Stock Features

[BASTON, Thomas], Thoughts on trade, and a publick spirit...

London, printed for the author, 1716.

Anonymous first edition of an impassioned tirade against joint-stock companies and stock-jobbers; this attack on the financial corruption of Exchange Alley is of particular interest because it pre-empts the 1720 bursting of the South Sea Bubble.

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1398 Number 11: 

‘WEAK PEOPLE TAKE STOCKS TO BE THE
WEATHER GLASS OF THE STATE’

[BASTON, Thomas].  Thoughts on trade, and a publick spirit.  Consider’d under the following heads, viz. I. Companies in trade.  II. Stock-jobbers.  III. Projectors.  IV. Corruptions in the law and publick offices.  V. Of a public spirit.  Humbly dedicated to all lovers of their country.  London, printed for the author, 1716.

8vo, pp. [16], 212; slight mark to outer margin of the title, else a crisp, clean copy, in recent calf-backed cloth boards with new endpapers, spine direct-lettered gilt, all edges speckled. 

Anonymous first edition of an impassioned tirade against joint-stock companies and stock-jobbers; this attack on the financial corruption of Exchange Alley is of particular interest because it pre-empts the 1720 bursting of the South Sea Bubble.

Writing of stock-jobbers Baston declares: ‘these wretched men thrive best when the nation is in a ferment, in times of war, rebellion and publick calamity, which they make a market of, to vent their lies and cheats in, which are of that malignant nature, that as it poisons the people, so it has a very bad effect on the government, because as most weak people take stocks to be the weather glass of the state; and as they ebb or flow, rise or fall, so they judge the health or sickness of the publick, by consequence when the stocks are low or run down’ (p. 8).  He also censures place-selling, the abuse of Parliamentary suffrage, and fraud and corruption in general.

‘Let all mens [sic] experience speak as to the truth of these hardships, and fatal misfortunes brought upon the midling [sic], industrious, and poor sort of people by these muck-worms, together with the infinite number of bankrupts, and broken tradesmen; the gaols in the Kingdom cramb’d full of miserable debtors, are too many mournful evidences’ (p. 7).  In the second half of the work there is a long section on the ‘Case of the poor debtors’, whom Baston sees as the victims of growing capitalism.

It may be that Baston was writing from bitter personal experience: an artist of that name, who specialized in marine prints, is recorded as being interned for bankruptcy (he blamed being cheated out of dues for his drawings) in King’s Bench Prison in 1710.  He was still there in 1716, which would account for the suggested involvement of Daniel Defoe in getting the book published and may also explain subsequent poor sales; the work was reissued in 1728 with a cancel title-page and a new expanded preface, and again in 1732, ‘for Olive Payne’, under the title Observations on Trade, and a publick Spirit (see note in ESTC).  Baston’s name did not appear on the title page until the publication of the third edition.

Dennistoun & Goodman 5; Goldsmiths’ 5282; Hanson 2217; Kress 2981.

HOOPER, W. Eden. Dudley HARDY and J. J. PROCTOR., Stock Exchange sayings in black and white.

London, W. Eden Hooper, c.1900.

‘Autograph’ edition, one of one thousand copies printed.

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1398 Number 70: 

HOOPER, W. Eden.  Dudley HARDY and J. J. PROCTOR.  Stock Exchange sayings in black and white.  Compiled, & illustrations innocently suggested, by one W. Eden Hooper & outrageously carried out by one Dudley Hardy.  London, W. Eden Hooper, c.1900.

Folio, ff. [4], [49] illustrations, inter-leaved with tissue guards; a very good copy bound in contemporary vellum-backed cloth boards with bevelled edges, spine direct-lettered black; spine a little worn, covers slightly soiled; with Dudley Hardy’s and Eden Hooper’s signatures on the title-page.

