Baskerville's Bible brought what we should now consider to be an outrageous sum, what shall be said of 'The Holy Bible, illustrated with Prints, published by T. Macklin, six volumes, folio, 1800,' which went for £43, incomplete though it was. Some £2 10s. for the whole seven volumes is not at all an uncommon auction price at the present day, and this amount and more would most certainly be swallowed up by the binding alone. What it comes to is that among all these books of theology, Biblical comment, criticism, polemics, sermons, and works of the Fathers, prices have fallen since 1812, except in those cases where collectors have stepped in to rescue old Bibles, works associated with some great religious revolution, or specimens of rare typography from the presses of old and noted printers.

For instance, there was here another Caxton called 'The Prouffytable boke for Mane's Soul,' folio, described as 'a beautiful copy,' which went for £140, and 'A Lytell Treatyse called Lucydarye,' 4to., Wynkyn de Worde, which brought £10. During the last dozen years the former book has appeared twice. At the Earl of Aylesford's sale in March, 1888, it brought (in company with 'The Tretyse of the Love of Jhesu Christ,' by Wynkyn de Worde, 1493) £305, and in July, 1889, an inferior copy, badly wormed, sold for £100.

These are the sort of books beloved by large public libraries, which are fast swallowing up the few that remain. From a pecuniary point of view it would perhaps pay some rich book-hunter of the Lenox type to buy up everything of the kind he could lay his hands on, though the worst of speculations such as these is that the interest on the money invested has a tendency to swell the principal, and so to add enormously to the original cost.

Among books that have gone down in price since the Duke of Roxburghe made his famed collection are those classical works of the ancients which were at that time all the rage. Virgil is no longer a name to conjure with, unless he happen to rank as a sound copy of the editio princeps. The first edition of Virgil was printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome, without date (1469?), and the Duke, notwithstanding the search of a lifetime, never came across a copy of that. Not more than seven copies can now be traced, and only two of these have come to the hammer for more than a hundred years. One, though imperfect, realized 4,101 francs at the La Vallière sale held at Paris in 1784, and the other £590 at the Hopetoun House sale at London in February, 1889. Then Homer is also a most desirable companion if he happen to have been printed at Florence, in two volumes, folio, 1488. About £100 is his price under those circumstances. Speaking generally, however, unless the printer comes to the rescue of a Greek or Latin classic, it may fairly be said to have fallen on an unappreciative generation. Scores upon scores of volumes, the very flowers of classic days, edited by Cunningham, Heyne, Person, and other first-rate scholars of the last century, are to be met with in this bulky catalogue at sums varying from £2 to £3 each. In an old book of this class, a copy of Epictetus, edited by Heyne, and published at Dresden in 1756, was a slip of paper with a memorandum of the price at which it had been purchased in 1760. It was a bookseller's bill for £1 12s., made out to one 'Mr. Richard Cosgrove,' doubtless a good customer in his day. I have the book now, and it cost me fourpence, as much as it was worth. At the Duke of Roxburghe's sale a copy of this same edition brought £1 4s. This, no doubt, is rather an extreme case, but it will serve to illustrate the general principle sought to be enunciated, namely, that eighteenth-century classics are, for the most part, but wastepaper, for the simple reason that only a comparatively small number of people can read them. The learning of the schools may be deep and thorough—to assert the contrary would be to offend many excellent scholars of our own day; but it is nevertheless extremely probable, to say the least, that there are more books of the kind than there is any demand for, and so they litter the stalls, braving the wind and rain, till they are rescued by the merest chance and given house-room for a brief space.

In the opinion of many collectors the word 'poetry' only embraces English verse of a certain period, or written by certain people. The Duke's library was particularly rich in ancient English verse, lyric and dramatic, and some of the prices realized were very high. Webbe's 'A Discourse of English Poetrie,' 4to., 1586, brought £64, and 'The Paradyse of Daintie Devises,' 4to., 1580, £55. A curious collection of some thousands of ancient ballads, in three large folio volumes, sold for £477 15s. This collection, which was stated to be the finest in England, was originally formed for the celebrated library of the Earl of Oxford in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was even then supposed to excel the Pepys collection at Cambridge. It came from the Harleian Library, and was purchased and afterwards largely added to by the Duke, who managed to secure a ballad printed by Leprevik at Edinburgh in 1570, a ballad quoted in 'Hamlet,' of which no other copy was known to exist, and many other extraordinary rarities. Dibdin was present when the 'poetry' was competed for, and bought several hundred pounds' worth of books, either on his own or somebody else's account, the whole of which he could easily have stowed away in his capacious pockets.

Naturally enough, the works of Shakespeare would first be turned to by anyone who held this catalogue in his hand for the first time. There are nearly three pages of closely printed entries referring to the great dramatist, and the only conclusion that can be arrived at is that in 1812 the early quartos must have been, if not exactly common, at any rate of no great rarity. It would be impossible to argue that Shakespeare was not then appreciated, for the contrary is well known to have been the fact. The late Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in after-years talked of picking up early quartos for a few shillings each, and lamented that, for some mysterious reason which he found himself unable to explain, they had suddenly become scarce. Very likely he himself had excited a keen desire to possess them in the breasts of those who read his numerous books, or—publish it not in Gath!—the bulk of them may have fallen into unappreciative hands, and been used to light the fires withal.

However this may be, the early Shakespearian quartos, now of great price, were disposed of at the Roxburghe sale for only a little more, and occasionally for less, than the first editions of Marlowe, Massinger, and several other of the chief Elizabethan dramatists. A copy of the first folio sold, it is true, for £100, but the second only brought £15, the third £35, and the fourth £6 6s. This record, in the face of £84 for Boydell's edition in nine volumes, folio, 1802—a work which may now be expected to sell for £5 or £6, even with some of the illustrations after Smirke and others in proof state—is most extraordinary.

But let us get to the quartos and compare the prices of then and now. The first-named are those realized at the Roxburghe sale; those in brackets are modern, and authenticated with dates and items complete. There is more scope for reflection here, and a whole volume might be written on the mutability of fashion. 'Much a-doe about Nothing,' first edition, 4to., London, 1600, £2 17s. (the Gaisford sale, April 23, 1890, £130); 'A Midsommer Night's Dreame,' first edition, 4to., 1600, £3 3s. (ibid., £116); 'The Merchant of Venice,' by Roberts, first edition, 4to., 1600, £2 14s. (the Cosens sale, November 11, 1890, £270); 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' 4to., 1619, 5s. (the Lakelands Library, March 12,