The fluctuations and revolutions in the mercantile value of old English books present phenomena to our consideration of an instructive and occasionally of a tantalising character. No one has the power to foresee what future changes time may bring forth. It is the fashion with the vendor to force a purchase on his client, because, says he, this book cannot recur for sale, or this class of books is rising; but that is a faÇon de parler, nothing more. We are apt to sigh over the times when unique Caxtons could be had—ay, in our grandsires' time—for less than £20. In the sixteenth century twenty pence paid for them. But let us recollect that our estimation of an article depends on its cost so largely. What we acquire cheaply we hold cheaply. Should we have heard of many of our great modern collectors had old quotations survived? We have known personally one or two who would not dream of taking a volume at a low price; you had, as it were, to adjust it to their meridian. They failed to perceive how anything could be worth having if it was to be secured for a song. A hundred-dollar author might be barely admissible; a dollar man would be a disgrace to the collection.

As regards the strange vicissitudes of the tariff for second-hand books prices, there is an illustrative note from Robert Scott, the celebrated dealer, to Pepys, dated June 30, 1688, where he offers his customer four books for 34s., namely:—

The value set on the second and fourth items would now, if they were poor copies, be vastly in excess of the figures named by Scott; but for the other two a bookseller of the present day might not expect much more than Pepys was asked more than two hundred years ago.

The anecdotes of bargains picked up from day to day at the present time are plentiful, and (except for the fortunate finder) exasperating enough. But if we go back to a period when there were no auctions, no organised book depÔts, no newspapers, no railways and other such facilities, and men lived practically in separate communities, there can be no feeling of astonishment that our own early literature, like that of all other countries, has descended to us in an almost inconceivably shrunk volume. Books, and more especially pamphlets and broadsheets, were acquired, and, after perusal, flung away. There were not only no booksellers, in our sense, but down to the seventeenth century no systematic book-buyers. The library, as we understand the term and the thing, is a comparatively modern institution. Even the products of the Caxton press, very early in the next century, had sunk in commercial value to almost nothing; they were procurable for pence, nor did they acquire any appreciation till the reign of George III. and the rise of a new school of collectors, amongst whom we have to reckon the King himself.

It is not unusual to hear cases of cheap books having been acquired by the normal buyer in the open market. A friend tells you that he has bought such or such a volume of a dealer—perhaps a specialist in that line—a positive bargain; he was not very keen on purchases just at the moment, but he could not resist this. It may be so; but it is exceedingly problematical. If we were to inquire into the facts, one might, nay, one would almost certainly, find that the specialist had secured the item over all competitors at a recent auction, and had added his own profit. If he had not been present, the item would not have brought half. He was deemed rash by his confrÈres for giving so much. Of course there were two in it; but the under-bidder was, maybe, a second private enthusiast, who had gone to the full extent of his ideas or resources. Where, then, is the bargain?

The more or less artificial quotations at first-class auctions partly arise, no doubt, from the preference of certain private buyers for dispensing with the middle-man in the person of the bookseller. They do not object to employ him as an agent, and often enable him to secure their desiderata against all comers; but they somehow distrust him as an independent valuer of what he may offer over the counter; and this is, we fear, usually attributable to their diffidence of their own judgment and experience. There is a prevailing idea—it may be a prejudice—that in the salerooms an article fetches its worth and no more, and that you save the relative profit. You may or you may not. In the majority of cases, where the actual purchaser has no practical knowledge, and his resources are ample, the saleroom is a dearer market than the shop, if the property offered is that of an eminent person and is of high character; and even in obscurer sales bargains of any moment are only to those who are experts and are on the spot.

