signification to me by these worthy and faithfull gentlemen I received both speedily and safely. Which volume hath the marke of honor upon it, which no other volume in my collection hath, and very diligently and carefully I continued the same, until the most hapie restoration and coronation of his most gratious mātie Kinge Charles the second whom God long preserve.—George Thomason.”
Here we have surely an interesting instance of the poetry of bibliography.
According to Mr. Madan’s calculation, there are 22,834 pamphlets in about 1983 volumes, and apparently some hundred or so pieces have been lost from the original set. The collection of these pamphlets was made at very considerable expense, and Thomason is said to have refused £4000 for them, “supposing that sum not sufficient to reimburse him.” On his death in 1666 a special trust was appointed under his will to take charge of the collection, and Dr. Thomas Barlow (Bodley’s librarian, 1652 to 1660) was one of the trustees. In 1675 Barlow was appointed Bishop of Lincoln, and in the following year requested the Rev. George Thomason (son of the bookseller) to take over the charge. After many vicissitudes the books were bought for the absurdly small sum of £300 for George III., who presented the collection to the British Museum. It is impossible to guess at the present price of what is practically invaluable.
The famous antiquary Elias Ashmole, whose treasures are now preserved at Oxford in the Ashmolean Museum, records in his Diary some of his purchases, as, on May 1667, “I bought Mr. John Booker’s study of books, and gave £140 for them”; and again, on June 12, 1681, “I bought Mr. Lilly’s library of books of his widow for £50.”3 We can judge of the character of his library by these purchases of the collections of two of his famous astrological friends.
Even in the seventeenth century men began to be frightened at the increase of books, and Sir Thomas Browne in his Religio Medici