a lifetime--a lifetime almost dedicated to a single
object.

CHAPTER III

The Huth Library--Special familiarity of the writer with
it--Seven influential collectors of our time--The great
dispersions of old-established
libraries--Althorp--Ashburnham--Johnson of Spalding--List of the
other leading collections, which no longer exist.

DURING a long series of years it was my special good fortune to see
nearly every week the late Mr. Henry Huth, and to learn from him many
particulars of the sources from which he had derived some of his fine
and rare books. We made Mr. Huth's acquaintance not long after the
enrichment of his library by the sale of George Daniel's collection in
1864; and that, with his very important acquisitions when Mr. Corser
died, and his early English poetry came into the market soon after,
constituted the backbone or stamina of the new-comer. Mr. Huth did not
collect on a large scale during a great length of time; he made his
library, or had it made for him, chiefly between 1854, when he bought
his first folio Shakespeare at Dunn-Gardner's auction, and 1870. Once
or twice his health and spirits failed, and he was always more or less
desultory and capricious. We saw him one afternoon, when he shyly
mentioned that he had at last taken courage to order home the Mazarin
Bible, which Mr. Quaritch had kept two years after giving L2625 for
it at the Perkins sale, and then sold to Mr. Huth for L25 profit. He
did not show the book to us, for he had not opened the parcel, and
confessed that he was rather ashamed of himself. A very curious
circumstance was that one of the Rothschilds, who had been nibbling at
the copy, called at Quaritch's a day or so later, and was of course
vexed to find that he had been anticipated. Huth necessarily bought in
every case, like Addington and Locker, at the top of the market, for
he waited till the books were shown or sent to him; he never searched
for them. Condition governed his choice a good deal; he was fond of
Spanish books, his mother having been a Spaniard, and of early German
ones, being a German on his father's side. He took the classics and
Americana rather hesitatingly, and there is no doubt that the old
English literature interested him most powerfully, as it was most
fully represented on his shelves. The folio volume of black-letter
ballads, knocked down to his agent at the Daniel sale for L750, was
regarded by him with special ten