The prices or market values of the older and rarer books form a debateable ground, on which those interested will probably never arrive at anything approaching unanimity; and the reason or part of the reason seems to be that the actual realised figure depends on so many considerations, of which the mere character of the article put up for sale is not invariably the most influential. There is no species of weather-glass more sensitive than the bibliographical one; it responds to the slightest change in the commercial temperature, and must be carefully watched and studied by all who either seek to sell at a profit or to buy without the risk of serious loss on eventual realisation. Two books belonging to the same edition, bound in the same style by the same person, are they not one as good as the other? By no means necessarily so. Setting aside the extrinsic features which confer arbitrary value on literary property, one of the copies may have the start of the other, if it is something then in active or general demand; one may occur when the trade has a glut of stock, or has exhausted its credit at the auctioneer's; one may belong to a "genuine" collection, while the other may labour under the suspicion of being "rigged." Place them side by side; there does not appear to be sixpence between them, yet under the hammer one lot may fetch twice as much as the other.

This, it may be fairly argued, tells against the wisdom and security of laying out money by collectors of moderate resources on such doubtful investments; but look in whatever direction you please, and you will encounter similar phenomena. The buyer of coins, china, pictures, or any other curiosities, meets with an identical experience. Immense sums are lost in these recreations by one class to provide livelihoods, and very handsome livelihoods, too, for thousands and tens of thousands year by year. Sometimes the amount is not serious to the individual, or he can afford it; occasionally it is otherwise.

Prices fluctuate, and their fluctuation is apt to be deceptive. It is not merely the article which has to be considered, but the atmosphere in which it was sold. No one can be sure that he has secured a bargain till he sells it. At the Beckford sale the Thuanus copy of Buchanan's Poemata, 1579, fetched £54; a year or two later it was offered at £18, and in 1897 it occurs in a catalogue at £42. A rare theatrical item in the Mackenzie sale produced £62, 10s. In another in 1897 a second copy formed part of a bundle which brought 14s. At the Laing sale Beza's Confession of Christian Faith, in Italian, 1560, said to have been the property of Mary Queen of Scots, was carried to £149. After being kept by the purchaser many years, it realised during the current year £52. The Éclat which accompanied these books on their original realisation was absent, or was no more than a tradition. Some judged the Queen of Scots volume very dear even at the lower quotation. We saw it knocked down, and such was our own judgment.

These samples we adduce for the advantage of ordinary purchasers of literary property, whose estimation principally depends on its provenance. There is an inherent proneness to shrinkage of interest and value in the hands of any one who is not equally celebrated, or is not going to become so.

Even an approximately accurate appreciation in a commercial sense of books of various classes can only be reached by one who is behind the scenes, who can feel the pulse of the market, and who follows the incessant changes in its temperature and feeling. It is absurd for a simple amateur, who passes his time in a study or an office, to attempt or presume to instruct us on this subject. He knows what he has given for his own library, and what some of his friends have given for theirs, and he reads the accounts in the papers of periodical sales. But it is a widely different affair, when one sets about the task, intrusted to this or that individual by a friendly publisher or editor-general, in a scientific manner; and it is only under such circumstances that one realises, or can render intelligible to others, what prices actually mean and are, how much they depend on perpetually modifying and varying influences, and how little the quotations found in works of reference are to be trusted. The turns of the book-market are as sudden and strange, as delicate and mysterious, as those of a Bourse; and the steadfast and keen onlooker alone can keep pace with them—not he always; the wire-pullers are so many.

How, then, shall collectors of books, for example, protect themselves? They cannot. It is their diversion, their by-play; their time and thought are engaged elsewhere in business, where it is their turn to reap the fruit of special study and experience, and they hand over a percentage of this to the caterer for their pleasure. The whole world is, in other words, perpetually intent on gathering and distributing; we are, every one of us, buyers and sellers, not of necessaries only, but of luxuries and amusements.

Coming to the more immediate point, men nowadays, in the presence of a severe and almost homicidal competition for subsistence, have to devote their whole attention to their chosen employment, and have the most limited opportunities of ascertaining or verifying values as submitted to them by experts in the book-market; they have Lowndes, which is almost worthless, and Book Prices Current, which is, of course, more contemporary, but must be read between the lines; and the extreme difficulty of judging what is worth having, and how much should be given for it, has led to that frequent habit of collectors favouring a particular dealer, or, as an alternative, pursuing a policy highly unpleasant to dealers by acquiring direct from the salerooms. Fortunately for booksellers the latter plan does not suit busy men, and it is just that class, especially the merchant and the stockbroker, the solicitor and accountant, who are their best clients.

