appointed an assistant master at Eton, and in 1771 succeeded Dr. Sumner
as headmaster of Harrow, a post he held for fourteen years.[85] He died
on the 31st of May 1817, at the rectory of Walkerne in the county of
Hertford, a living given to him by his College, which he held with the
rectory of Farnham in Buckinghamshire. He was buried at Exeter. Dr.
Heath, who was 'a scholar and a bibliomaniac,' added greatly to the
library given to him by his father, for which he built a large room at
Walkerne, where, says Dibdin, 'he saw, entertained, and caressed his
friends, with Alduses in the forenoon, and with a cheerful glass towards
evening, hospitable, temperate, kind-hearted, with a well furnished mind
and purse, and with a larder and cellar which might have supplied
materials for a new edition of Pynson's _Royal Boke of Cookery and
Kervinge_, 1500, 4to.'[86] Some years before his death Heath offered his
books to King's College, Cambridge, for half the sum they had cost him;
but the College authorities declined the purchase, and he then sold the
principal portion of them to some private individuals, who, Dibdin
believes, were Messrs. Cuthell and Martin, for three thousand pounds
beneath the sum they ultimately produced,[87] and they instructed Mr.
Jeffery of 11 Pall Mall to sell the books by auction. The sale took
place on Thursday, the 5th of April 1810, and twelve following days and
Wednesday, May 2nd, and eighteen following days. It consisted of four
thousand seven hundred and eighty-six lots, which realised eight
thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine pounds. The sale catalogue states
that the library consisted of 'rare, useful and valuable publications in
every department of literature, from the first invention of printing to
the present time, all of which are in the most perfect condition.'
Another catalogue, with the prices and purchasers' names, of which it is
said only two hundred and fifty copies were printed, was published later
in the year by Constable of Edinburgh. Both the catalogues are to be
found in the Library of King George III. in the British Museum.
Dibdin describes this sale in enthusiastic terms in his
_Bibliomania_:--'Never,' he writes, 'did the bibliomaniac's eye alight
upon "sweeter copies"--as the phrase is; and never did the
bibliomaniacal barometer rise higher than at this sale! The most marked
phrensy characterized it. A copy of the Editio Princeps of Homer (by no
means a first-rate one) brought L