congress from 1827

to

MR JAMES LENOX 141

to 1832. While talking on library
conveniences and plans, I chanced to
notice a small copper globe, a child's
plaything, rolling about the floor. On
inquiry, I was told that he picked it
up in some town in France for a
song, and now, as it opened at the
equator and was hollow, the children
had appropriated it for their amuse-
ment. I saw at once by its outlines
that it was probably older than any
other globe known, except Martin
Behaim's at Nurnberg, and perhaps
the Leon globe, and told Mr Hunt
my opinion of its geography, request-
ing him to take great care of it, for
it would some day make a noise in
the geographical world. Subse-
quently I borrowed it for two or three
months, studied it, took it to Wash-
ington, exhibited it to Dr Hilgard
and others at the Coast Survey Office,
and employed one of the draughts-
men there to project it in a two-
hemisphere map, with a diameter of
the original, about five and a half

inches,

142 RECOLLECTIONS OF
inches, at a cost to me of $20. On
returning to New York I delivered
it into the hands of Mr Hunt, telling
him that it was unquestionably as
early as 1 510 and perhaps 1 505, and
was in historical and geographical
interest second to hardly any other
globe, small as it was; and concluded
by recommending him, when he and
his children had done playing with
it, to present it to the Lenox Library,
the plans of which he was then en-
gaged upon. I also told Mr Lenox
of it and its value, and recommended
him to keep his eye upon it, and se-
cure it if possible for preservation in
his library. My pains and powder
were not thrown away. Not long
after Mr Hunt presented it to the li-
brary, and from that time it has been
known and styled as the ( Hunt-
Lenox Globe/ On my return to
London I showed my drawing of it
to my friend Mr C. H. Coote, of the
map department of the British Mu-
seum, and lent it to him for the re-
duced

MR JAMES LENOX 143

duced fac-simile in his article on
GLOBES in the new edition of the
c Encyclopaedia Britannica/ Thus the
c Hunt- Lenox Globe ' won its geo-
graphical niche in literature as well
as in ( Narrative History/

Notwithstanding all these rarities
that Mr Lenox by his enterprise and
liberality secured for his library, he
sometimes missed his opportunities,
and failed to shoot the folly as it rose.
Among the numerous c pearls of great
price* that passed through my hands,
and he permitted to slip through his
fingers, may be mentioned the follow-
ing : — i. Captain John White's 73
original water-colour drawings in
1 585-86, while acting with Hariot in
Raleigh's first expedition, represent-
ing the men, women, beasts, birds,
fish, plants, etc., of Virginia, 23 of
which had been engraved by De Bry
in his Part I. Frankfort 1 5 90. These
drawings, showing the English origin
of De Bry's famous colledion, were
first offered to Mr Lenox, and on

being

144 RECOLLECTIONS OF
being declined, were sold to the
British Museum for ^235, and by
Mr Panizzi placed in the Grenville
Library, where they are esteemed of
inestimable artistic and historical
value. Mr Lenoxwrote me the 23rd
April 1866: — CI think you have
made a good sale of your White's
drawings to the Museum. I shall be
glad to see your report to the trustees
on the subject. I hope you will not
forget it.' '

2. Walter Ludd's c Speculi Orbis
descriptio/ printed at St Die in 1 508 ,
a small folio tract of a few leaves,
expensively bound in red morocco by
Bedford, a sort of key to the Vespucci
books and the Cosmographies Intro-
ductio,was another unknown nugget
which I took infinite pains to study
and place in America. Mr Lenox
and all my other correspondents there
declined it at ten guineas. So after
having offered it also to the British
Museum with like success, I threw it
into auction at Sotheby's, where it

was

,

MR JAMES LENOX 145

was bought for the Museum for
£8 8j, I having called Mr Winter
Jones's particular attention to it and
the explanatory note in the auction
catalogue, thus costing with commis-
sion £9 4^ 9</. The day after its
delivery at the Museum, I called Mr
Major's attention to it, and he made
a good use of the little work in his
forthcoming Prince Henry, which
notice immediately raised my goose
to a swan. On writing again to Mr
Lenox respecting its progress, and
regretting his oversight, he replied,
ist July 1 867 : ' Your " Speculi Orbis
Descriptio " is of value merely as a
reference to sustain the attempt to
deprive Hylacomylas of his labour/
This was in a long letter respecting
M . D' Avezac and the Cosmographias
Introductio. The fact appears to
have been that Mr Lenox so strongly
espoused Humboldt's and D'Ave-
zac's somewhat crude notions about
Hylacomylas or Waldseemuler, that
he could not abide the evidence that
u perhaps

146 MR JAMES LENOX

perhaps Philesius or Matthias Ring-
mann, instead of Waldseemuler, was
after all the prime moving spirit
among that famous geographical fra-
ternity at St. Die, who wrote up Ves-
pucci at the expense of Columbus,
and gave the name America to the
New World. Ludd's Speculum
still remains an historical
gem of the first
water.

XVIII

XVIII

Mr Lenox passes over several impor-
tant c Nuggets,' including the collection
of 275 Mathers andStuarfs Por-
trait of Washington

OME months before
going to America in
1868, I had sent on
inspection to Mr Le-
nox a score or two of
very rare books which I imagined
would strongly attract his attention,
notwithstanding his intermittent no-
tices of his intention to cease pur-
chasing. To my great surprise, he
selected several that I cared very
little about and declined those that
I, as caterer and bibliographer, was
sweetest upon. Among these was

a

148 RECOLLECTIONS OF
a little book of seven pages, beauti-
fully bound in Pratt's best red mo-
rocco, with panelled sides and rich
inside tooled borders. It was en-
titled ' A Declaration of former
Passages and Proceedings betwixt
the English and the Narrowgansets,
with their Confederates, &c. Pub-
lished by order of the Commissioners
of the United Colonies. At Boston
the 1 1 of the sixth month, 1 645 .'
[Printed by Stephen Daye, Cam-
bridge, N.E. 1645. 4°'] I* was
signed c Jo : Winthrop, President.
In the name of all the Commisioners.'
This little book was so rare and
historically important that before
parting with it I had it carefully tran-
scribed, lest the hungry sea should
swallow it, and it be lost sight of
for ever. All the rejected, including
this precious little nugget, priced at
ten guineas or $50, together with
about a hundred other rare books,
big and little, all pertaining to what
Mr Brown always called the c great

subject,'

MR JAMES LENOX 149

subject/ were packed in a very large
box and sent by my agent, with a
new invoice, to Providence, for the
approval and selection of Mr Brown.
He was much pleased with the con-
signment, and selected a large part
of the books ; but like Mr Lenox,
he passed the c Narrowgansets,'
though a Rhode Island book, alleging
that the price was too dear. The
box was repacked and stored away
subject to my orders.

Some months after, being in Hart-
ford one day gossiping with my old
friend George Brinley about the un-
certainty of book collectors' fancies,
and telling him that I could never
count on my correspondents' likes
and dislikes ; that in London I was
choked up with nuggets that had
been declined by all my chief cus-
tomers as too dear or of not sufficient
interest, and yet were, in my own
judgment, every way as attractive to
me as the majority of those they had
selected, and I instanced as cases in

point

150 RECOLLECTIONS OF

point my unique colle&ion of above
275 c Mathers' that had been de-
clined by the Trustees of the British
Museum, Mr Lenox and Mr Brown,
and this ' Narrowganset ' book.
' What/ said he, ' do you mean to
say that you have a little book such
as you describe, signed by John
Winthrop and printed at Cambridge
by Stephen Daye in 1645, tnat nas
been declined at ten guineas by both
of those gentlemen after having been
sent to them on inspection ? ' 'It is
even so/ I replied ; c but I am used
to it, as the smoke said to account
for its going up a crooked chimney.
It is no new thing with me, and I do
not suppose that it argues anything
more against their intelligence than
it does against my foolishness. We
think differently and have a right to.
I sometimes deem my stock of nug-
gets, that has been picked over by
the " council often," representing my
clients in Europe and America, as
rather purified than depleted by their

selections.