The trade has its sorrows and trials; but it cannot be a very bad one when we see how many live out of it, if they do not often make fortunes. The fact is, that the motives for buying books are almost as infinitely multifarious as the books themselves, and there exists not the volume for which the customer will not arise, if the holder can wait; and this customary incidence accounts for the familiar aphorism that booksellers accumulate stock, not money—an aphorism to which the exceedingly rare exceptions prove the rule.

Putting it differently, bookselling outside the current literature is a form of speculation which varies according to the class of investment which the stockholder selects; and it is quite necessary to bear in mind the nature and tendency of the business in order to more clearly appreciate the uncertainty of prices, and how utterly impossible it must ever be for any ordinary book-buyer to rely on his purchases as a representation of value. If he does not view the matter in that light, or chooses to let the instruction or pleasure derived from his acquisitions become a set-off against the outlay, it is very well; what he or his heirs get for the property is in that case all profit.

We dwell a little on this aspect of the matter, because we are quite aware that in purchasing books many persons look at the ulterior question, and even demand of the vendor how much the article is likely to bring when or if re-sold. Such a contingency usually limits itself to cases where a volume is secured for a special and temporary object, or where funds are restricted and the fancy is purely personal.

Apart from these considerations, there are other influences always at work to render the book-market uncertain and insecure. Collectors who have no fixed plan or aim are apt to follow the precedent set by such as have, or are supposed to have, one, and this obviously tends to create a run on particular subjects or authors, till the call is satisfied, or the coterie grows sensible of the inexpediency of proceeding any further. A revolt from a fad naturally gluts the market with the discarded copies, and the latest vendors have to bear the brunt. Such is not an occasional incidence, but one continually in progress among a certain quota, and a large quota, too, of the book-buying public, who let others judge for them, instead of judging for themselves.

It cannot be treated as otherwise than an ordinary and reasonable sequitur that prices which are purely artificial are also arbitrary and precarious. The quotations which are to be found in such a publication as Book Prices Current are at best a bare record of facts; but with such a record at his elbow no man who does not possess a fair amount of knowledge and judgment would be safe in his figures. It would be little better than plunging. Still less is it of any use to rely on the reports in the press, which are frequently inaccurate, and in nine cases out of ten are the work of inexperienced persons.

The careful and discerning observer of these problems (for such they indeed are) discovers that the high prices for books, which the trade is never tired of citing as an encouragement to its connections, are almost invariably associated with conditions which are adventitious or accidental, and which scarcely ever comprise benefit to a living individual. A man must be truly exceptional, phenomenally above suspicion, bedridden with an incurable complaint, to disarm the scepticism of the wary buyer under the hammer; it is the property of the departed which is preferred; for the result cannot help him, and he is not at hand to reserve lots. So recently as 1896, there was an exception to the prevailing rule; but it was one rather in appearance than in reality. We allude to the Frere sale at Sotheby's. Now, we repeat that this was merely an ostensible departure from ordinary experience; and what we mean is that the most valuable portion of the library was that which once belonged to another and antecedent person, Sir John Fenn, and that these items had been long known to exist, and were desiderata for which public and private collections had hitherto thirsted in vain. No wonder, then, that there was a dead set at them, the living owner maulgre. The booksellers are apt to complain nowadays of their inability to move or place items with which they cannot give a certificate of character. It will not always suffice to allege that they have realised a great deal of money heretofore, as vouched by Lowndes; they must carry with them some definite recommendation; they must exhibit remarkable allusions; they may be written by an ancestor or namesake of the buyer in view; at all events, if they are not by a good author, they must be on a good subject. Their interest must be (1) personal; (2) local; or (3) topical. There is a drift on the part of collectors of the purer type toward accredited and certified securities—toward recognised writers. Established character goes for more than mere rarity. The trade can always place fine copies of authors who have made their personality standard: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Sydney, Jonson, Milton, Butler, Swift, Thomson, Goldsmith, Miss Burney, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Thackeray, George Eliot. If to the more fastidious or self-diffident amateur an excessively rare item is introduced without credentials, it is in danger of being rejected; the same principle applies to certain foreign writers, such as Cervantes, Montaigne, MoliÈre, Corneille, La Fontaine. But in almost all these cases the demand is not for collected or library editions, or even for first copies of everything coming from the pens of those writers. Chaucer has to be served up in the types of Caxton or De Worde or Pynson; Spenser is only sought in quarto and octavo; Shakespeare means the four folios and certain quartos, and the Poems in octavo; the leading aim in Sydney is the Arcadia of 1590; Jonson is just admissible in folio (the right one), but is preferred in quarto; by Milton we mean the Comus, Lycidas, Poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in the original issues. Butler is only represented by his Hudibras; Swift by his Gulliver; Defoe by his Crusoe (some must have all three volumes, although the first is worth nearly all the money); Thomson by the Seasons; Goldsmith by the Vicar of Wakefield; Miss Burney by one or two of her Novels in boards; Dr. Johnson by his Rasselas; Scott by the Waverley series with uncut edges, and so forth.

