'
Jonson's books, as was said of himself, were like the great Spanish
galleons, bulky folios with '_Sum Ben Jonson_' boldly inscribed. We know
little about Shakespeare's books, except that they probably went to the
New Place and passed among the chattels to Susanna Hall and her husband.
His Florio's version of Montaigne is in the British Museum, if the
authenticity of his signature can be trusted. His neat Aldine Ovid is at
the Bodleian, inscribed with his initials, and a note: 'this little booke
of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will
Shakspere's.'
We would call to our meeting Gabriel Harvey with his new Italian books
and pamphlets; and Spenser, if possible, should be there; Dr. Dee would
tell the piteous story of his four thousand volumes, printed and
unprinted, Greek, in French, and High-Dutch MSS., etc., and of forty
years spent in gathering the books that were all on their way to the
pawnshop. He might have told the fortunes of all the books with the help
of his magical mirrors and crystals. Francis Bacon's store was to
increase and multiply, to adorn the library at Cambridge and fill the
shelves at Gray's Inn; Lord Leicester's books, with their livery of the
'bear and ragged staff,' were to freeze for ages in the galleries at
Lambeth. We should have Ascham inveighing against the ancients and their
idle and blind way of living: 'in our father's time,' he says, 'nothing
was read but books of feigned chivalry'; but Captain Cox would come forth
to meet him, attired as in the tournament at Kenilworth, or in the
picture which Dibdin has extracted from Laneham.
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