‘Autograph’ edition, one of one thousand copies printed.  A series of 49 illustrations, mostly executed by Dudley Hardy (1867-1922), a British painter and illustrator known primarily for his graphic art.  The drawings each graphically illustrate a stock exchange slang term.  For instance, the image for ‘A Lame Duck’ is a sharply-attired duck, complete with a monacle and top-hat, with one leg in a sling and crutches.  The drawings executed by Hardy, who spent time studying in Paris, display an impressionistic style reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec, a style which contrasts effectively with the cleaner, more realistic technique exhibited by the minority of illustrations executed by J.J. Proctor.  As Hooper explains in the ‘Prospectus’, these drawings are intended to portray the humour and gaiety of the stock exchange at the end of the nineteenth-century.                

Dennistoun & Goodman 754.

[PARIS-DUVERNEY, Joseph and François-Michel-Chrétien DESCHAMPS]., Examen du livre intitulé reflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce.

The Hague, Vaillant and Nicolas Prevost, 1740.

An exceptional copy of a scarce first edition.

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1398 Number 132: 

A SUPERB COPY
OF THE REFUTATION OF JOHN LAW HIGHLY PRAISED BY ADAM SMITH

[PARIS-DUVERNEY, Joseph and François-Michel-Chrétien DESCHAMPS].  Examen du livre intitulé reflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce.  Tome premier [–second].  The Hague, Vaillant and Nicolas Prevost, 1740.

2 vols, 8vo in twelves, pp. [iv], xxxix, [1], 404, [2]; [iv], 462, [2]; with a half-title and final errata leaf in each volume, and one large folding table (‘Calcul des dettes publiques au premier Janvier 1721’); titles printed in red and black; a very fine copy, from the Bibliothèque du Château de la Roche-Guyon, bound for the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in contemporary sprinkled calf, La Rochefoucauld armorial gilt centre-pieces to all sides, spines handsomely gilt-tooled in compartments, red morocco lettering-pieces, red edges and marbled endpapers; small stamps of the bibliothèque de La Roche-Guyon in lower margins of titles; a superb copy. 

An exceptional copy of a scarce first edition.  Dutot’s Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce, a favourable examination of the system of John Law, was published by the brothers Prevost in 1738.  Joseph Paris-Duverney, the third of the Paris brothers, whose financial plans had been accepted under the Regency in 1716, had fallen into disgrace with the rise of Law, then risen again with Law’s fall in 1720: ‘It was Pâris-Duverney who broke with the Système, and established that enormous operation, the Visa, which examined into the private property of more than 500,000 persons who had more or less had a share in the transactions of the Système’ (Palgrave, iii, p. 61).  In the Examen, he and Deschamps made a clear and tersely-argued refutation of Dutot and Law, warmly praising the Visa, and providing a detailed history of the Mississippi scheme and its collapse.  ‘The different operations of this scheme are explained so fully, so clearly, and with so much order and distinctness, by Mr. Du Verney in his Examination of the Political Reflections upon Commerce and Finances of Mr. Du Tot,’ that I shall not give any account of them’ (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776, I, 385). 

Kress 4519; Goldsmiths’ 7784; Einaudi 1538; INED 1359; Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library: A Catalogue, 1244.

[V.O.C.] [PRICE CURRENT.] , Wryheid. Gelykheid. Broederschap. Cours der Koopmanschappen, Premiën van Assurantien, Wissel, en Speciën, tot Amsterdam. Den 29 December 1796.

Amsterdam, J. Van Gulik, 1796.

A rare original issue of the ‘Cours der Koopmanschappen tot Amsterdam’, a printed price current listing various commodity prices across Europe.

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1398 Number 180: 

[V.O.C.]  [PRICE CURRENT.]  Wryheid.  Gelykheid.  Broederschap.  Cours der Koopmanschappen, Premiën van Assurantien, Wissel, en Speciën, tot Amsterdam.  Den 29 December 1796.  Het tweede Jaar der Bataafsche Vryheid.  Met goedkeuring van de Gemeente van Amsterdam, van Koophandel.  Leeden van den Raad der uitmakende het Committé en Zeevaart.  Amsterdam, J. Van Gulik, 1796.

