Properties
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- The John Rylands Library, in Manchester, contains a very fine copy which was acquired with Lord Spencer's Althorp collection, in 1892. It measures 7½" × 5", and has the Wright imprint. Earl Spencer purchased it in 1798, at the sale of Dr. Richard Farmer's library, for £8. It is in excellent condition, and is bound by Roger Payne in green morocco. Two peculiarities give the copy exceptional interest. On the last page of the volume, below the ornament, is the following manuscript note, in a somewhat ornamental handwriting of the early seventeenth century:—‘Comendacons to my very kind & approved ffreind 23: M:’. The numeral and capital at the end of the inscription may be the autograph of the donor in cipher, or may indicate the date of gift, March or May 23. Nothing is known of the history of this inscription, and there is no internal or external evidence to associate it in any way with Shakespeare. The copy was clearly presented by one friend to another about the date of publication. Another manuscript note in the volume is of more normal character. At the top of the title-page—to the left above the ornament—is the symbol ‘5d’ written in the same hand as the inscription at the end. There is no doubt that this represents the cost of the volume, and it is curious to note that Edward Alleyn records in his account-book for June, 1609, that he paid fivepence for a copy of Shakespeare's *Sonnets*. The suggestion based on this fact that the Spencer copy originally belonged to Alleyn seems hazardous.¹
An interesting history attaches to the copy in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere at Bridgewater House. Originally acquired by the second Earl of Bridgewater, it was sold by
**No. VII.**
The Bridgewater House copy.
¹ Cf. Dibdin's *Aedes Althorpionae*, i. 194. Mr. Guppy, the librarian of the John Rylands library, has kindly given me a very full description of this volume and careful tracings of the manuscript inscriptions.
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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 67
THREEDITION OF 1609.
the last Duke of Bridgewater in 1802, apparently on the erroneous assumption that he owned another copy. It was then bought by George Chalmers for £1. At the sale of Chalmers’ library, in 1842, it was repurchased for the library at Bridgewater House by the first Earl of Ellesmere, grandfather of the third Earl, the present owner, for £105. This copy was reproduced in photo-zincography, under the direction of Sir Henry James, in 1862. It has the Aspley title-page. It is in eighteenth-century binding. The measurements are 7¼″ × 5½″.
The copy belonging to A. H. Huth has the Wright imprint. It was for many years in the Bentinck library at Varel, near Oldenburg, and formed part of a volume of tracts which had been bound together in 1728. The volume was first noticed by Professor Tycho Mommsen in 1857, when the Bentinck library was dispersed by sale. It was purchased by Halliwell[-Phillipps], but was sold at a sale of his books in 1858, when it was acquired by Henry Huth, father of the present owner, (through the bookseller Lilly) for £154 7s. od. The copy is somewhat dirty, the top margins are cut close, and some of the print in the headlines is shaved.¹
Of the copies in America, the most interesting belongs to Mr. E. Dwight Church of New York. It has the Wright imprint, is bound in brown morocco by Charles Lewis, and measures 6½″ × 5″. At the end of the seventeenth century it was purchased by Narcissus Luttrell for one shilling. It subsequently belonged to George Steevens, whose autograph it bears, and it was sold in 1800 at the sale of Steevens’ library for £3 19s. od. It was then acquired by the Duke of Roxburghe, at the sale of whose library in 1812 it fetched
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