The actual current appreciation of old books seems to be, to a large and increasing extent, in the ratio of their literary or artistic attraction; and under the second head we comprise typography and wood-engraving; and we think that we could establish that, as a rule, the highest bids in modern days are for something of which the reputation or importance, or both, are a matter of tacit acknowledgment and acceptance. A merely curious volume may fetch money; but it must be something beyond that to make the pulse beat more quickly and form a record.

Two considerations govern and recommend such a course—those of commercial expediency and of space. There is not much probability that in the time to come book-buyers will arise to renew the traditions of the Harleian and Heber libraries, or even of such vast heterogeneous assemblages of literary monuments as those formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, James Crossley, Joseph Tasker, Gibson-Craig, and a few others. The feeling is more in favour of the French view—small and choice; and there is no doubt that, as a rule, the sale of a collection should not occupy more than three days. Beyond that time the interest flags and prices are apt to recede.

At the same time there has always been, and will be, a powerful curiosity in the direction of knowing or hearing what certain rare or superlatively important books occasionally bring. The feeling is rather more general than might be imagined, for it extends to those who are not collectors, yet like to see how foolish other people are, or, again, store up the information, in case they should have the good fortune to meet with similar things in their travels. When one thinks of the extraordinary casualities which have brought to light undescribed works or editions, and continue to do so year by year, there is no reason to despair of completing ourselves in due course in many and many a direction. The tendency in prices of late has certainly been favourable to books which are at once rare and admittedly important; and we have said that the latter feature and quality appear to be weightier than mere unfrequency of occurrence. For instance, any given number of copies of such comparatively common volumes as the first folio Shakespeare, the first FaËry Queen, the first Paradise Lost, Herrick, Beaumont and Fletcher, will present themselves in the market and command steadily advancing figures; it is the same with Pope and Dryden in a measure, and with some of the more eminent moderns. The literary Éclat stimulates the biddings.