Broadside (54.5 cm x 15 cm), printed on both sides; with small woodcut coat of arms of the city of Amsterdam at the top, small inventory number at foot of the verso, old folds, a fine copy. 

A rare original issue of the ‘Cours der Koopmanschappen tot Amsterdam’, a printed price current listing various commodity prices across Europe.  Divided into 32 sections, it lists the prices of all kinds of goods, including spices, oil, sugar, cocoa, tea, coffee, metals, flax, ropes, hides, silks, cottons, Muscovy goods, whale-oil, fish, diamonds, wine, corn, etc.  Following the commodity prices, the ‘Cours der Koopmanschappen’ lists insurance premiums for ships and cargoes in major European cities, money rates, exchange rates, and other financial information, providing essential data for merchants throughout Europe.  At the end of the text there is a key of the used abbreviations and symbols. 

The ‘Cours der Koopmanschappen’ was published intermittently as early as 1585, and every Monday beginning in 1609.  ‘Amsterdam’s commodity price current came quickly to dominate commercial and financial publishing not only to the exclusion of competing papers in the city but throughout the country—and perhaps that of Antwerp as well.  By the 1680’s the Amsterdam commodity price current was regularly available for sale in all the major business centers of the Netherlands, a fact that it advertised at the foot of the second page of each number.  The importance of the Amsterdam market and the reputation and availability of the Amsterdam commodity price current go far to explain why no important commodity price current seems to have been published elsewhere in the country.  Just as Amsterdam dominated the business life of the Netherlands—and beyond—so also did the Amsterdam commodity price current dominate business publishing there’ (McCusker and Gravesteijn, p. 44).

COWLEY, Abraham., Poemata Latina

Londini: Typis M. Clark, Impensis Jo. Martyn ... 1678.

Second edition, John Evelyn’s copy, with his autograph press mark ‘N. 48’ on the title-page.

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List 2010/13 Number 15: 

JOHN EVELYN’S COPY, BY HIS ‘EXCELLENT AND INGENIOUS FRIEND’

COWLEY, Abraham.  Poemata Latina: in quibus continentur sex Libri Plantarum ... huic Editioni secundæ accessit Index Rerum antehac desideratus.  Londini: Typis M. Clark, Impensis Jo. Martyn ... 1678.

Small 8vo., pp. [26], 191, 190-343, [13], with an engraved portrait frontispiece; a fine copy in early calf, blind thistle corner-pieces, red edges; folding cloth box.     

Second edition, John Evelyn’s copy, with his autograph press mark ‘N. 48’ on the title-page.  Poemata Latina was first published posthumously in 1668; this edition adds an index of plants, and Cowley’s epitaph.  After the first edition, which Evelyn must surely have possessed, though the Evelyn sale of 1977 did not include a copy, it is hard to imagine a more evocative association copy.

Cowley and Evelyn had known each other in Paris in the late 1640s, where Cowley was secretary to Henry Jermyn.  On his return to England in 1654 as a royalist agent, Cowley went to Oxford to study botany and medicine, and began to gather the material that became his Libri sex Plantarum, the six-book poem on nature and man that takes up the bulk of the present volume – the first two books were published in 1662, the remainder, on flowers and trees, only after Cowley’s death, in Poemata Latina 1668.  The last book, ‘Sylva’, is ‘purely national in feeling: the dryad of the oak presides and is given an excuse to utter a long speech on the Civil Wars, the King’s affliction and return, and the beginning of the Dutch wars’ (Perkin).