MR JAMES LENOX 151

seledlions. If I offer a hundred of
my nuggets to Mr Brown, Mr Le-
nox or the British Museum, and one
half is taken, I do not consider that
the rest is depreciated in value be-
cause the consignment has been
"picked over." Often the plums
settling at the bottom are left.'

c Well/ he asked, c may I have
the Narrowgansets at the same price ? '
cYes.' < Then I'll have it; but now
comes the rub. How can we get at
it without arousing Mr Brown's or
Mr Bartlett's attention ? If it is in-
quired for separately, especially for
me, and they see it again, they will be
sure to keep it.' It was then arranged
that the c Express ' should call on Mr
Brown in Providence, and without
naming its destination, should bring
the big box with its entire contents,
at Mr Brinley's expense, overland to
Hartford. In this manner Mr Brin-
ley scored a double, and was biblio-
graphically happy. After his death,
eight or nine years later, this little

book

152 RECOLLECTIONS OF

book, fully described by Dr Trumbull
under lot 7 54, was sold by au&ion in
New York, in the Brinley sale part I,
in March 1878, for $218, consider-
ably more than four times my price.
That goose is now a swan.

The larger portion of my c Mather
Collection' above alluded to had
already found a resting-place in Mr
Brinley's library. It was the result
of many years of active book-hunting.
The books were generally in excellent
order, and were mostly bound by
Bedford and Pratt in their best style
in morocco or calf. After the col-
lection had been offered and declined
by both Mr Lenox and Mr Brown,
it was offered entire (barring the
duplicates) to the British Museum
about 1862 at the same prices. Mr
W. B. Rye, during Mr Winter Jones's
holiday absence, reported on the col-
lection to the Trustees, recommend-
ing the purchase if Mr Stevens felt dis-
posed to make a discount of one-third.
The Trustees acceded to this proposal,

and

MR JAMES LENOX 153
and I was so informed, but instead of
accepting it, the entire collection was
withdrawn.

It had been so long on my hands,
and this class of books was increasing
so much in value, that I felt justified
in adding twenty-five per cent to my
prices and sending the whole col-
lection to Mr Brinley. He promptly
jumped at the lot, except a few that
he possessed already in as good copies.
These ' Mathers ' constituted about
two-thirds of the extraordinary Brin-
ley collection sold in March 1878,
for prices generally ranging from two
to five times the prices he paid me
some ten years earlier. It was a great
gratification to me to find that in
many instances both Mr Lenox and
Mr Brown were the winners of these
little nuggets that they had years be-
fore missed the opportunity of secur-
ing. It patted my poor judgment
on the back, though perhaps a little
late.

In books I found myself more of
x an

154 RECOLLECTIONS OF
an authority than in painting, sculp-
ture, antiquities, etc. Early in 1 847
I had an opportunity to secure what
I believed to be a genuine full-length
portrait of Washington by Stuart.
I bought it, and took it to Boston
with me the following November.
It was exhibited, written about and
talked about, but everybody dis-
credited it; why I could not tell.
My price was $1,000, but no body
and no institution would buy it. Mr
Lenox had nibbled at it and made
inquiries about it through some one
in Boston, but finally declined it.
One day in the autumn of 1848,
while gossiping with him, he inquired
if I had sold my Stuart's Washington.
I said c No, nor can, I account for its
not going off at my reasonable price.
Will you tell me frankly the reason
you do not take it ? * ' I do not mind
telling you/ said he, cif you will
not be angry. It is because it is yours,
and you cannot give its pedigree.
You do not profess to be a connois-
seur

MR JAMES LENOX 155

seur in portraits, and your price is
too low for a genuine Stuart.' ' I
thought as much/ I replied. c I am
not angry, but only pity those who
hang their art judgments on so slight
a peg, and even that not their own.'
Mr Lenox subsequently bought
a Stuart like mine, but with a pedi-
gree, and mine, after eighteen months
exile in its own land, found its way
back to London, where it occupied
for a few months my apartments at
Morley's. I next offered it as it stood
to Mr Russell Sturgis for £150, re-
solving to dabble no more in fine arts
that required so much 4 faith ' in their
owner, and c push ' in the seller. Mr
Sturgis said he would gladly have it,
if our friend Mr C. R. Leslie, R.A.,
who was well up in Stuart's work,
would examine it and give his opinion
that it was a genuine Stuart and all
right. Accordingly Mr Leslie came
and carefully examined the portrait,
and not only pronounced it a good
portrait but a good Stuart, and told

me

156 MR JAMES LENOX

me unhesitatingly that he should by
all means recommend Mr Sturgis to
secure it at any reasonable price. I
told him that it had become an ele-
phant on my hands, and that being
only too glad to get rid of it, I had
offered it for £ 1 50, and then told him
my fine art experiences. f My dear
sir/ said he sympathetically, c had
you asked ^500 for it you would no
doubt have sold it readily. Col-
lectors are suspicious of low prices.'
The picture was at once transferred
to the right place where it is now
fully and properly appreciated.

XIX

XIX

Mr Lenox declines the Large Paper

Dedication copy of Smith's Virginia,

also Gosnold's Voyage and Weymouth's

Voyage, but afterwards buys them

at the Brinley Sale

|R LENOX was very
much interested in
the bibliography of
Captain John Smith's
History of Virginia,
and spent much time and a great deal
of money in running out its history
and variations, especially in the maps
and plates. As early as 1 8 5 2 we had
a brisk correspondence for many
months, and I procured for him a
great many variations of the maps,
and informed him of others in the

libraries

158 RECOLLECTIONS OF
libraries of London, Oxford and
Cambridge. The results of this cor-
respondence were worked up by him
in a paper entitled c Curiosities of
American Literature. No i . Smith's
General History of Virginia, New
England and the Summer Islands,'
which appeared in Norton's Literary
Register in 1 853 or 1 854, signed L.
In this he aimed at giving an account
of all the mechanical features of the
volume, together with all the known
editions or variations of the maps,
and a brief enumeration of the other
works by Captain Smith : altogether,
for a first attempt, a most valuable
contribution to the bibliography of
American History. A few copies
were printed separately on blue writ-
ing paper. Eight distinct issues of
the map of New England were de-
scribed.

No 2 of the c Curiosities ' was a
reprint of No i, greatly enlarged,
modified, corrected and improved,
mostly based on the friendly criti-
cisms

MR JAMES LENOX 159

cisms and help of Dr Charles Deane.
Both of these papers Mr Lenox sub-
sequently sent to me with his manu-
script additions and corrections, soli-
citing further criticism. I was able
to send him several other items of
interest generally, and particularly to
raise the number of issues of the New
England map to eleven.

