d in the catalogue in five
imperial octavo volumes. It is impossible to do justice to it in the
brief space at our disposal. But a few rarities may be enumerated as
showing its extremely varied nature. Nearly all the early printers are
represented in the Huth Library--there are the Gutenberg and Fust and
Schoeffer Bibles; the Balbi Catholicon, 1460; there are over seventy
Aldines, including the rare Virgil of 1501, with the bookplate of
Bilibald Pirkheimer. There are no less than a dozen fine examples of
Caxton's press; the only known copy on vellum of the 'Fructus Temporum'
of the St. Albans press; about fifty works from the press of Wynkyn de
Worde, of which several are unique; and sixteen works printed by Richard
Pynson. Of Shakespeare quartos the late Mr. Huth secured a very fine
series at the Daniel sale in 1864, including 'Richard II.,' 1597; 'Henry
V.,' 1600; 'Richard III.,' 1597; 'Romeo and Juliet,' 1599; 'Midsummer
Night's Dream,' 1600; 'Merchant of Venice,' 1600; 'Merrie Wives of
Windsor,' 1602; 'Othello,' 1622; 'Titus Andronicus,' 1611; and
'Pericles,' 1609. The library is equally rich in the production of
Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, many of the items being either
unique or very nearly so; it is especially rich in first editions of the
English poets from the earliest times down to Goldsmith, Keats, Shelley,
etc. Indeed, the collection seems to contain the first or best editions
of every English work of note; there are many fine manuscripts, and some
highly interesting autographs. Mr. Ellis tells us that Mr. Huth always
bought on his own judgment, without consultation and without hesitation,
'and I believe it may be safely affirmed that it would be difficult to
name any collector who made fewer errors in his selection. He was never
known to bargain for a book or to endeavour to cheapen it. The price
named, he would at once say 'Yea' or 'Nay' to it, and though it was
supposed at the time that he paid high prices for his books, it may be
confidently asserted that as a whole they are worth very much more than
he paid for them, which, I think, could not have been much less
altogether than L120,000.' Joseph Lilly is said to have sold to or
purchased for Mr. Huth books to the value of over L40,000. Mr. Huth was
born in 1815, and died in 1878. The library is, as we have said, now the
property of his son, Mr. Alfred H. Huth, who has made a number of
important additions to it, and who is as ardent and as genuine