Those works which represent the maximum value during recent years have been:—

(i.) The earliest examples of printing, at all events in book-form; MissÆ Speciales, and other smaller books executed by Gutenberg previous to 1455, or at all events to the Bible ascribed to that date; Gutenberg's Bible, otherwise known as the Mazarin Bible, 1455, re-issued by Fust and Schoeffer in 1456; the Psalters of 1457 and 1459, designed for the Cathedral and Benedictine monastery of Mainz respectively; the Chronicles of Monstrelet on vellum; Lancelot du Lac on vellum, 1488; the Sarum Missal, 1492, 1497, 1504; Caxton's two Troy-Books, two Jasons, Arthur, Speculum VitÆ Christi and Doctrinal of Sapience on vellum, Canterbury Tales and other separate works of Chaucer, Paris and Vienne, &c.; Book of St. Albans, 1486, and other works printed there, 1480-1534; Tyndale's New Testament, 1526; Coverdale's Bible, 1535; Boece's Chronicles of Scotland on vellum, 1536; the Huth Ballads; Montaigne's Essais, 1580; the same in English, 1603, 1613; Spenser's FaËry Queen, 1590-96; Constable's Diana, 1592; Bacon's Essays, 1597, 1598; Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, 1st quartos, Sonnets, and the collected Plays, 1593-1623. (ii.) Shelton's Don Quixote, 1612-20; first editions of Daniel, Drayton, Lodge, Watson, Barnfield, Breton, &c.; Milton's Comus, 1637, Lycidas, 1638, Paradise Lost, 1667; Walton's Complete Angler, 1653, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 1678, and any other capital or standard authors of the seventeenth century, particularly Lovelace, Carew, Suckling, down to Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, which, though a common book, has lately grown a dear one by sheer force of companionship.

There seems a disposition to look more indifferently on volumes which have no certificate or passport. Secondarily, as in the case of Florio's version of Montaigne, items are admitted as hangers-on and interpreters of great authors.

The last copy of the FaËry Queen, 1590-96, offered for sale, an extraordinarily fine one, brought £84, of Robinson Crusoe, £75. The British Museum paid for the Book of Common Prayer, 1603, a year earlier than any edition so far described, £175. It was obtained by the vendor from a sale at Sotheby's, where its liturgical interest was overlooked.

The question of prices in all these cases is involved in equal uncertainty and difficulty. The second Psalter of 1459 brought at the Syston Park sale £4950. Mr. Quaritch still holds it (1897), and asks £5250. The British Museum possesses both impressions. This was the highest figure ever reached by a single lot in this country. Gutenberg's Bible follows, copies on vellum and paper having produced from £1500 to £4000; the vellum copies are deemed more valuable, but of those issued by Gutenberg himself we seem to have only examples on paper. The Huth copy of the latter type, from the Sykes and H. Perkins libraries cost its late owner £3650. Mr. Grenville for his gave £500. As we have already remarked, the book has a tendency to become commoner. The Ashburnham Fust and Schoeffer Bible of 1462 brought £1500; at the Comte de Brienne's sale in 1724, where Hearne refers to the "vast prices," the Earl of Oxford gave for the same book £112.

The History of King Arthur, printed by Caxton, 1485, for which Lord Jersey's ancestor gave £2, 12s. 6d. about 1750 to Osborne, was carried at the Osterley Park sale in 1885 to £1950, the British Museum underbidding; while the Troy-Book in English from the same press fetched £1820; and at the dispersion of a curious lot of miscellanies, apparently derived from Darlaston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire, an imperfect, but very large and clean, copy of the first edition of the Canterbury Tales, by Caxton, was adjudged to Mr. Quaritch at £1020, a second one, by an unparalleled coincidence presenting itself at the same place of sale a few months later, only four leaves wanting, but not so fine, and being knocked down at £1800 to the same buyer. The Asburnham Chaucers and other works from the same press were (with one or two exceptions) so poor, that it was surprising that they sold even so well as they did.

We descend to relatively moderate quotations when we come to the Daniel (now Huth) Ballads in 1864 (£750); the £670 and £810 bidden for the Caxton's Gower at the Selsey sale in 1871 and the Osterley Park sale in 1885 respectively; the £600 paid for the Book of St. Albans, 1486, wanting two leaves, in 1882; and the £420 at which Mr. Quaritch estimated the Troy-Book of 1503. The price asked for the original MS. of the Towneley Mysteries in 1892, £820, strikes one as reasonable by comparison.