Here the matter rested for several
years, until the ist of March 1873,
when I wrote him: — c One should
never despair. All rare books turn
up sooner or later in London. Some
twenty-five years ago you ordered or
inquired about a large paper copy of
Smith's History of Virginia. I offer-
ed^ i oo for Colonel Aspin wall's copy
[then for sale], though broken in the
binding, and two or three of the maps
were supplied from a small paper
copy. . . . That copy I had put in
order by Bedford for the Colonel,
and it is now the gem of Mr Barlow's
collection. BUT, a few days ago, THE
copy turned up in the library of

160 RECOLLECTIONS OF

a clergyman in Yorkshire, lately de-
ceased, the Rev Mr Lowe, brother
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It is not only large paper, but is in
the original binding in dark green
morocco, very richly tooled all over,
and in excellent preservation. It is
the Dedication copy, and no doubt
belonged to the Duchess of Richmond
and Lenox. The Richmond and
Lenox arms, very large and elaborate,
with her quarterings, are on the side.
The binding alone is,I think, the finest
I ever saw of Charles I's time, and
would readily bring £100 without
the book. I am having it put in a
morocco case, and shall next week
send it out to [my agents] Messrs
Austin, Baldwin & Co. Bankers, 70
Broadway. ... I shall instruct
them to give you the first offer, and
if you decline it they are to send it at
once to Mr Brinley. The price of
the Smith is 250 guineas, a large sum
for a Smith ; but when you see the
book I trust you will not think — or

rather

MR JAMES LENOX 161

rather will think it not best to pass
it/

I had three weeks before, on the 8 th
of February, written to Mr Brinley,
when sending him the Gutenberg
Bible of 1 450- 5 5, and added this: —
* The greatest bibliographical rarity
that ever crossed the Atlantic ocean
I shall send to Mr Lenox next week,
but as he is only a millionaire and has
stopped buying, he may not keep it
at my price. In that case I shall direct
Baldwin & Co to send it for your in-
spection. I trust your chances are
small. I had the order from Mr
Lenox twenty years ago, and am only
now able to execute it; but I am
more than rewarded for waiting,
though the price of the book has gone
up,while money has gone down. The
book is Smith's History of Virginia
on large paper, in the finest possible
condition, bound at the time, 1624,
in rich morocco tooled all over, with
the arms of Charles on one cover and
those of the Duchess of Richmond
Y and

1 62 RECOLLECTIONS OF
and Lenox on the other. In short,
it is the Dedication copy to the
Duchess, her own copy, in the most
sumptuous binding, early English, I
ever saw. Any book, no matter what,
in such early English binding, would
readily bring 100 guineas, but when
that book is Smith's Virginia with all
this story attached to it, and only five
other large paper copies being known,
and four of them in public libraries,
what must I ask for this, THE copy
of all others — a show book for ever,
I think — but you must wait/

Again on the 22nd of March, in
a letter to Mr Brinley, I added : —
c Mr Lenox writes me for the twenty-
fifth time that he no longer buys
books, and in his last letter has order-
ed nothing. So it is possible he may
hold to this resolution until he has
had time to pass the SMITH. If he
does pass it, he is more of a . . . .
than I ever took him for. However,
you come in for the reversion of it if
he does/ The book left Liverpool by

the

MR JAMES LENOX 163

the Cunard steamer March 15, only
four days before the ill- fated4 Atlantic*
sailed on her last voyage. On the 26th
April I wrote : — c Baldwin of New
York called on me this morning, and
gave me the first information I had
received respecting the Smith's Vir-
ginia. He said Mr Lenox called
on him just before he left and told
him that he had decided not to be
tempted to buy any more books at
present, and declined to trust his eyes
to see it ... I am not surprised at
Mr Lenox passing the book judging
from his recent letters, especially as
he did not trust himself to see it ...
but his love of books is so big that
he has to treat his good resolutions
every little while and indulge/

So the Smith became Mr Brinley's
at about $1,275, but a^ter n^s death
it became eventually Mr Lenox's, by
purchase at the Brinley sale in March
1878, Part I, No 364 at $i,8oo,or
above 40 per cent advance on my
price. In 1884 a similar copy, in

the

1 64 RECOLLECTIONS OF
the last Hamilton sale, wanting the
large map of Virginia, brought ^605,
or about $3,000, which has also I
understand found its way to New
York, making three large paper copies
in that city. The five copies in Eng-
land known to me are the Grenville,
Cambridge University Library ,Lam-
beth Palace, Eton College and Mr
Christie-Miller's. All this is I know
mere bibliographical gossip interest-
ingonly to those far advanced in book-
hunting, but it is for such these trivial
matters are written out. On my con-
gratulating Mr Lenox on his recovery
from his non-purchasing resolutions,
and his courage in so far topping
my prices, he merely remarked that
if I added simple interest for the five
years to my price I would see that he
had not paid anything more by wait-
ing. To this I rejoined that I always
supposed that the pleasure a million-
aire derived from book- hunting more
than paid the interest on his outlay.
Notwithstanding Mr Lenox's vir-
tuous

MR JAMES LENOX 165

tuous abnegation as to purchasing
any more nuggets, I kept constantly
supplying him with dainties, though
more and more rarely. Sometimes
however in a letter positively declin-
ing any longer to be tempted he
would add a postscript inquiring after
some lost lamb that 1 had offered him
months before, and asking me if still
on hand to send it to him. So I never
felt quite disposed to cease offering
him the choicer historical nuggets.
Accordingly in the spring of 1874,
having come into possession of fine
large copies of Gosnold's Voyage to
New England in 1602 by Brereton,
and Waymouth's Voyage in 1605 by
Rosier, I ventured to offer them to
him as the c Verie two eyes of New
England History ' for 250 guineas,
but he let them also pass into Mr
Brinley's hands. But at the Brinley
sale he thought better of it and bought
the two, March n i878,for$i,6oo,
or nearly thirty per cent extra for
waiting. See a full description of

them

166 MR JAMES LENOX
them in Brinley's sale, Part I, No
280. Mr Lenox was not however
so lucky as to be able so easily for
an advance to recover all the histori-
cal gems he had let slip through his
fingers through a pardonable lack
of prompt bibliographical ap-
preciation and courage.

XX

XX

The Vermonter burks a knockout. Mr

Lenox declines more important

' Nuggets '

BOUT 1852 my old
friend William Pick-
ering, one Saturday
afternoon, showed me
a catalogue he had just
received of Lord Mountnorris's Li-
brary to be sold at Arley Castle the
following Tuesday, and intimated
that we might perhaps indulge our-
selves in some rare sport in burking
a projected knockout among the Lon-
don booksellers, of which he had got
wind. This suited my complexion,
but it was necessary for us to know
all about the books and their condi-
tion,

168 RECOLLECTIONS OF
tion, and it was impossible for him to
get away from town just then ; so it
was arranged that I was to see Messrs
Farebrother & Co. the auctioneers,
and obtain an order from them to ex-
amine the books on Sunday in time
to set our traps for Tuesday.

Accordingly with the necessary
order in pocket I telegraphed to a
jobmaster in Birmingham to have a
man and dogcart meet me at the
station there on the arrival of the
midnight train to take me over to
Arley Castle some dozen miles. It
was a fearfully rainy night, but we
reached the little inn near the Castle
before dawn, after a bibliographical
steeplechase that ought to be cele-
brated in the annals of book-hunting.
The next morning early, after a two
hours' sleep and an hour's breakfast,
I tried in vain as a casual to gain ad-
mission to the Library with proper
assistants, until finally I produced my
order with a sovereign wrapped in it.
These brought two caretakers up

smiling

MR JAMES LENOX 169

smiling and we went not exactly to
cwork' but to bibliographical devo-
tion.

During the day I saw every book and
every parcel, both printed and manu-
script, and entered in my catalogue
a rough estimate of the value of every
lot. Before the sun set I set out for
London by the Great Western route
and was able to join Mr Pickering
Monday morning with all the neces-
sary information cut and dried for
our purposes. We retired and went
thoroughly through the numbers, fix-
ing a low limit on every lot that we
did not want, and a higher one on
those lots we desired to secure. Mr
Craven, Mr Pickering's accountant,
was then called in and instructed.
He left for Arley that night fully
equipped and primed for battle. He
was to procure, if possible, about
a hundred lots. If the combined
trade seemed disposed to let him have
these lots at reasonable prices he was
to bid on no others, but if they c ran '
z him,

1 70 RECOLLECTIONS OF
him, he was then without any bargain
or compromise to bid on every lot
up to a limit of about two-thirds of
its market value which was marked
in cypher in his catalogue. On his
declining to join them the Philistines
began to run him hard, but in every
case he won his lots though at a high
cost. He then began to play at their
game and bid on every lot, but let
them have all he was not told to se-
cure. This spoiled their beautiful
knockout, so that their dividend
among above twenty hardly paid for
their grog.

