a dibdin rarity
‘Remarks’ can be confirmed as the first version. 28
4. the bookseller thomas thorpe (1791–1851) listed a copy of ‘G. Lewis’s Observations respecting his charges for the Drawings executed by him for Dr. Dibdin’s Tour, privately printed, the size of the Tour’, along with a copy of ‘A Merry and Conceited Song’, one of the prospectuses for Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and a ‘Circular for a Roxburghe Club Meeting, with the Autograph of Dr. Dibdin, addressed to Sir F. Freeling’, all o V ered for a guinea as item 469 in his Catalogue of Books, Part X for 1837 . (There is no binding description so they simply may have been grouped to- gether.) Sir Francis Freeling (1764–1836), Dibdin’s ‘Licius’, had a choice collection of his works, many of them extra-illustrated, which were included in the sale of his library by Evans, 25 November–10 December 1836. His large-paper copy of the Tour , extended to four volumes with proof impressions of the plates and Lewis’s etchings, was lot 327. 29 One of the final lots in the sale is a ‘Collection of Various Scraps and Miscellanies’, which might have been the source of Thorpe’s o V ering. It is not located. 5. sir george henry freeling (1789–1841), Dibdin’s ‘Philelphus’, shared his father’s interest in collecting and outdid him in an enthusiasm for extra-illustration. In addition to the Haslewood copy (see 3), Freeling owned two other extra-illustrated sets of the Tour : lots 424, three volumes in four, and 427, three volumes in six. The descriptions in Freeling’s 1842 catalogue do not mention George Lewis’s remarks, but subsequent sales of lot 427 do. Bound for Freeling in olive morocco and richly tooled by Charles Lewis, it was purchased by Pickering for £ 89 5 s for Joseph Walter King Eyton (1820–1872). 30 In Eyton’s sale by S. Leigh Sotheby & Co., 15–22 May 1848, it was lot 489, with full credit given to its previ- 28 . Reproduced at pp. 371–8 in http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC11868783. 29 . Sir Francis Freeling’s Tour was listed in Quaritch Catalogue 1077 (1987), item 41. 30 . Mr Barlow’s copy of the G.H. Freeling catalogue was Eyton’s own copy with his notes regarding the Dibdin lots. He had considered the Haslewood copy (lot 437) but decided against it. Eyton produced a manuscript catalogue of his purchases at the G.H. Freeling sale in at least two copies, one of which is in the Grolier Club library.
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