But amounts which we venture to think unduly extravagant have of late years been obtained at Christies's rooms for certain books, such as Lady Elizabeth Tirrwhyt's Prayers, 1574, bound in gold, and said to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth (1220 guineas);[4] Henry VIII.'s Prayers, 1544, printed on vellum,[5] and enriched with notes by the King, the Queen, Prince Edward, and Princess Mary (610 guineas, as above mentioned); and a third folio Shakespeare, 1663-64, with both titles, but represented as being almost unique in that state, £435. What a contrast to the old prices! Even in our time and memory, the first folio could be had in fine state for £50 or £60, the second for £5, 5s., the third for £50, and the fourth for £5, 5s. George Daniel, we are informed by his representatives, gave about £220 for his first Shakespeare to William Pickering, and Mr. Corser kept his 1632 book in his dining-room at Stand Rectory among the commoner volumes, although it was a fine copy. A middling set now fetches £600 or thereabout.

The earlier standard both for English and foreign rarities was undoubtedly much lower. In Osborne's Catalogue for 1751, the Toledo Missal, described as the scarcest volume in the world, was valued only at £35. In the Heber, and even in the Bright sale, from £10 to £25 secured some of the greatest gems in ancient English literature.

At the Frere auction at Sotheby's, 1896, however, the realisation of the Fenn books beat every record, considering that the copies were generally so poor; and it was hard indeed to see where the value was in a Herbert's Ames accompanied by an extra volume of typographical fragments, of which many were mutilated and many were worthless (£255).

The Book of St. Albans, 1486, as it is usually designated, has descended a little from its original rank as a first-class rarity owing to the successive discovery of unknown copies. The romance connected with the acquisition of the Grenville one has been more than once printed; but the Chronicles of England, from the same press, especially on vellum, maintains its reputation for the utmost rarity, although there were two impressions; and the same may be said of the issues by William of Mecklin, Caxton, and Gerard de Leeu, all and any of which could not, if complete, fail to command very high prices even on paper.

£4900 for the second edition of the Mainz Psalter, 1459, appears (as we have observed) to be the largest sum ever paid in this country for a single work; and the vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible follows, £900 behind; at least at the price of £4000 it fell to Mr. Quaritch at the Ashburnham sale in 1897. But for the Manesse Liederbuch, a thirteenth-century MS. of national ballads, carried away by the French from Heidelberg in 1656, and found among the Ashburnham MSS., the German Government practically paid in 1887 £18,000. What may be termed a bad second was the Duke of Hamilton's Missal, sold to the German Government in 1887 for £10,000; but that also belongs to the manuscript class.

It must be an absolute truism to state that at the present moment the American is a material factor in influencing the book-market. He is less so, perhaps, in the sort of way in which he assisted the booksellers of a bygone generation in reducing or realising their stocks; but he has come to the front more than ever as a competitor for the prizes. There was a day when countless Transatlantic libraries were in course of formation; but they are now fairly complete, and, moreover, they have the means at hand, not formerly available, of filling up the gaps at home.

Our American kinsfolk have undoubtedly become masters of an almost countless number of bibliographical gems, and have been content to pay handsomely for them. We do not hear of any sensible reflux of old books from the States, but that might happen hereafter under the influence of financial depression. At the same time, there is perhaps nothing on the other side of the Atlantic which is not represented in duplicate here, unless it be in an instance or two, as, for example, the perfect Caxton Morte Arthur, 1485; and even those volumes, which are of signal rarity, are almost without exception in repositories accessible to all.

