Gold Cannot Buy

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 17

Gold Cannot Buy

“Mr. William Shakespeare's comedies, Histories and Tragedies,” published “according to the true Originall Copies” 1623, is the first folio edition of Shakespeare's works and is in really good order. Copies of this edition have sold at. about £4.000, so that, although 178 copies, are know n to exist, the City may well call this book valuable. A copy of the second edition is also possessed by the Library. Another volume bears the intriguing title of

“Poems written by Wil Shakespeare, Gent.” It was printed 1640, and copies have sold for £6OO. Beu Jonson, Chaucer, Juvenal, Josephus may be read from the self same books that educated men of the period 1500—1700 read.

Several original editions of the curious designs of William Blake or of works illustrated by him are more modern but vastly interesting. Noteworthy in a famous collection is Kingsborough's “Antiquities of Mexico” representing tbe paintings and hieroglyphic writings of ancient Mexico that are preserved in the European libraries. Its 1,000 large plates are hand-coloured in exact representation of the originals and nine huge folio volumes are needed to hold them. The issue was of 200 copies and Lord Kingsborough spent over £32.000 on the work. He was arrested for debt and died in a Dublin gaol before he could be rescued from his creditors. Had he lived he would have inherited, within 12 months, an estate of £40,000 per annum.

Carlyle said that “The Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things that man has devised.” That a new land situated half a world away from the centres of older civilisation should possess such a magnificent record of the development of that miraculous art is in itself an almost miraculous thing. That record is available for students and book lovers. Its money value could be expressed in tens of thousands of pounds, but that counts for nothing against its historical and educational value. -The books that have been mentioned merely indicate its character and are not an enumeration. Suffice to say that Auckland may well be proud of its unique and valuable book collection and thank those who had vision ami generosity to give it to the City.