English Embroidered Bookbindings
English Embroidered Bookbindings
Book Excerpt
s, as a rule, bought only the books of their own day,
giving them distinction by the handsome liveries which they made them
don. Our English collectors have more often been of the omnivorous type,
and though Lords Lumley and Arundel in the sixteenth century cannot,
even when their forces are joined, stand up against De Thou, in Sir
Robert Cotton, Harley, Thomas Rawlinson, Lord Spencer, Heber, Grenville,
and Sir Thomas Phillips (and the list might be doubled without much
relaxation of the standard), we have a succession of English collectors
to whom it would be difficult to produce foreign counterparts. Round
these dii majores have clustered innumerable demigods of the
book-market, and certainly in no other country has collecting been as
widely diffused, and pursued with so much zest, as in England during
the present century. It is to be regretted that so few English
collectors have cared to leave their marks of ownership on the books
they have taken so much pleasure in bringing together. Michael Wodh
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