I first met with John Pearson, if I remember rightly, when he had a room at Noble’s in the Strand. He had sent me his catalogue, and I went to buy a small London tract, for which he demanded £3, 3s., because it had all the three blank leaves; it was in fact a speech delivered to King James I. on his entry into the City in 1603 by Richard Martin of the Middle Temple. Mr Huth sent it to Bedford, who removed the leaves, which constituted the feature; but I did not see the mischief, till it fell to my lot to catalogue the piece years afterward. My good friend was very tiresome and difficult in these small matters, which in bibliography are apt to become great ones. I obtained for him a bipartite volume by Ben Jonson, comprising the description of James I.’s reception in London and his previous entertainment at Althorp, in 1603-4, at two different points, and explained to him the desirability of having them bound together, as the latter portion was named on the first title. They went to Bedford, I suppose, without a word, and were clothed in separate jackets.

Pearson became another of my coadjutors. His intelligence, energy, and good fortune did me excellent service. He dealt of course with many other persons, both here and in America; but a handsome proportion of his prizes passed through me to Mr Huth. The latter at that period—in the seventies—still lacked some of the most ordinary desiderata of a collection, which was beginning under my auspices to assume a more general character than it possessed, when I entered on the scene in 1866. Even Lovelace’s Lucasta, of which I purchased of Pearson George Daniel’s copy for £3, 3s., Carew’s Poems, 1640, of which I met with a beautiful specimen on thick paper in the original binding for 21s., and many others, were absent. It was Pearson’s object to come to the front, and I perhaps did my part in making him known to my patron, who eventually added his shop to his places of call, and inspected the articles, which the proprietor and I had agreed to lay before him as suitable and deficient.

The Turbervile above noticed was my most signal gain from this quarter. I shall never forget Pearson’s exultation, when I acceded to his proposal; he seemed, as he cried, ‘I have made £75 by it,’ as if he would have leapt over the counter.

His commercial transactions became sufficiently wide and lucrative, and all my purchases of him did not go to Mr Huth. A curious little piece of luck befel me in the case of a Chaucer wanting the end, which he had kept for years, and at length sold to me in despair. The next week Reeves & Turner obtained a second of the same impression by Thomas Petyt, wanting the commencement. Reeves let me take out the leaves I required for a trifle. I never experienced from Pearson any deficiency of straightforwardness, except that once Mrs Noseda and he had, I think, a joint hand in passing off a facsimile frontispiece of Taylor the Water-Poet’s Works, and I was the victim. I said nothing, but, like the Frenchman’s jackdaw, thought the more. He was an exceptionally shrewd and vigilant character, and nearly broke Lovejoy of Reading’s heart by getting from his assistant an uncut copy of Ruskin’s poems for a shilling during Lovejoy’s absence. But Pearson paid the price, which the fellow asked. I was in the shop, when he had just received through a third party a lovely copy of Walton’s Angler, 1653, in the pristine binding for £14 plus £3, 10s. to the bringer. The last copy in the market in precisely the same condition brought successively £310 and £415. Someone tells me that in both cases the buyer and the seller was one and the same party. Poor Walton! like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, and our other Great Ones, he has been converted into bric-À-brac. To your millionaire amateur it does not signify whether it is a book or a tea-pot or a violin, if the price is high enough—better still, if it is higher than was ever given before. That is his intelligent seeing-point. In the present instance the holder of the Walton, if the above-named view be correct, did not meet with a customer so enthusiastic as himself. He was a trifle too much in excelsis.

Pearson was almost the introducer of those stupendous prices for really first-rate books or rarities in book-form, which have now gone on ascending, till it is hard to tell where they will stop. Frederic Locker told me that he had asked him fifty guineas for a prose tract by Southwell a few years anterior in date to any recorded. Why not five hundred? With Pearson’s successors I have had many years’ pleasant acquaintance. Verbum sap. The volumes, which have changed hands on that ground, would form a library and a fine one.With the late James Toovey I never had a single transaction. But Mr Huth often spoke of him and of the Temple of Leather and Literature, as his place of business in Piccadilly was jocularly called from Toovey’s predilection for old morocco bindings. I do not pretend to know what was the exact nature of this business; but it must have been a very profitable one. Ordinary bookselling made only a small part of it. I always took Toovey to be a Jew, till I found that he was a Catholic; and it was a laughable circumstance that, when the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle-Hill had to be valued, he was the very person selected to perform the task, although Phillipps had laid down in his will that the house should never be entered, nor the books examined, by Mr Halliwell or a Papist.