Our bill was large and on the whole
not at extravagant prices. Among
the books were many rarities for Mr
Lenox. I took nearly the whole of
Mr Pickering, allowing him a com-
mission of ten per cent. Among the
manuscripts which I secured were
three which gave me infinite satisfac-
tion, but I failed utterly for the next
year or two to find any one else to
appreciate them. They were, ist,

the

MR JAMES LENOX 171

the original autograph manuscript,
entitled c A particular discourse con-
cerning the greate necessitie and
manifold comodyties that are like to
grow to this Realme of Englande by
the westerne discoveries lately attemp-
ted, written in the yere 1584, by
Richarde Hakluyt .... atthere-
queste of Mr Walter Raleigh before
the corny nge home of his two Barkes
[from Virginia, under Amidas and
Barlow] ' in 63 large closely-written
folio pages ; and, 2nd, two of the
original autograph log-books of Cap t.
Luke Foxe's famous voyage in 1633
to Hudson's Bay.

These were all offered in May and
June 1 8 53 to Mr Lenox, Mr Brown,
the British Museum, etc., but without
any luck. Finally in 1 8 54 they were
thrown into auction at Messrs Put-
tick & Simpson's, and were bought
by Sir Thomas Phillipps at prices
nearly equal to what I had asked.
Some years later when Dr Woods
came over to seek for original historic

materials

172 RECOLLECTIONS OF
materials on behalf of the Maine
Historical Society, I called his atten-
tion to this Hakluyt MS. He had
it transcribed, and it was carefully
edited and published as one of the
volumes of the Maine Historical So-
ciety's Colle<5tions, a book of inestim-
able value on the origin and history
of c Western Planting ' by the Eng-
lish Nation.

This was one of my many biblio-
graphical failures, but I have never
regretted my Saturday night and Sun-
day's experiences in that Arley book
chase. If I made mistakes in the
venture they were not so great as
those of the gentlemen and librarians
who declined to take the MSS. off
my hands. I was equally unsuccess-
ful in offering several other unique
nuggets to Mr Lenox and others,
which have remained unique to this
day, as far as I know, such as c The
Temple of Wisdom,' or Withers'
Abuses Stript and Whipt ; with Ba-
con's Essays, printed by Bradford at

Philadelphia

MR JAMES LENOX 173

Philadelphia in 1688, finally sold to
Mr Menzies for 1 5 guineas, and the
original c Line of Demarcation ' Bull
of Alexander VI dividing the Indies
between Spain and Portugal, printed
at Rome in 1493 and dated May 4.
Also a large block- leaf printed about
1499 or 1 500 representing the Man-
ners and Customs of the Natives of
America, described fully with a not
very clear fac-simile in my c American
Bibliographer No i 1 854,' and in my
<HistoricalNuggets'No77£i2 I2J:
sold at auction by Puttick & Simpson
at a sale of some of my books, May
1 8 1854 (No 27 America) and
bought in by myself in the name of
Marchant for £3 13^ 6d. It was
again sold by me at Puttick & Simp-
son's March 6 1861 No 57 described
as before, and was bought by C. J.
Stewart the eminent Theological
Bookseller for fifteen guineas. In
1 866 the learned Henri Harrisse un-
der his No 20 B. A. v. assigns the posses-
sion of it to the British Museum, and

in

174 RECOLLECTIONS OF
in 1885 Mr Justin Winsor in his
' Narrative History ' informs the
world with his usual accuracy that
( the only copy known was bought in
London at auction by the British
Museum for ^3 13^6^011854.'

On enquiry at the British Museum
in October and November 1 8 8 5, no
trace of this remarkable block-leaf
could be found, and the librarians not-
withstanding this cumulative evi-
dence do not think the leaf ever found
its way into the Library. I am unable
now to trace this leaf on account of the
death of Mr Stewart and the discon-
tinuance of his business.

Another instance was the Second
Bay Psalm Book of 1647, in i6mo,
sold to Mr Brinley for $500, and re-
sold in his sale Part I No 850 for
the same price, the only other copy
known being in the Library of the
British Museum. Then there was
Franklin's c Liberty and Necessity,'
London 1725, bought for 25 6d,
offered to the British Museum with

its

MR JAMES LENOX 175

its story for one guinea and declined
on account of price, then offered to
Mr Brown and Mr Lenox at five
guineas and declined by both ; sub-
sequently thrown into auction at
Messrs Puttick & Simpson's with
nearly a half page note, where it
fetched 19 guineas and was bought
by Mr Hotten against the British
Museum ; on Mr Hotten's death in
1872 it was sold again by Puttick &
Simpson for £22 los again against
the British Museum. Neither the
Museum nor Mr Brown nor Mr
Lenox ever secured this rare little
book. My own copy (for I had a
duplicate) is now slumbering in the
4 Stevens Franklin Collection ' in the
Department of State at Washington,
bought by the United States Govern-
ment in 1 88 1 for £7,000, in which I
had valued it at £100. It is rather
remarkable that both of the only two
copies now known out of the 100 that
Franklin printed himself at Palmer's
at the age of 1 8 should have thus
passed through my hands.

XXI

XXI

rns Autograph Manuscripts of
* Auld Lang Syne ' and ( Scots wha ha
wi Wallace bled' Books in the
Indian Languages

FTER Mr Pickering's
death I bought the
better part of his
collection of original
manuscripts of Robert
Burns, among which were the Auto-
graphs of c Auld Lang Syne ' and
c Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled'-
two gems that I thought would be
better appreciated in America than
even in Scotland. But I again found
that Mr Lenox's notion of their value
did not tally with my own. So after
keeping c Auld Lang Syne ' four or

five

MR JAMES LENOX 177

five years I sent it in 1859 by Capt
Judkins to New York, to be express-
ed by him to Albany to be in time for
the Burns Centenary Festival there.
Chancellor Pruyn had written me
about this proposed festival and asked
me to send him in time for it some-
thing startling. I proposed that
* Auld Lang Syne * should be sung in
Albany from Burns* Autograph, but
there was not a moment to spare.

A railway guard by first train from
London Saturday morning undertook
to deliver the package personally into
the hands of Judkins on the c Russia '
who had by telegraph been advised
what to expect, and he was requested
to use his best efforts to have it de-
livered to the train conductor to
Albany as soon as he reached New
York. In this way the Song reached
Albany at nine o'clock in the evening
and was delivered into the hands of
Chancellor Pruyn, who at once in-
terrupted the after-dinner speech-
making, and displaying his parcel re-
A A quested

1 78 RECOLLECTIONS OF
quested all present to rise, join hands
and sing' Auld Lang Syne ' from the
poet's own handwriting, just receiv-
ed from London without an hour's
delay. The effect was sublime, and
the Chancellor thought this ac-
quisition cheap at ten guineas and
thanked me too.

The story of c Scots wha ha' ' was
equally interesting. It was written on
a single half sheet of quarto writing
paper, and cost me at auction ,£33.
This purchase by me was mentioned
in the ' Times/ A few days later my
old friend David Laing of Edinburgh
wrote me that some years ago the
papers of the Earl of Buchan, the
correspondent of Washington, fell
into his hands, among them a letter
from Burns with the c Battle of Ban-
nockburn ' attached, but the poem
had been detached, and he never
could hear of it. ' Now I suppose
you have the one leaf and I the other.
Pray send me the poem and I will
send you many others in exchange/

MR JAMES LENOX 179

My reply was a letter inclosing Haifa
dozen of Burns'poems and letters, and
requesting him to send in exchange
his letter to Buchan ; c for the two
ought to come together again, never
to be separated, and then to go to
America where they would be so
highly appreciated/ By return Mr
Laing sent me the letter and I had
them neatly joined and bound in a
limp red morocco cover. This done,
with patriotic pride and much plea-
sure, I reported the beautiful little
volume to Mr Lenox at fifty guineas,
with scarcely any advance on the
costs. He declined it as too dear.