Returning for a moment to the commercial aspect of our present topic, the Transatlantic acquirer at any cost makes the fixture of high, even ridiculous, prices for certain books impossible. Beyond the maximum there is a higher maximum still. Who would have dreamed of a first edition of Burns, although uncut, bringing, as it did just lately (February 1898) in an Edinburgh auction-room, £572, or a sixpenny volume on Ploughs by one Small, £30, because it bore on the title, Rob^t. Burns, Poet, in the great man's own hand, as well as a holograph memorandum attached to flyleaf? In the case of the Kilmarnock Burns of 1786 the sole excuse of the purchaser was its uncut state, for it is a comparatively common book. It was acquired by Mr. Lamb of Dundee, a hotel-keeper, of one Mr. Braidwood for £60. A second copy in paper covers, also uncut, exists; but the general condition is not so good. There are in London and other English centres, however, American export and commission agents, independently of those houses which make shipments to the States a collateral branch of their business. It has been the cry, ever since we can recollect, that our cousins were draining the old country of its books, and yet the movement continues—continues with this difference, that the Americans have now plenty of ordinary stock, and are more anxious to limit their acquisitions to rarities. The number of public and private libraries has become very considerable; the most familiar names are Lenox, Carter-Brown, Tower, and Pope, the last the purchaser of the King Arthur printed by Caxton in 1485, and formerly in the Harleian and Osterley Park collections. There is an occasional reflux of exportations, and we should like to hear one day of the Arthur being among them.

One not very pleasant aspect of American and other plutocratic competition has been to convert most of the capital old English books from literature into vertu. What else is it, when two imperfect Chaucers bring £2900, and a Walton's Angler, £415, and where for the second and third folio Shakespeares persons are found willing to give a profit on £500 or £600?

The Transatlantic buyer, or indeed the buyer at a distance anywhere, has no option in employing an agent on the spot to acquire his desiderata, and he is practically in his hands. So long as your representative is competent it is well enough, and on the whole the American agencies in London are, we think, both that and conscientious. But the frequenter of the salerooms cannot fail to note a very unsatisfactory aspect of this business by proxy, where an inexperienced amateur with a well-lined purse employs an almost equally inexperienced person to act on his behalf—that is to say, one who is a bookseller by vocation, but who enjoys no conversance with bibliographical niceties. His principal consequently scores very poorly by buying wrong things at the right prices; but if he is satisfied, who need be otherwise? And his error, if his property is not realised in his lifetime, never comes home to him! Nevertheless, to buy with other people's eyes and judgment is not, after all, the best form; all that can be pleaded for it is, that it is the sole resource of the individual who has no time to devote to the practical side, or who, if he has, distrusts his own knowledge; and as everything has its compensation, such are the customers on whom the trade mainly leans. If the amateur expert were to be too much multiplied, the professional bookseller would inevitably be a grave sufferer.

Those are in the safest hands, perhaps, who are in their own. But in the case of books, as of all analogous property, the next best thing to acting for oneself is to employ a high-class dealer, or, if the line is very special, one who enjoys a reputation for conversance with the particular branch of inquiry. Where a collector who does not possess personal knowledge, and takes into his service a bookseller who is not much more informed, or who has not studied certain classes of literature, it is bound to be an exemplification of the blind leading the blind, and one, at all events, unless he has a very long purse, falling into the ditch.

Under any circumstances, it is unquestionably beneficial to any private buyer to take some pains to arrive at at least a general knowledge of values, as well as of the bearings and extent of the field which he may choose. He should not be a puppet in the hands of his representative, if he can help it. Where he cannot, he is apt to buy in one sort of market and to sell in another. Not the worst policy is to hand a commission to one's strongest opponent, if he will or can take it. It disarms him. But some firms dislike agency, as the profit, though sure, is often so narrow, particularly where the person employed is a specialist in the line, and would have given for purposes of re-sale in the ordinary way twice or thrice as much as the item fetches, his personal opposition withdrawn. Hence it is not unusual among commission-agents at book-sales to charge, not on the price realised, but on the figure given by the client. The latter authorises his representative to bid up to £10 for this or that lot; it drops at £2; the fee for buying it is a percentage, not on the lower, but the higher amount. A commission of £6 was given by the present writer for a volume of John Leland's Tracts; it dropped at 2s.; his agent charged him 10s. brokerage.

Some hand their orders direct to the auctioneer, and this may be done within certain limits; but if the practice becomes too habitual, the dealers retaliate by bidding against the rostrum. "All is fair in love and war."

[4] Now in the British Museum by the munificence of the late Sir Wollaston Franks (Department of Antiquities).