Willis & Sotheran’s in the Strand was known to me by tradition. My father had bought books of Willis in early times, when the latter was in Prince’s Street and in the Piazza, before he joined Mr Sotheran. The shop in the Strand united with Pickering’s and one or two more to supply me with a handful or so of curiosities, while I remained what is termed an amateur. Later, it was one of the marts, to which I regularly resorted with advantage in quest of the wants of Mr Huth or the British Museum. An old-established business, it mechanically attracted year by year an endless succession of private parcels and single lots, which generally rendered the monthly catalogues remunerative reading. It is more than a quarter of a century ago, since I received one of these lists at Kensington, and spied out two unique items in the shape of Cookery Books of the Elizabethan period at 10s. 6d. each. I was on the top of the next omnibus going Londonward, and entered the premises with a nervous uncertainty not legible on my countenance. I applied for the lots; they brought them to me; they were in splendid state; I clapped them in my pocket, and I left the place with a lightened heart. I met some of my friends, who were coming in, as I walked out, and I guessed their mission. How sorry I was for them! Mr Pyne was one. There came into my thoughts a saying of Mr Huth’s elucidatory of the success of his firm: ‘We do not profess,’ quoth he, ‘to be cleverer than other folks; but we get up earlier in the morning.’

Mr Huth owed his copy of Caxton’s Game of Chess to Willis & Sotheran. An individual brought it into the shop, and offered it for sale. It was in vellum, but wanted A i. and A viii., the former a blank leaf. What the firm gave, I never heard; but when Lilly approached them on behalf of Mr Huth, the demand was £1000. It is always wise to start with a margin. The ultimate figure was £300. It was the second edition, of which Trinity College, Cambridge, the Duke of Devonshire, and Lord Tollemache, have perfect copies.

It was the buyer (Francis), whom Willis & Sotheran employed about 1860, to whom we were all indebted for discovering at or near Plymouth the unique tragedy of Orestes, 1567, which went to the Museum, and for a duplicate of which Payne Collier safely offered at the time fifty guineas, and the equally rare copy of Drayton’s Harmony of the Church, 1610, which was acquired by Mr Corser, and at his sale by Mr Christie-Miller. I have not heard that the West of England has of recent years yielded many such finds as it formerly did. It was long a profitable hunting ground.

Speaking of Drayton, of whose early editions it has fallen to my lot to secure several at different times, I am reminded that in Willis & Sotheran’s 1862 catalogue appeared that eminent writer’s Tragical Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy, 1596, of which only three copies are known; the volume turned out on examination to want a leaf; but luckily in another list issued by the firm there was a second example misdescribed as Drayton’s Poems, which, though elsewhere imperfect, supplied the immediate deficiency; and the duplicate, which had served me so well, was wasted. I had been about the same time disappointed by missing at a shop in Old Bond Street (not Boone’s) the English Ape, 1588, in the original binding at £2, 12s. 6d.; and curiously enough the house in the Strand purchased it, bound it in red morocco, and put it in a subsequent monthly circular at £5, 5s. I had to stretch my purse-strings, and go to the higher figure.

I have elsewhere given Willis himself credit for introducing me to a small literary commission, which if it did not yield much money, did not entail much labour. The only other experience of the same class afforded me the labour without any result. It was a parson of independent fortune, who called me in for my opinion on certain Diaries of Travel, which he had written, and which he thought (most correctly) in need of editorship. The negotiation came to nothing, and so did my fee. It was not my province to inform the reverend gentleman that his MSS. were waste-paper, nor would the mention of his name be of any utility. He was unconsciously one of those sempiternal caterers for the paper-mill, whose unprinted effusions generally figure in the auctions among the bundles in the wane of the season, and they resemble in their inevitable doom the processions through the streets of the drover’s charges on their way to our shambles. Let us pray that from the pulp of this holy man’s derelicta, swept out by his executors, something worthier and more durable may evolve.

There is quite a group of minor or secondary dealers, whose absolute rank to me was indifferent, and from whom it has been my fortune in the course of my career as a bibliographical huntsman to bring away spoils of the chase neither few nor unimportant.

An odd case of rather shallow misrepresentation occurred, when I went to an emporium in Conduit Street in search of a copy of Stapylton’s Musoeus, 1647. It was marked 5s. 6d. in the catalogue, but, said the owner, ‘that is a misprint for 15s.’ I put down the larger sum, merely inquiring how the odd sixpence crept in!

