advertisement demonstrates the fact even more plainly, for on a day near at hand, the advertisement tells us, was to be fought, at a neighbouring cock-pit, 'a Welsh main,' and the prize was to be nothing less than one of the advertiser's engravings, 'a pretty piece of work, worthy the observation of the curious.' If the term book-plate had been known in Barber's day, it would probably have found its way into his advertisement, which is clumsy from the want of a word to express the very thing he is advertising.

William Stephens, who engraved a good many book-plates in his time, could find no better expression than 'print of your arms' to describe the 800 book-plates which, for half-a-guinea, he sent to Dr. Samuel Kerrich, the Shakespearian student, in 1754.

Horace Walpole, again, would, I think, have used the phrase 'book-plate' had he known it. In his Catalogue of Engravers—the edition of 1771—he speaks of George Vertue having engraved 'a plate to put in Lady Oxford's books'; and in his Anecdotes of Painting, he refers to the 'plate' which Hogarth 'used for his books.' One of his own book-plates—that engraved soon after 1791—Walpole describes as his 'seal': Sigillum Horatii Comitis de Orford; but this phrase is, I think, used simply because the book-plate itself is the representation of a mediæval seal. Bartolozzi—giving, in 1796, a receipt for a book-plate which he had just completed—refers to it as a 'ticket-plate' (see p. 94); but he was a foreigner, and may not have known the English name for such things, for we have seen that, some five years before, Ireland refers to Hogarth's 'book-plate.' Charles James Fox, in a note, dated at Leicester on 2nd August 1801, speaks of the 'book-plate' of his great-great-grandfather, Sir Stephen Fox.

But, though the phrase 'book-plate' may have been occasionally used at the close of the last century and the beginning of the present, it was then by no means widely used; and although the writer quoted on page 6 refers in 1823 to what are 'generally called' book-plates, William Wadd, in 1827, can find no direct term by which to refer to these marks of ownership. Speaking in Mems., Maxims, and Memoirs, he says: 'In the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, there are many volumes, formerly the property of the celebrated Douglas, having his arms embellished with various kinds of surgical instruments, which was by no means an uncommon practice, as in the Library of the College of Physicians there are many examples of volumes where the former possessor has not only blazoned his own arms, but borrowed the arms of the college and super-added supporters, as Apollo, Mercury, Æsculapius, and his daughter Hygeia.'

Lord Byron, too, did not, I fancy, know the word 'book-plate' in its now-used sense; writing to a fair admirer, who had apparently designed one of these for him, he says: 'I received the arms, my dear Miss ——, and am very much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken. It is impossible I should have any fault to find with them. The sight of the drawing gives me great pleasure for a double reason: in the first place they will ornament my books, and in the next they convince me that you have not entirely forgot me.'[3]

So the term book-plate is only a century old, and the fashion of collecting book-plates much more modern still; but the use of book-plates is really of respectable antiquity, and is a matter on which we may now appropriately speak. Whether, in the first instance, the use of book-plates was suggested by a desire to commemorate a gift, or as a mark of ownership, seems to be a matter on which a variety of opinions exist. Some of the earliest mechanically produced book-plates are certainly commemorative of gifts (see p. 114); but I think we must accept as book-plates, to all intents and purposes, the six fourteenth century examples mentioned by Herr Warnecke in his Die Deutschen Bücherzeichen, an excellent work on German book-plates. These are heraldic coloured drawings on the parchment leaves of Italian manuscripts, which also bear an inscription of possession by the particular individuals whose arms are represented.

But, of course, the real necessity for book-plates, whatever may have been their original use, began when the printing-press gave to the world not two nor three, but a hundred or more copies of a particular book. Then it was that the different owners needed to distinguish their respective copies of a work; for the professional book-borrower, who would gladly have retained the manuscript volume lent to him by an unsuspecting friend, could he have done so without his crime being detected, doubtless saw in the multitude of copies a greater opportunity of carrying out his nefarious designs. The existence of book-plates is, therefore, largely due to the literary enthusiast who amasses a library by retaining volumes received on loan; the inscriptions on some of the earlier book-plates prove this to be so.

The earliest printed book-plates are certainly German, and there is little doubt that some of these are nearly contemporary with the very early printed books on the oak covers of which they may still be found pasted. By the commencement of the sixteenth century book-plates were frequently fine examples of the wood-engraver's art. Albert Dürer himself designed book-plates; and of these, one of the most elaborate and the best known is that of his friend Bilibald Pirckheimer, the Nuremberg jurist, whose portrait he engraved on copper in 1524. The book-plate is still earlier.

England can now—thanks to recent investigations—claim the second place in the chronological sequence of countries in which book-plates have been used. Cardinal Wolsey's book-plate (see p. 24) is probably not later in date than 1525. France can boast of a book-plate dated in 1574; Sweden of one dated in the following year, and Switzerland of one in 1607; Italy in 1623: in other European countries, dated examples do not appear, nor does the practice of using book-plates seem to have been adopted until considerably later.

In concluding this opening chapter, let me say a word about the position in a book in which a book-plate should be looked for. The usual place was certainly on the front cover of a volume; sometimes another copy of the same plate was fastened to the back cover; and sometimes—as in Pirckheimer's case, just noticed, and in that of Samuel Pepys (see p. 216)—the same person would use a different book-plate at the back of the volume to that used at the front. Another plan, less frequent, but by no means uncommon, was to insert the book-plate on the title-page, often on the back of it; and another, to fasten the book-plate into the volume, by pasting its right-hand margin about a quarter of an inch on to the title-page, so that the book-plate would fold over and face it. This is a plan that leads to a book-plate being most easily overlooked.

Collectors should also note that, in many instances, book-plates are found in a variety of sizes; this should