For nearly twenty years I retained
it as an interesting autograph with
which to astonish and out-brag my
friends, frequently offering it to li-
braries and collectors at the fixed
price, but found no one to admire it
to the extent of fifty guineas, till my
old friend Charles Sumner came and
spent a morning with me during his
last visit to London. Said he, < I have

bought

i8o RECOLLECTIONS OF
bought to take home with me one or
two good engravings from Colnaghi,
an old book or two from Quaritch,
some old wine from Bond Street, and
now what striking relic that I can buy
and leave behind me can you suggest?'
I showed him my Burns and told him
its story, with its price, cthe rejecled
of men/ 'What! Mr Lenox, a New
York son of a Scotchman, a collector
and a millionaire, decline that for a
paltry half-a- hundred guineas ! I had
rather possess this " Scots wha ha'"
than anything else of the kind I can
name/

So Charles Sumner by exchanging
a paltry cheque for fifty guineas on
Barings became the owner of what
he reckoned, during the short re-
mainder of his life, the pride of his
mementos and memorials of the great,
and bequeathed it with the pomp of
circumstance to the Library of Har-
vard College, where it now rests f A
thing of beauty and a joy for ever/
The poor thing, like many other of

my

MR JAMES LENOX 181

my antiquarian and historical bant-
lings and pets, had eaten its head off,
but I loved and cherished it as the
bookmiser does his books.

In 1 8 5 2 I had acquired a large and
valuable collection of the rarest and
earliest books in the Indian Languages
of America. A full list with prices
and bibliographical descriptions and
collations was prepared, and the whole
offered to Mr Lenox. He promptly
declined nearly the whole as too dear,
and added moreover that he had not
made up his mind to invest in that
class of Americana.

Mr Brown shortly after came to
London and the collection was shown
to him . It attracted his attention very
powerfully, but never having bought
many books of that class, he began
to diplomatize and delay, taking time
to make up his mind, but manifesting
a strong desire to possess the whole.
He however, after nibbling three or
four weeks, finally said that he was
going off to Paris and I need not re-
serve

182 MR JAMES LENOX

serve the dear little volumes for him.
When he returned, perhaps he might
treat for them, but I was not to re-
serve them for him. Scarcely had
he turned his back for France when
Dr Cogswell showed up, with his
grand new Catalogue, not of the
Astor Library, but of the chief books
he intended to buy for the Astor
Library. He saw this linguistic col-
lection, and though not one of the
books was named among the 100,000
volumes of his future library, he
pounced upon the whole like an eagle
ever wide-awake and ready for his
prey. He swept the board without
any haggling about the prices. The
volumes went to the Astor Library
and Mr Brown never ceased mourn-
ing that lost opportunity. I am
not sure that Mr Lenox ever
manifested any particular
craving for American
linguistics.

XXII

XXII

Mr Lenox's method of recording his

books. His failing health. 'The Stevens

Catalogue of the Lenox Library

proposed

;N 1 8 55, when Mr Le-
nox was in London
before going to the
Continent, he came to
my house every day
for nearly a month, and we spent from
i o till 4 o'clock going over by divisions
all my stock of Bibles and books relat-
ing to America, he pronouncing his de-
cision, yes or no, on every one with
remarkable promptitude and discri-
mination. At the same time, we went
over together all his many notes of
desiderata and imperfections. He

collated

1 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF
collated very carefully every book he
bought, and then entered it or ticked
it off in some class catalogue, or in-
terpolated a brief manuscript record
of it. The catalogues he used were
mainly, for Bibles, Lea Wilson, Cot-
ton, Ebert and Pettigrew. For books
on America, Asia and Africa, he used
Rich and Ternaux-Compans with
MS. additions. These, together with
his astonishing memory for details,
for a Jong time enabled him to steer
clear of duplicates, and to keep a com-
prehensive grasp of his accumula-
tions. But it was overloading his
memory and taxing cruelly his brain
and health.

The amount of labour he per-
formed in this way was prodigious,
and it was all his own. No one was
permitted to assist him. As he took
up subjects .and worked them out by
study, correspondence or otherwise,
he recorded the results in these tem-
porary catalogues. The labor was
absorbing and immense. No doubt

in

MR JAMES LENOX 185

in time and in turn he would gladly
have taken up many of the subjects
and items I reported or submitted to
him, but he was pre-occupied and so
lest many an opportunity that occurs
to a collector but once in a lifetime.
The wonder is not that he missed so
many chances, but rather that he
missed so few of them.

On my arrival in New York at the
beginning of September 1868, I
found Mr Lenox despondent over
the burden of his catalogues. There
were many signs of his breaking down
under their weight. His memory be-
gan already to fail to tell him where
particular books were deposited, and
it was not always easy for himself to
find his brief record of them, nor was
it possible for anyone else to find
either the books or the entry of them.
Under these circumstances our con-
versation was soon and naturally
led up to a new and complete cata-
logue, in a single alphabet, of his
entire library. I offered to make it
B B for

1 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF
for him, in the highest style of scien-
tific bibliography in my power, and
on my own responsibility, but under
his supervision. He eagerly enter-
tained the idea, but was exceedingly
suspicious of the details and the pos-
sibility of carrying them out without
great personal inconvenience, and
bottomless risk to his books and
manuscripts.

Now that these stores of histori-
cal and literary nuggets had become
his, and were safely locked in his own
closets, he seemed to forget that a
very large portion of them had been
mine for months or even years ; col-
lected and kept in my possession, col-
lated, completed, bound, described,
and reported to him with paternal care
and perfect safety. However, after
many interviews and much discussion
for some six weeks as to the kind of
catalogue to be made, and as to how,
when and where the work could be
done, I finally on the 1 8th of Nov-
ember reduced the results of our de-
liberations,

MR JAMES LENOX 187

liberations, together with my own
notions, to writing and handed him
my first rough sketch of the proposed
catalogue of the c Lenox Library/
Two days later he wrote that my
scheme brought ' the matter before
him in a more definite shape/

We continued almost daily to dis-
cuss the details of our plans, so that
in a week he wrote, transmitting to
me c a sample of titles down to Ter-
naux No 100,' and intimated that
if this sample suited my purpose he
could go on as he had time. On my
telling him that his method, as long
as it omitted nothing as far as he went,
was all I required for making my pre-
liminary alphabetical list, he set to
work with trip-hammer earnestness
and speed, and in the course of less
than six months supplied me from
time to time with a brief but suf-
ficient indication of nearly all the de-
partments of his library, both printed
and manuscript. During this time
he was occasionally very ill from

over-

1 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF
over-work, and in his letter of May
10 1869, he wrote, ' My physician
forbids my talking. The catalogue
must I fear bear the blame/ He fi-
nally broke down, and was obliged to
go into the country.

From Yonkers 1 9 June he wrote,
c You spoke, I think, of coming back
in the late autumn or winter ; and
I would rather you should do so ....
I feel that any thing attempted now
would be done in a hurry, and cer-
tainly prove unsatisfactory. I must
therefore stop here, and now/ I had
by this time received his memoranda
or notes of his entire Americana in
all languages, his Miltons, his Bun-
yans, his Shakespeares, his Voyages
and Travels, his Bibles, etc. etc. Un-
der these circumstances, instead of
returning as proposed to London, I
decided to sit down in Boston and
New York for a few months, and
reduce my life-long observations into
shape by studying into the f Age of
Discovery,' and especially into the
bibliography

MR JAMES LENOX 189

bibliography of the early voyages of
Columbus, Vespucci, and the first ex-
plorers of the new hemisphere. My
papers on Tehuantepec and the Ca-
bots were some of the results in the
shape of Geographical Notes. I had
previously put into type, privately in
London, some 400 pages of biblio-
graphical research respecting early
Bibles in all languages.