The Wallers of Fleet Street, originally next to Saint Dunstan’s Church, subsequently higher up, had known my grandfather. The younger was my more particular acquaintance, and helped me to many choice items. I recollect that I refused a spotless copy of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespear, in old sheep, 1807, for 7s. 6d., which Waller assured me that Mr George Daniel had seen, and estimated at a guinea; and I regret this more than I congratulate myself on the acquisition of an unique folio MS. of Edmond Waller’s Poems, which his namesake had got from a furniture sale for one shilling, and let me have for fifty, of an unknown impression of A Description of Love, 1629, tenderly and mercifully swaddled between two imperfect books in a volume, and itself (the sole thing of value) as clean as a new penny, and several other ungratefully forgotten blessings. It was to the Waller volume that the last editor of the poet was indebted for the unprinted and otherwise undescribed dedication to Queen Henrietta Maria, of which I furnished the earliest notice an age since to Notes and Queries. By the way, I must not overlook the matchless copy in boards uncut of the Papers relating to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, published at Boston, 1769, for which I tendered Waller 5s., and for which an American house gave £8.

I had not much to do with the Rimells and the Walfords. The former put in my way two or three rarities, and I furnished them with a couple of valuable Americana for the Carter-Brown library at New York. The books which I associate with this firm are Philipot’s Elegies on the Death of William Glover, Esquire of Shalston in Buckinghamshire, 1641, which cost me 4s., and Gardyne’s Theatre of the Scottish Kings, 1709, both alike scarce to excess. Of neither are more than two copies known, and the Grenville one of the second is mutilated. Mr Christie-Miller would have been glad to possess the Philipot; but it went to the national library; the Gardyne passed into the Huth collection.

The Walfords were instrumental in enabling me to track out a pamphlet by Taylor the Water Poet relative to a murder at Ewell in 1620, of which I had been on the scent for years, and of which a copy at last occurred in a huge pile of miscellanies at Sotheby’s tied up together at the close of a season. I found that Walford was the buyer; and when I waited on him, it turned out that it was a commission. For whom? Well, a customer in Scotland. But he did not want the account of a transaction at Ewell! Well; he would write, if I would name my price. I offered 10s. The tract came up; I took all the particulars; and the Museum relieved me of it at £4, 4s. No duplicate has ever been seen, I believe.

John Russell Smith was one of my earliest publishers. I became acquainted with him in 1857 in that capacity, and continued to do literary work on his behalf down to 1869. I subsequently purchased a large number of old books of him and of his son, Alfred Russell Smith, through whose hands passed some very rare articles less highly appreciated by him than by myself. Which was the truer estimation, I do not know; but Smith now and then ingenuously stated to me that a lot in the catalogue, which I selected, had been ordered over and over again. Such was the case with the Book of Measuring of Land, by Sir Richard de Benese, Canon of Merton Abbey, printed at Southwark about 1536 by James Nicholson, priced 15s. in the original stamped binding, and Henry Vaughan the Silurist’s Thalia Rediviva, marked 25s. Smith said one morning that a party had sent him three tracts, which he shewed me, and wanted 25s. for the lot; and he should expect 5s. for his trouble, if they would suit me. ‘Very well,’ said I. But the party advanced to 30s. and Smith by consequence to 35s. Still I was agreeable; and at that figure they became mine. Two of them were by Taylor the Water Poet, one unique—the original narrative of his journey to Bohemia, 1620; and it was, as so many of these exceedingly rare items often are, in a perfect state of preservation.

I once went through Hotten’s stores in Piccadilly, and found nothing but the copy which Mr Huth had, of Wither’s Psalms, printed in the Netherlands, 1632, in unusually fine condition, and marked 15s. Hotten had from Cornwall, in a volume, Cowley’s Poems set to music by W. King, 1668, and Bunyan’s Profitable Meditations, the latter unique, and now in the British Museum. I somehow missed that; but I bought the Cowley; it is the identical one described in the Huth catalogue. Hotten had a curious propensity for marking his old books at figures, which might denote the exiguity of his profit—or the reverse. He would not ask 18s. or a guinea, but 19s. 6d.

There was a constitutional and aggravating proneness on his part as a publisher to the pursuit of a tortuous path in preference to a straight one; and I am afraid that he took a certain pride in trying to outwit or overreach his client. Most unwillingly I had in the case of a small book, which he took, to involve him in two bills of costs from his sheer perversity in regard to his engagements; and the curious, but unfortunate sequel was that his successors, in taking over the interest, repudiated their balance of liability, and exposed themselves to a farther superfluous outlay. What was a poor author to do?

