Lost Leaders Part 6

It is not as if you were collecting really beautiful things like Tanagra terra-cottas, or really rare and quaint and mysterious things like aggery beads. Though Tanagra terra-cottas, and aggery beads, and fine examples of Moorish l.u.s.tre, or of ancient Nankin, or of gold coins of the Roman Empire, are all rare, yet there is no definite limit to their number.

More may turn up any day when the pickaxe breaks into a new Tanagra cemetery, when a fallen palm in Ashanti brings up aggery beads clinging to its earthy roots, when a pot of coins is found by some old Roman way, and so forth. To be sure, perfection may be attained in coin collecting, when a man has specimens of all known sorts, but even then he will pine for better specimens, for the best specimens. In the other branches of the sport we have mentioned the collector may be eager, of course, for good things, but he can never know the pa.s.sion of the stampomaniac who has all sorts but three, and finds these within his reach. Perfection is within a step of such a man, and that step we fear he will take, even if it involves ever so many breaches of the Decalogue. In one of this month's magazines, in a story called "Mr. Pierrepoint's Repentance," Mr.

Grant Allen tells the tale of a coin collector's infamy, and that coin collector a clergyman and fellow of his college. A pope is said to have stolen a rare book from a painter, and it is certain that enthusiastic collectors are apt to have "their moral tone lowered some," as the American gentleman said about the lady whom he had wooed with intentions less than honourable.

A good example of the toils of the collector in pursuit of perfection is given by M. Henri Beraldi in his very amusing catalogue of M. Paillet's library. This book, by the way, is itself scarce, and the bibliomaniac will be rather lucky if he meets with it. M. Beraldi describes M.

Paillet's copy of Dorat's "Fables," published in 1773, with ill.u.s.trations by Marillier. n.o.body perhaps ever reads Dorat now, but his book came out in the very palmiest days of the art of ill.u.s.tration in France. There were no _photogravures_ then, nor hideous, scratchy, and seamy "processes," such as almost make one despair of progress and of the future of humanity. The people that takes to "processes" is lost! The ill.u.s.trations of the "Fables" were duly engraved on copper. There were ninety-nine vignettes, and as many tail-pieces. The bibliographical history of the book is instructive, either to young collectors or to the common herd, not to speak impolitely--the persons who do not understand what collectors want. The "Fables" were originally published on three different sorts of paper, Dutch paper at seventy-two francs, French paper at twenty-nine francs, and on "small paper" at twenty-four francs. In 1853 the original drawings were bought by one of the Rothschilds for about 60 pounds; they would now, probably, be worth at least 1,000 pounds. The ordinary copies of the book itself bring about 6 pounds, the large paper copies about 30 pounds, and a copy in old morocco can hardly be estimated--you may pay anything for it, as a copy in old calf has sold for 240 pounds.

Such is the natural history of a book pretty valueless as literature, the "Fables" of Dorat. In the early edition of "Brunet's Manual," published in 1821, the large paper copies of the work, with the engravings in the earliest state, are priced at from fifteen to eighteen francs. These vignettes had gone out of fas.h.i.+on; they have come in again with a vengeance. The high prices, eighty or a hundred pounds, are merely the beginning of what the great collectors are ready to pay, and to do, and to suffer in the cause of Dorat. In M. Cohen's catalogue of all these old ill.u.s.trated books special mention is made of M. Paillet's copy of the "Fables." It is "a superb example, with all the engravings printed separately." But M. Paillet describes this specimen far more lovingly.

All the designs are separately printed, and, oh joy! all have all their margins uncut. The book is "all that man can dream of" in the way of perfection. Cuzin did the binding, in yellow morocco, tooled with roses and b.u.t.terflies. "Reader," cries M. Beraldi, "if you are not a collector you cannot imagine the difficulty of getting such a copy. It is the thirteenth labour of Hercules." First you buy your text, then you must have the separately printed _fleurons_. These can only be picked up here and there, in sales and stalls. Perhaps you purchase half of them in one lucky investment. With no great difficulty you secure another lot. Then begins the hunt--you buy a.s.sortments at the price of bank notes, merely for the sake of two or three out of the ma.s.s. You offer to barter twenty- five for one you have not got. Then you have all but three, which you demand from the universe at large: then all but two; then all but one.

What you pay for that one you keep a profound secret, lest your family should have you put under control. Even then you are not safe, for some of your engravings have false margins, and must be changed for entire examples. Such are the joys of the collector, for shadows we are and engravings _a toutes marges_ we pursue.

Footnotes:

{6} Except with worm in a summer flood.

{8} Perhaps an Editor put this moral in?

{16} The author once caught a salmon. It did not behave in any way like the ferocious fish in this article.

{23} Mr. Wordsworth, in his poem of "The Recluse," expresses a horror of this diversion.

{37} It is a melancholy fact that the Author has quite forgotten what _did_ happen! Thus a narrative, probably diverting, is for ever lost, thanks to the modesty of our free Press.

{135} These remarks were made before the great discovery of some modern authors, that the best novels are those in which there is never a petticoat.

{152} What _was_ this anecdote?