Sales catalogue: Quaritch

Date:
September 1886
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/17/44
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Quaritch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/100
    MANUSCRIPTS : Illuminated and remarkable examples, from the Ninth to the Sixteenth Century ; followed by MISCELLANEOUS MANUSCRIPTS AND AUTOGRAPHS of later date. Tt is claimed for this catalogue that the descriptions are as faithful and as nearly correct as a tolerable experrence of MSS., combined with a sincere desire to be exact, could make them. Al the very least, that reckless blundering is avoiled which is only too common in contemporary catalogues, and which is nearly as pernicious as a wilful intention to deceive. Instances of this practice are numerous, and must cause bitter regret amongst distant purchasers, especially at auctions, who have charged irresponsible and inex- perienced agents with their commissions. Not long ago a manuscript brought a high price in consequence of a note in the catalogue which stated that it had been the property of St. Lowis in a.p. 1248: as a fact, there was no indication of any early ownership, the first leaf of the book was a modern fabrication, and the oriyinal scribe’s work could be referred to a period later than the King’s death. Another was sold as a Invre d’ Heures which had belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and had been used by her on the scaffold. It was a Flemish book of little value, written in the fifteenth century, which the unfor- tunate Queen had never set eyes on—but rt fetched an eatremely high sum of money, about ten times its real worth. Another was sold at w still more extravagant rate, because it was declared to be the Prayer-book of Margaret of Anjou, a gratuitous mis-stutement, based upon the circumstance that some person had fancied a resemblance between one of the miniatures representing the Virgin and an old picture of that Queen. No such examples of misleading and unnecessary perversity will be found in this catalogue ; against errors in judgment none can be free at all times, but every statement made in these pages ts believed to be true and reasonable. 937