Source-hunting, a favourite sport of historians of literature, is greatly facilitated where there survives a list of the books belonging to the particular writer under study; fortunately, such is the case with Lauder. However, while the catalogue of the sale of Lauder's library does provide a window into the poet's intellectual formation, not everything will necessarily be on display. It cannot safely be assumed that all the books ever owned by him will be recorded, since before the list was drawn up some items might already have been lost, stolen, sold, lent to friends, given away, or retained by members of his family. Moreover, some titles in the list may be those of only the first-encountered texts in volumes containing several individual works. Of the books listed, not all need have been of equal importance to their former owner: while some of those owned may never or seldom have been read, it is just as likely that he will have been influenced by books read but never owned. Despite such caveats, books furnish minds as well as rooms, and the list provides, even if imperfectly, an indication of the influences bearing on the poet, his own cultural preferences, and his professional concerns.

THE AUCTION-SALE CATALOGUE

At several points in the foregoing discussion, similarities between the poetry of George Lauder and William Drummond of Hawthornden have been noted, and the two poets invite comparison in yet another respect, to wit, the similar size of their respective libraries. However, the fates of the two collections were very different. Drummond bequeathed his library to Edinburgh University, his alma mater, and there most of his books still repose.1 Those belonging to Lauder, however, were sold at auction four years after the poet's death, and so were dispersed. As was customary in the Low Countries at that time, the sale took place in the Ridderzaal in The Hague. A copy of the sale-catalogue survives in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolffenbuttel: Catalogus Variorum et Insignium Librorum Omnium Facultatum ac Lingua[rum] Nobillissimi D. Georgii Lauderi […] Auctio habebitur ad diem 12.