XXIII

XXIII

'The Stevens' Catalogue agreed upon

and commenced. Correspondence

on the subjeft

iN the course of the
autumn of 1869 Mr
Lenox's health and
strength were such
that he resolved to
shift his burden by seeking an Act
of Incorporation of c The Lenox Li-
brary/ and transferring all his col-
lections to the public. Early in 1870
this Act was passed, and the next time
I saw him he exclaimed, ' Well, you
now see what your doings have
brought about ! I was obliged on ac-
count of my health to wash my hands
of the whole concern. Now, about

our

MR JAMES LENOX 191

our catalogue ? ' We had much cor-
respondence and many interviews,
until finally, on the 3ist of May, I
handed him duplicates of a letter I
had drawn up, setting forth the plan
of the proposed catalogue as far as
we could settle it, including estimates
of the cost in every particular. To
this the same day he replied in du-
plicate ; the two letters thus forming
an agreement between Mr Lenox
and me for a complete and elaborate
printed catalogue of the Lenox Li-
brary. This agreement, together
with a seleftion of the correspondence
preceding it, is printed in small type
below.

Clarendon Hotel, New York,

Nov. 1 8 1868.

To JAMES LENOX, Esq. 53 Fifth Avenue. —
DEAR SIR, — You wish a catalogue of your li-
brary. I am willing to undertake it at once,
and bring to bear upon it the results of my
study and experience for the last 25 years.
As I am now more free than I have been
for a long time, or expect to be for the future,
it will suit my convenience better to discuss

the

192 RECOLLECTIONS OF
the matter with you now than to defer it.
If therefore you are disposed to treat with
me I think we can settle matters one way or
the other very speedily. No doubt we should
readily agree upon the main points of a good
common-sense alphabetical catalogue made
with the highest degree of accuracy, of col-
lation and description, with all the improve-
ments of the latest and best bibliography. I
do not know that I have quite determined
upon what to call the best scheme of arrange-
ment, or the precise style of printing, but
as each book would be catalogued on a slip
by itself, all these details might be settled
when the MSS are nearly done, and we
have the bulk of our copy before us. The
catalogue would necessarily be in several
parts or divisions, such as Bibles, Books on
America, Voyages and Travels, Miscel-
laneous, etc., but I think it would be best to
prepare the copy for the whole before any
part goes to the press.

The modus operandi that would best suit
me would be to go through your library at
once, within the next two months, and make
on small slips a very brief one-line schedule,
generally under the headings the books would
appear in in a general alphabetical catalogue.
This work could I think be sufficiently well
done in two or three weeks, and would en-
able us to have the whole subject fairly
before us. I would then return to London,

say

MR JAMES LENOX 193

say in January 1 869, arrange the slips alpha-
betically, or in classes, as found most con-
venient, and print off, say half a dozen copies
in a very condensed form for our own private
use. This could cost very little. The titles
would be numbered, and as you would have
copies before you, all our correspondence
would be by numbers. This done I could
at once begin to look out all the titles and
notes that I have accumulated during the
last 25 years, and work them up with the aid
of the British Museum and the Bodleian.
In this way I could, I think, prepare seven-
eighths of the titles better than I could
possibly do them here, and have them ready
by the end of next summer. I would then
come to New York and apply my work to
your particular copies, revise the titles with
you, compare notes, settle discrepancies, and
finally edit and prepare the manuscripts for
the press. This I think we could do in three
months hard labor. When the MSS. of the
entire library are completed and we have
compared and settled all our researches, I
would again return to London and put the
work through Whittingham's hand-press as
fast as possible, keeping in your hands about
100 pages of proof all the time and printing
off the sheets as fast as you could pass them.
This plan at present would best suit me, and
would give you, I think, the least amount of
trouble, but if a better or more expeditious
c c plan

194 RECOLLECTIONS OF
plan could be devised, I should of course be
glad to adopt it. The work, if I go into it,
would be done con amore and not for mer-
cenary profit. Still I must live, and should
expecl a moderate remuneration in money.
I would suggest that I should have also that
part of the edition which will be for sale,
but I am not disposed to drive a bargain. I
wish to work up in the best form my accu-
mulated materials in history and bibliography.
I suppose therefore I ought to assume the
responsibility of the work and place my name
on the title-pages.

I will not to-day trouble you further.
Pray take these as preliminary hints for con-
sideration and discussion. If you on reflection
are inclined to proceed with the matter, I
will meet you any day I am in town. I am
obliged to run round the country a good
deal within the next fortnight, but letters
here, or at 62 Cedar Street, will reach me
if I am away.

I am yours truly, HENRY STEVENS.

53 Fifth Avenue, 20 Nov. 1868.
HENRY STEVENS, Esq. — DEAR SIR, — I have
your letter of the i8th inst. in reference to
a catalogue. It brings the matter before me
in a more definite shape; but there is so
much to be said upon the subject that I
cannot undertake to write all I have to say.
When you may be in town, let me know,

and

MR JAMES LENOX 195

and t will try to arrange some opportunity
when you may be able to call and see me.
Yours very truly, J. LENOX.

Friday night, 27 Nov. 1 868.
H. STEVENS, Esq. — MY DEAR SIR, — I send
you a sample of titles down to Ternaux No
100. It is not as neatly done as I should
desire : but will it suit your purpose ? If
it will, I will go on as I have time. I have
just recollefted that I have a list from which
I could probably make out a list of Bibles,
&c., in other languages than English : and of
American Bibles the titles of those in my pos-
session may be culled from O'Collaghan, of
which I presume you have a copy. Had I your
printed titles, I could cut them up and by
placing one in each of the volumes to which
it refers, those might be put on one side, and
thus render the cataloguing of the others
more easy. Yours very truly, J. LENOX.

10 Dec. 1868.

MY DEAR SIR, — I have nearly made myself
sick by preparing the accompanying papers :
viz. a list of MSS. and eight other portions of
my library. I find it no light work. I return
your list of German De Brys. I would like
to see you some little time before the day
fixed for your departure. If this matter is to
go on, it must be brought into a more defi-
nite shape, and that cannot probably be ar-
ranged

196 RECOLLECTIONS OF
ranged at one interview. On any morning
except Monday, I might see you at about half-
past 9 o'clock, except next week, when it would
not be convenient for me that you should
come on Friday or Saturday. If possible I
should like you to give me notice on the pre-
vious morning. Yours very truly,

H. STEVENS, Esq. J. LENOX.

53 Fifth Avenue, 16 Dec. 1868.

DEAR SIR, When I next

see you I have some suggestions to make of
importance, before I can come to a decision
as to the plan of the catalogue. When you
come, please bring a copy of the estimate you
read me the other day. I wish to consider
it at leisure, that I may if practicable make
up my mind before you go away, as to the
whole matter.

Yours very truly, J. LENOX.

HENRY STEVENS, Esq.

53 Fifth Avenue, 9 Jan. 1869.
MY DEAR SIR, — I have your note of 5th
Jan. I have nothing at present to say to you
to take up your time. I wish however that
you would give me timely warning when you
shall have fixed upon the day of your depar-
ture. There are many matters which must
be determined before a positive resolution to
print can be arrived at, and they cannot be
resolved in a hurry. I have finished the Bib.