When he was in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, I saw a good deal of John Salkeld, a north-countryman, whom I always found perfectly satisfactory and reliable. He never had occasion to carry out the practice on me, as I was a most exemplary paymaster, especially in those cases, when I thought that the money was at once an object and an encouragement; but Salkeld often spoke to me of less punctual clients at a distance, whom he should like to hug. My most notable adventure in connection with him was the result of a catalogue, which he sent to me, so that I got it the last thing on a Saturday night. There was a Wither’s Emblems, Daniel’s Works and Panegyrick in a volume on large paper, and one or two other matters. They were not very cheap; but they were worth having, thought I. I knew that Salkeld resided over his shop, and on the Sunday evening I walked up to town from Kensington, proceeded to Orange Street, found my man at home, and carried off my plunder in triumph. What charming books they were! For no better a copy of the Wither Mr Huth had paid Toovey £40. Both wanted the pointers to the dial.

Like so many other of my doings in the book-market, the solitary experience which I had of a person named Noble was with an immediate eye to Mr Huth. He (Noble) had come into possession of a handful of scarce old English tracts, including a volume containing several by Lady Eleanor Audley, a very rare item in the series of George Chapman’s poetical works—his Epicede on Prince Henry, 1612, absolutely complete with the folded engraving, and Joshua Sylvester’s Elegy on the same personage, so difficult to procure in such condition as Mr Huth always desired. These treasures I converted for Noble into cash, and was immediately afterward favoured with a casual suggestion elsewhere, which led me to take them to Riviere to be measured for new coats, except the Lady Audley volume, which I deposited at Great Russell Street. I had paid Noble £2 for it, thinking it must be worth £3; but before I reached Bloomsbury, I thought that it might not be too dear at £7, 7s.

The only other misadventure of the kind—if it may be so termed, as no unpleasant consequences ensued—was in connection with a book, which some one stole from Stibbs in Museum Street, and sold to Salkeld, who sold it to me. I was apprised by the original owner that he had traced it to my hands; but I pointed out that I had purchased it in good faith in open market, and for the rest I referred him to the Trustees of the national library, where it had found a resting-place.Messrs Jarvis & Son succeeded during my acquaintance with them in stumbling upon a variety of bargains and prizes, which I usually appropriated. One was a splendid copy of Greene’s Pandosto, 1592, the only known one of that of 1588 in the Museum being imperfect. A second acquisition was the copy, which had belonged to James I. of the long-lost first edition of Lennard’s translation of Charron De la Sagesse, dedicated to Prince Henry; and a third was a singular metrical tract by John Mardelay, Clerk of the Mint to Henry VIII. called A Rueful Complaint of the Public Weal to England, printed under Edward VI., and completely unknown.

There was a remarkable coincidence between this Mardelay piece and an equally unique little volume by Thomas Nelson, 1590, which I purchased elsewhere about the same time, that both were folded in a precisely similar manner, as if the old owner grudged the space, which they occupied in a drawer or a box. They were perfectly clean and very much as they had left the printer’s hands. The Nelson was the hitherto undiscovered pageant of the Fishmongers under the mayoralty of John Allot, Lord Mayor of London, and Mayor of the Staple, and was six-and-twenty years anterior to any of which the company was aware. It was not published, but privately issued to members. I held this to be a great find, and I reproduced the text in the Antiquary, before I parted with the original to the Museum. The printer could not make out the meaning of staple, and in the first proof put steeple.

There was one more striking episode in my temporary contact with Jarvis & Son. I saw in a catalogue of miscellaneous books sold at Sotheby’s in 1890 a lot, which fixed my attention as a bibliographer. It was the English or Anglicised version of Henryson’s Æsop, printed at London in 1577, and of which David Laing, in his edition of the old Scotish poet, 1865, speaks as having been seen by him in the library of Sion College, when he visited that institution about 1830. He mentions that he wished to verify something at a later date, and that the volume had disappeared. I found on inspection that this was the identical book, no other being known anywhere, and I bought it under the hammer for £6, and let Jarvis & Son have it for £12, 12s. They sold it to Lord Rosebery. It had probably been a wanderer above half a century, since it quitted the College in the pocket of some divine of elastic conscience or short memory.