After the Restoration Evelyn and Cowley renewed contact, and horticulture was the hub of their relationship.  ‘Evelyn’s friendship with Cowley was reinforced by the exchange of plants and verses, and reciprocal garden visits’ (Darley, John Evelyn, 2006).  In March 1663, Evelyn sent Cowley some seeds for his garden in Barnes.  In 1666, Cowley dedicated an essay and poem ‘The Garden’ to Evelyn, and Evelyn reciprocated in the second edition of his popular Kalendarium Hortense (1666).  In ‘The Garden’, which Evelyn prefixed to editions of his Sylva from 1679, Cowley had noted that nobody ‘possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden; and, yet no man, who makes his happiness more public, by a free communication of the art and knowledge of it to others’.  Indeed Cowley must have drawn on Evelyn’s knowledge, and his library, for his Libri Plantarum, and in turn Evelyn was to cite Cowley’s poems multiple times both in his unfinished magnum opus, the Elysium Britannicum, and in his final edition of Sylva in 1704.

Wing C 6681; Perkin A30.

[LEWIS, Mathew Gregory]., The Monk: A Romance...

London: Printed for J. Bell ... 1797.

Third edition. The first edition of The Monk (1796) was published anonymously, the second, announced the author as ‘M. G. Lewis, Esq., M. P.’, but it was this third edition that attracted the attention of the Proclamation Society, headed by the Bishop of London, and was suppressed.

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List 2010/13 Number 52: 

THE SUPPRESSED EDITION IN THE ORIGINAL BOARDS

[LEWIS, Mathew Gregory].  The Monk: A Romance … in three Volumes … the third Edition.  London: Printed for J. Bell ... 1797.

3 vols., 12mo., apart from rather crude repairs to C7 and C8 in volume I and M2 in volume II (all without loss), a very good, unsophisticated copy, uncut in the original pale blue boards and tan paper spines (some rubbing and wear, volume I chipped), the spines unlettered but with stamped volume numerals.  Book-label of Mari Bicknell. 

Third edition.  The first edition of The Monk (1796) was published anonymously, the second, announced the author as ‘M. G. Lewis, Esq., M. P.’, but it was this third edition that attracted the attention of the Proclamation Society, headed by the Bishop of London, and was suppressed.  To avoid having to recall the whole impression, and faced with perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred unsold copies, Bell put them on the market disguised as first editions by means of cancel title-pages.  Overnight the true third edition became extraordinarily rare (three copies in ESTC).  This complex publishing history was untangled by William B. Todd in Studies in Bibliograpy, II (1949-50), 3-24.

Perhaps the most famous – or infamous – of all Gothic novels, The Monk is ‘the supreme example of the horrific extremity’ of its genre, ‘an encyclopedia of all the Gothic impulses ... [It] officially shocked and secretly delighted all varieties of readers.  Its repulsive situations, lewd vulgarity of style, blasphemous rhapsodies, and erotic candor made it the first Gothic novel to be considered indecent, infamous, and dangerous ...’ (F. S. Frank, The First Gothics). 

When the authorship became known there was general outrage that ‘a member of the House of Commons, an elected guardian’ of law and religion, had, to quote T. J. Mathias, ‘neither scrupled nor blushed to depict and publish to the world the arts of lewd and systematic seduction, and ... the most open and unqualified blasphemy against ... our religion’ (The Pursuits of Literature, part IV, 1797).  It was this review that caught the attention of the Proclamation Society and led to Bell’s stratagem of the cancels, a stratagem that nearly failed as the date on the ‘first edition’ cancels still read ‘MDCCXCVII’ until, in some copies, the final ‘I’ was scraped away to restore it to 1796.

ESTC records copies at the British Library, Harvard, and Auckland Public Library.

PARADIN, Claude., The Heroicall Devises...

London: Imprinted by William Kearney ... 1591.

First and only early edition in English, rare: the second classic English emblem book after Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes (Leiden, 1586), or third if you include The Theatre for Worldings, and the first to be printed in England.

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List 2010/13 Number 72: 

A LIKELY SOURCE FOR THE TOURNAMENT SCENE IN PERICLES

PARADIN, Claude.  The Heroicall Devises ...  Whereunto are added the Lord Gabriel Symeons and others.  Translated out of Latin into English by P. S.   London: Imprinted by William Kearney ... 1591.