Americaine

MR JAMES LENOX 197
Americaine and also the Bib. Asiatique et
Africainefof Ternaux-Compans] : the latter
was comparatively an easy task. I shall now
commence the Bibles, probably next week.

Yours very truly,
H. STEVENS, Esq. J. LENOX.

[Extrafts.] 15 Feb. 1869.

I have not been well I

have not proceeded with my list [of Bibles] as
rapidly as before, although I have nearly two
copy books fall for you, but have not got
quite to the end of Lea Wilson. I must
again say to you that all our arrangements
must be made in person. It will not do to
leave anything to be settled by letter. I wish
to see exadlly, as far as possible, what I am
about to undertake.

30 April 1869.

DEAR SIR, Your note

finds me in bed where I have been since mid-
day yesterday, and I cannot tell when I shall
be up again and able to attend to business.

53 Fifth Avenue, 10 May 1869.
HENRY STEVENS, Esq. — MY DEAR SIR, — I
have been able to leave my room to-day for
the first time ; but it will not be in my power
to see you this week. My physician forbids
my talking. The cataloguing must, I fear,
bear the blame. Yours very truly, J. LENOX.

Yonkers,

198 RECOLLECTIONS OF

Yonkers, Westchester Co. 19 June 1869.
HENRY STEVENS, Esq. — DEAR SIR, — I was
so busy before leaving the city, that I could
not ask you to see me again. I wanted to
examine your sketch of expense of catalogue
in order to come to some definite arrange-
ment, and to make a change before any ex-
pense had been incurred. It is not a matter
that can be closed in haste. My sickness and
absence from town have caused delay, and
further delay must necessarily follow from
these and other circumstances. I have de-
termined therefore to defer the whole subject
to a later time, when I am at home, and you
have less to do. You spoke, 1 think, of
coming back in the late autumn, or winter ;
and I would rather you should do so, and
give yourself to this one matter ; this could
be arranged hereafter by letter. I feel that
anything attempted now would be done in a
hurry, and certainly prove unsatisfactory. 1
must therefore stop here, and now, ....
I am, dear Sir, Yours very truly,

JAMES LENOX.

[Bill] No. 9. In Senate, January 121 870.
Introduced on unanimous consent by Mr.
Tweed — read twice, and referred to the Com-
mittee on Literature. — Reported favourably
from said Committee, and committed to the
Committee of the whole. AN ACT to incor-
porate the trustees of the Lenox Library.

74

MR JAMES LENOX 199

74 Parker House, Boston, Feb. 10 1870.
MY DEAR SIR . . . Mr Murphy has just
sent me « N.Y. Senate Bill No 9, Jan. 12
1870,' the Adi incorporating the 'Lenox
Library.' It is short, clear, clean and com-
prehensive ; but I cannot help mentioning
my being at Hartford a few days ago with
Mr Brinley. He said that Mr Lenox had at
last like Samson brought the whole fabric
down upon himself — meaning that the great
meddlesome American public would be down
upon you and worry you to death. He hoped,
and so do I, you will be able to resist as here-
tofore, and keep matters within your own
hands for a long time to come j but I fear
your strength ....

Yours truly, HENRY STEVENS.
JAMES LENOX, Esq. 53 Fifth Avenue, N.Y.

New York, nth February 1870.

HENRY STEVENS, Esq. — MY DEAR SIR, —
Your letter of the loth inst. is just received

If there be anything of the

Samson about me, I think it is only this —
that I pull down the edifice on others and
yet escape myself. By the way, I would like
to get, if such a thing exists, the regulations
of the British Museum as to the kind of books
given to general readers in the hall. Is an
introduction required ? Do they allow the
use of pen and ink or only pencils ? And
what are the regulations as to reserved books ?

What

200 RECOLLECTIONS OF
What is the character of these ? Introduc-
tions are required, no doubt, but of what
kind ? I have the regulations in Paris, etc.,
and I have no doubt, at least 1 always felt
that when employed with such works I was
secretly watched, and I felt very well satisfied
that I should be watched. But I am not
aware that in London I was watched. Do
you know anything on the subject ? I note
these things more as topics of conversation
when we meet than as asking you to answer
them at once. But I must close.

Yours very truly, J. LENOX.

Clarendon Hotel, New York,

May 31 1870.

MY DEAR SIR, — The imperial oftavo de-
scriptive catalogue, such as we have discussed
for the year past, of your entire collection of
books and manuscripts, in one alphabet, with
historical, geographical, chronological notes
and illustrations, with full indexes, I estimate
will cost you, for best hand-made paper,
printing (including corrections), illustrations
and binding, at the rate of £600 per volume
of 500 pages, everything in its way to be of
the best style and quality, something in ap-
pearance like that of Lord Spencer, but
superior in many points. The editions to
be 300 copies on the regular paper; 50
copies on the finest and best Dutch paper ;
24 copies on very thin opaque strong writing

paper;

MR JAMES LENOX 201

paper ; 2 copies on pure white vellum ; or
376 copies in all of 4 sorts or editions. My
calculations are based on an estimate of
2,500 royal octavo pages, or 5 volumes, to
cost £3,000 as follows: Composition and
printing 2,500 pages, 5 vols, £1,250; paper
made to order, small, folding in 4to, 240
reams, £400 ; binding 1 880 volumes in half
roan, uncut, £150; Printing and binding,
say 25 copies of the proposed hand catalogue,
say 12,500 titles, i line each, small type, thin
paper, very close, £100; Corrections,
foreign, difficult printing, reimposing for the
large paper copies, say £100 per volume,
£500 ; Illustrations selected by Mr Stevens,
£500 ; expenses of correspondence and
transcripts, etc. in distant libraries, for the
whole, say £ 100, amounting to £3,000 ; for
my services, for say two years, or more if
necessary, including my present collection of
copy, and work already done, £1,000, besides
one half of each of the above-named four
editions, the cost bills payable quarterly if
desired, and my salary at the rate of £50 a
month, beginning with April i87o,£i,ooo ;
amounting to £4,000.

Yours truly, HENRY STEVENS.
JAMES LENOX, Esq. 53 Fifth Avenue, N.Y.

53 Fifth Avenue, May 31 1870.

DEAR SIR, — Your letter of this date on the

foregoing page states the result of our

D D several

202 RECOLLECTIONS OF
several conversations respecting the catalogue
of the Lenox Library, which you have un-
dertaken to prepare and print. This is to be
considered as a maximum estimate of the cost
of such a work, to be modified hereafter upon
your arrival in England and consultation with
compositors,printers,etc., and such reductions
will be made and such alterations in detail as
maybe suggested hereafter. Your previous in-
vestigations and preparations for an American
catalogue so called, and your experience in
different smaller publications of the same
kind, enable you to be more definite in your
calculations and estimate, than if the under-
taking were perfectly new to you.

According to our understanding (not ex-
pressed in your letter) the work will be put
in form as soon as possible after your arrival
in London, be carried on by correspondence
and frequent communication between us ;
and in November next I shall expect you
here to collate, compare and describe such
of my books as will require a very minute
examination, and to prepare for commencing
the printing of the catalogue.

I hope that both our lives may be con-
tinued to bring this work to a conclusion.
You have undertaken that it shall be, as far
as lies in your power, a catalogue sought after
by bibliographers and bibliomaniacs, and I
have little doubt that you can render it, I
will not say a perfect work of the kind we

late.

MR JAMES LENOX 203

contemplate, but approaching nearer to per-
feftion than those attempted by your prede-
cessors.

It is with this hope that I have agreed to
enter upon my part ; and I think the con-
ditions as expressed in your letter manifest
that I have done so in a liberal spirit. And
I say to you, what I think I may add with-
out laying myself open to a charge of boast-
fulness or vanity, that few men having made
such a collection as mine, know so much
about it as I do. I only wish that I knew
far more about my books than I do. I do
not intend to place myself in this respedlupon
the same platform as that on which you
stand ; but I do hope to be in some degree
helpful in the work.

