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In America the unparalleled increase of Free Libraries has brought, not books alone, but collections of photographs and other reproductions of the best Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in the world, as well as medals, book-plates, artistic bindings, etc., within reach of students of art. Art Academies and Museums have also been greatly multiplied.
The learned bibliophile and librarian of Florence, Magliabecchi, who died in 1714, devised for his library of thirty thousand volumes, which he bequeathed to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, a book-plate representing his own profile on a medal surrounded with books and oak boughs, with the inscription "Antonius Magliabecchius Florentinus." Some book-plates embody designs of great beauty.
It was no secret to Maggie it was indeed positively a public joke for her that she couldn't explain as Mrs. Assingham did, and that, the Prince liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner of book-plates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition of this luxury had to be met.
No collector, as is very well known, whether of books, coins, pictures, medals, fans, scarabs, book-plates, autographs, stamps, or anything else, has any conscience at all. Anybody can cut out slips and make a catalogue, but it requires a sharp assistant, with eyes all over his head like a spider, to be always on guard against this felonious and unscrupulous collector.
The earliest known book-plates date back to the fifteenth century, and are of German origin, though English plates are known as early as 1700. In France, specimens appear for the first time between 1600 and 1650.
As well might the border farmer have engraved his name and address on the collars of his grazing herds, in the hope that the riever would respect this symbol of authority. The history of book-plates is largely the history of borrower versus lender. The orderly mind is wont to believe that a distinctive mark, irrevocably attached to every volume, will insure permanent possession. Mr.
Lichtenstein, writing in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas.
Still more infinitesimal seems the man who is a subdivision, not of a form of work even, but merely of a form of taste; the man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, or arrow-heads, the connoisseur of a tiny section of one of the lesser schools of Italian painting, the coral-insect who has devoted his life to a participle, first-edition men, and all those various bookworms who, without impropriety be it spoken, are the maggots that breed in the dung of the great.
All books coming into a library which contain autographs, book-plates of former owners, coats of arms, presentation inscriptions from the author, monograms, or other distinguishing features, should preserve them as of interest to the present or the future.
But he had had unpleasant experiences with men of that profession, who had absolutely purloined books from the Public Library, removed the book-plates and library stamp, and covered the volumes with paper carefully pasted down inside of the covers. A librarian in Massachusetts testified that it was common experience that clergymen and professional men gave the most trouble.
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