12mo., pp. [10], 374, with 217 woodcut illustrations; a few sidenotes and headlines shaved, one image (the bear on p. 96) just touched; slightly grubby with light browning throughout and a few minor stains, but withal a very good copy in late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century calf (joints repaired, new label); the Macclesfield copy, with bookplate and blindstamps. 

First and only early edition in English, rare: the second classic English emblem book after Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes (Leiden, 1586), or third if you include The Theatre for Worldings, and the first to be printed in England. 

Translated from the Antwerp edition of 1562, The Heroicall Devises combines the emblems of Paradin’s original Devises Heroiques (1551) with those of Gabriele Simeoni first published in 1559.  The publisher Kearney dedicated the work to Capt. Christopher Carleill, commander of forces in Ulster and a friend of Spenser.  This is one of only a small handful of books published by Kearney in London before his return to Dublin, where he issued the landmark first edition of the New Testament in Gaelic, 1603.  The translator ‘P. S.’ has not been identified with any certainty, though there are intriguing links to the late Philip Sidney, whose fascination with the subject is well-documented, and who was related by marriage to Carleill.

That Shakespeare was widely familiar with the genre of emblems and imprese is well known.  In March 1613 he was paid 44 shillings for composing an impresa for the Earl of Rutland to carry at the accession day tilts (Richard Burbage was paid the same amount for painting it), and non-specific emblematic images occur through many of his plays.  However, it is the well-known tournament scene in Pericles, written in 1607, that is the most sustained passage of Shakespearian emblematic imagery.  The imprese of six knights are described in detail, but debate about their sources continues.  Three are found together only in this 1591 translation of Paradin; ‘Shakespeare was thoroughly familiar with the impresa genre.  That familiarity derived in part from his knowledge of at least one printed collection of impresas, here tentatively identified as P. S.’s translation of Paradin’ (Alan R. Young, ‘A Note on the Tournament Impresas in Pericles’, in Shakespeare Quarterly, 36/4, Winter 1985, pp. 453-6). 

ESTC shows only five complete copies: BL, Bodley, National Library of Ireland; Illinois and Folger (‘a few letters in facsimile’); plus incomplete copies at Bodley (wanting 10 leaves) and Worcester College Oxford (wanting 27 leaves).  To these we can add Penn State (wanting 1 leaf).

STC 19183.

PEACHAM, Henry. , The Gentlemans Exercise.

London, Printed for John Browne, and are to be sold at his Shop ... 1612.

First edition thus, second issue, with a cancel title-page altering the title from Graphice or the most auncient and excellent Art of Drawing and Limming.

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List 2010/13 Number 74: 

PATRONAGE AND THE ART OF DRAWING

PEACHAM, Henry.  The Gentlemans Exercise.  Or an exquisite Practise, as well for Drawing all Manner of Beasts in their true Portraitures: as also the making of all Kinds of Colours, to be used in Lymming, Painting, Tricking, and Blason of Coates, and Armes, with divers Others most delightfull and pleasurable Observations, for all yong Gentlemen and Others.  As also serving for the necessarie Use and generall Benefit of divers Trades-men and Artificers, as namely Painters, Joyners, Free-masons, Cutters, and Carvers, &c. for the farther gracing, beautifying, and garnishing of all their absolute and worthie Peeces, either for Borders, Architecks, or Columnes, &c ...  London, Printed for John Browne, and are to be sold at his Shop ... 1612.

4to., pp. [10], 118, 121-174, [2, errata], complete despite mispaginations, with a full-page woodcut with the arms of Henry, Prince of Wales, and numerous woodcut vignettes (heads, an eye, shading, coats of arms, the latter with contemporary hand-colouring); contemporary marginalia, cropped, but sometimes preserved by folding, including a few small drawings and a manuscript index to the armorials; signature A with dampstains, else a very good copy in recent full calf; the Macclesfield copy. 