My note however has stretched itself out
farther than I expelled, but you have not
left me time to shorten it.

I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,
HENRY STEVENS, Esq. JAMES LENOX.

New York, May 31 1870. RECEIVED
this day One Hundred and Fifty pounds
sterling of James Lenox, Esq. on account of
three months salary according to the written
agreement. HENRY STEVENS.

Clarendon Hotel, New York,

May 31 1870.

MY DEAR SELF, — Please find enclosed a

Bill

204 RECOLLECTIONS OF
Bill of Exchange for j£ioo, being the first
2 months salary from Mr Lenox, April and
May. Now do turn over a new leaf and look
at both sides of your money before you spend
it. If you will take advice from any one, I
am sure you will from me. Be prudent, be
industrious, hold your tongue, and remember
that close mouths catch no flies. Go ahead
and carry out this great work for Mr Lenox,
and especially for the world and yourself.
You have the opportunity. Improve it, and
in two years let the world of book collectors
and bibliographers have the opportunity of
improving their minds. The writer intends
to embark on the ' Russia ' to-morrow with
Mrs Stevens his wife, and Master Harry his
son bound for dear old England, after an

absence of 21 months So good bye

and good luck. Thine own>

HENRY STEVENS.

To HENRY STEVENS, Esq. G.M.B.
4 Trafalgar Square, W.C. London.

Liverpool, June n 1870.
MY DEAR SIR, — We reached Liverpool
this morning, all well. Hope to be in London
and in harness on Monday. There is nothing
new under the sun. Passing through Islington t
one of the good streets of Liverpool, this
morning, my eyes were attracted by a pro-
minent sign in large gilt letters,

THE LENNOX PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Of

MR JAMES LENOX 205
Of course I crossed the street and entered
the Institution. It is on rather a small
scale, but calling to mind the faft that * tall
oaks from little acorns grow,' I inquired most
respedlfully into its origin, history and
statistics. The result is enclosed in the
shape of the catalogue of this Public Library.
It is in facl: Mr J. Lennox's private library,
held for the use of the public for a moderate
remuneration. I told the librarian, an in-
telligent young lady, that there was about to
be established an institution in New York,
for the use of the public, to be called * The
Lenox Library.' She expressed great interest
in the matter, and said that she should be
glad to exchange catalogues. I told her that
I would with great pleasure forward her
catalogue [a 12° tradl of about a dozen pages]
to the founder of the New York namesake,
but that I believe no catalogue of that
American library had yet appeared. I did
not enlighten her as to the difference between
the extent, aims or objedls of the two Institu-
tions. I hope you will preserve this Liver-
pool catalogue and have it appropriately
bound. In haste, Yours truly,

HENRY STEVENS.
To JAMES LENOX, Esq.

5 3 Vth Avenue, New York.

The foregoing correspondence has
little use now, except as a memorial

of

206 RECOLLECTIONS OF
of an important literary enterprise
that was begun in earnest, but for
some reasons which I found it im-
possible to comprehend, was never
carried out. In June 1870 I re-
turned to London, and worked like
an infatuated slave, con amore, all
through that summer, in reducing
my bibliographical accumulations in-
to working order, printing my ( Sche-
dule' of some 1,500 nuggets in single
long lines, as a sort of specimen of
our preliminary ' one line1 catalogue,
and putting up a sample sheet, to
show my idea of types, style, page,
illustration, paper, etc., with corrected
estimates of the whole work.

This all done to my own satisfaction
I returned to New York in the fol-
lowing November to resume the
work over the Lenox books and
manuscripts for the winter of 1870-
7 1 . On our first interview I found
Mr Lenox unusually distant, grumpy
and formal. He appeared pale, ner-
vous, and I thought, for the first time

with

MR JAMES LENOX 207

with me, a little cross, though ex-
ceedingly polite and yet not cordial.
He was sorry to see me he said, be-
cause he felt sure that nothing on
the catalogue could be done at pre-
sent, or perhaps until the books
could be got out and removed to the
new library building, then in course
of erection. ' Besides/ he added, ' I
am afraid that you have so much
other work on hand that you will be
unable to give your attention suffi-
ciently to the catalogue.' This was
new and unexpected, so I let him do
most of the talking, hoping that by
this means his mind might soon clear
itself. ' Furthermore/ said he, c I have
been dreadfully disappointed that you
did not answer my several letters, to
which I attached much importance/
To this I mildly replied that there
surely must somewhere be a mistake,
for I had certainly answered fully the
three letters in question, and could
show him my press copies of them ;
and besides, I had received a reply to

one

208 RECOLLECTIONS OF
one or two points in one of the long
letters ! To this he shook his head and
smiled incoherently.

Fortunately for me, just at that
moment, he had occasion to unlock
and open a strong writing-desk be-
tween the front windows, when on
pulling out a drawer a roll of thin
papers fell to the floor. On picking
them up he stared at them for some
time ; then putting his hand to his
forehead, exclaimed mournfully and
apologetically, c Oh, my memory !
here are your three letters : they
were received of course, and I re-
member now having placed them
there for special reference, but can
remember nothing more about them/
Immediately Mr Lenox was his dear
old self again, and we had a long and
earnest talk about the catalogue and
the ' Lenox Library/ but the painful
result was that he could not make
up his mind to let me go to work in
his house. It would fidget him to
death to leave anyone in the house,

and

MR JAMES LENOX 209

and he must go out sometimes. After
many unavailing suggestions, I, fully
appreciating his timidity and appre-
hensions, agreed to postpone this
proposed work for the winter, or
perhaps till he was able to have a
room in the new library building
fitted up to receive a part if not the
whole of the books, so that I might
work uninterruptedly and to ad-
vantage on the catalogue from the
books themselves.

In the spring of 1871 I returned
to London, and for many months
proceeded with the great work as
well as I could from my old materials
and from books in the British Museum
and elsewhere. But it was like paint-
ing portraits from dummies and
models. Mr Lenox had paid me
regularly my salary of £50 a month
from April to September 1870, and
then without any notice or explana-
tion ceased remitting. Our corre-
spondence however continued about
books, special subjects, and the pro-
E E gress

210 RECOLLECTIONS OF
gress of cataloguing for more than
two years, I frequently requesting
him to let me know when he was
ready to let me examine his books
and adapt my titles. That time was
constantly deferred, as the completion
of the library building was delayed.
Finally, towards the end of 1873,
when the catalogue ought to have
been completed and printed, he wrote
me that he supposed I had understood
that he had abandoned the work for
the present. He must have forgotten
that he had never written me to that
effect ; but as I found that the im-
pediments were exceedingly unpro-
fitable to me, and that now even
perfect success would be a pecuniary
loss to me, I let the matter drop si-
lently into the pool of oblivion. I
dare say that Mr Lenox had some
good reason for not proceeding with
the catalogue, but if so he never ac-
quainted me with it. However, my
three years of c posting up ' my bib-
liographical studies were not all

thrown

MR JAMES LENOX 211
thrown away. My studies and
business continued, and in 1877 I
had the honour and pleasure of shunt-
ing a segment of my Bible biblio-
graphy, on very short notice, into
my * Catalogue of Bibles in the Cax-
ton Exhibition/ Other portions of
those accumulations are now (1885)
being worked up, with my son, in
the continuation of my c Historical
Nuggets/ Mr Lenox died in 1 8 80,
and the c Lenox Library ' is under-
stood to be flourishing in New York,
but the c Stevens Catalogue of the
Lenox Library ' has never yet been
resumed, though the agreement
for the manufacture of it has
never yet been cancelled.

THE END.

THE

UNIVERSITY

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LD 21-40m-10,'65
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