First edition thus, second issue, with a cancel title-page altering the title from Graphice or the most auncient and excellent Art of Drawing and Limming.

Peacham had published his rare Art of Drawing with the Pen (two issues, in total six copies in ESTC) in 1606, ‘the first art manual written specifically for an audience of non-professionals’ (Levy), as well as containing the first explicit description of the ‘grotesque’ style in English.  In 1612, after six years’ immersion in the court of Prince Henry and a greater exposure to his subject, he released the present, much-expanded edition, adding several chapters in Book One, and the whole of Books Two and Three (pp. 105-174, on allegory and the blazoning of arms), with numerous other revisions throughout. 

‘As its title implied, the earlier Art of Drawing with the Pen was essentially a manual … Now Peacham strengthened the links between painting and gentility … The Englishman is as happy in invention as any foreigner; he is less successful because he lacks patronage [“encouragement from the better sort”]’ (Levy). 

Peacham opens with a renewed defence of painting (and the connoisseurial patronage of painting) as an appropriate activity for gentlemen: ‘I am sory that our courtiers and great personages must seeke farre and neere for some Dutchman or Italian to draw their pictures, and invent their devices, our Englishmen being held for Vaunients [i.e. good-for-nothings]’.  Modern practitioners are ‘nothing inferiour’ to the ancients, and among his countrymen Isaac Oliver, Nicholas Hilliard, Robert Peake and ‘Mr. Marques’ (i.e. Marcus Gheeraerts II), can hold their heads high in the company of Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and Dürer.  This list is expanded from 1606, and Peacham also adds praise for a new generation of patrons and collectors – Charles I and Prince Henry, the Earls of Salisbury, Arundel and Pembroke etc., ‘to whom our masters are daily beholden’.

Peacham then continues in a practical mode, explaining the equipment required; which animals are easier to draw (elephants, badgers, cows) and which hard (lions, stags); how light falls on solid bodies and through glass; how to make pigments; the rules for landscape; and how to paint on glass.  The most substantial revisions here are to the chapter on landscape, which Peacham now appreciates as a potential genre in its own right, rather than an accompaniment to portraiture, and in the addition of chapters on sight and colour.  But there are changes throughout: as a result of Peacham’s greater experience, ‘the new edition was enlivened with references to specific painters (and even some specific works of art) to serve as models for the young student’ – e.g. Dürer and Goltzius for drapery (Levy).

The two new books exemplify Peacham’s association of art with gentility, asserting that a comprehension of art (including emblemata and arms) is central to becoming a gentleman, a foretaste of the courtesy books for which Peacham would soon become famous.  Here there is a virtual guide to the interpretion of emblems and imprese, showing how ‘to purtract and expresse, Eternitie, Hope, Victorie, Pietie, Providence, Vertue, Time, Peace, Concord, Fame, Common Safetie, Clemencie, Fate, &c. as they have been by Antiquitie described either in Comes, Statues, or other the like Publike Monuments’, followed by like advice on the personification of rivers, winds, the muses, seasons etc.  Book three is a philosophical dialogue between Cosmopolites and Eudæmon on the composition of coats of arms, and on the metaphorical signification of the colours and forms used.  Peacham uses examples from his own experience – such as the arms of ‘Doctor Neuell our Master of Trinitie College in Cambridge’ or ‘the ancient coate of Bassingbourne, which by chance I found in a window at the Vicaredge in Fulham’.  Mentioned also is Peacham’s own effort to turn ‘his Majesties ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΝ ΔΩΡΟΝ, into Emblemes and Latine verses, presenting the same after to Prince Henrie’. 

ESTC shows nine complete copies of the first issue and seven of the present: BL, Bodley, Lambeth, V&A; Folger, Huntington, and Library of Congress.

STC 19508.  See F. J. Levy, ‘Henry Peacham and the Art of Drawing’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37, (1974), pp 174-190.