1891, £37); 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' 4to., 1635, 14s. (ibid., £15); 'Romeo and Juliet,' second, or first complete edition, 4to., 1599, £12 12s. (the Perkins sale, July 10, 1889, £164); 'King Lear,' 4to., 1608, £6 12s. (the Brayton-Ives sale, New York, March 5, 1891, $425); 'Sir John Oldcastle,' first edition, 4to., 1600, 19s. (the Gaisford sale, April 23, 1890, £46).

These modern prices are small in comparison with what might have been, for none of the copies above mentioned were in the finest condition. If we want first-rate records we must go further back—to the Daniell sale, for instance, held in 1864, when thousands of pounds were paid as a matter of course for a selection of these little quarto volumes, which had successfully eluded the greasy fingers of generations of playgoers, the fires of disgusted Puritans, and the ignorance of our own people. Never shall we see nearly three thousand distinct lots of English poetry as previously defined disposed of at one single sale again, never again will prices rule so low. Many of these books are not to be met with at all in our generation, no matter what price may be offered for them, seeing that, as an old book-hunting friend used to say, they have become 'scandalously uniquitous.'

In addition to early English texts, the great Duke had amassed a splendid collection of romances of the Quixotic school, known in polite circles as the Table Ronde. He was not content, it seems, with the printed editions, but also collected many manuscripts on vellum, illustrated with beautiful illuminations. Among these curious manuscripts were several which had been used and translated by the celebrated Walter de Mapes for the entertainment of his Sovereign, Henry II. The printed books of this character, some of which occasionally, though very rarely, gladden the hearts of romantic bibliophiles, included the twenty-four small volumes recounting the exploits of Amadis of Gaul, published at Lyons and Paris in 1577, etc., and also several duplicates, £16 16s. A fairly good set, without the duplicates, brought £4. 4s. in April, 1887—a dreadful drop, considering the demand there is for books of the kind. Still, this particular work has undoubtedly fallen, for another copy produced only £6 the June following. Nor, should I imagine, would 'L'Histoire du Noble Chavelier Berinus,' a quarto book printed at Paris, without date, sell for as much as £7 7s. at the present time, or 'Le Livre de Beufves de Hautonne,' folio, Paris, 1502, for £13 13s., or 'L'Histoire Merveilleuse du Grand Chan de Tartarie,' folio, 1524, for £22.

The twelve pages devoted to the enumeration of works of chivalry and romance glow with the martial achievements of Palmerin of England, Godeffroy de Boulion, Perceforest, Roy de la Grande Bretaigne, Perceval le Galleys, and scores of other champions who went about rescuing damsels in distress, sleeping in enchanted castles, and challenging the whole civilized race of men, one at a time, to mortal combat. Perceforest, by the way, in six folio volumes, Paris, 1528, went for £30, a fact worthy of note, inasmuch as another copy sold, a few months ago, for £10 l0s. Of all the knights of ancient days, the regal Perceforest was the least worthy of credence, which is saying a great deal. His folios bristle with dragons, necromancers of the worst type, heroic rescues, combats with giants, devils, and all kinds of monsters who strove, and in vain, to destroy this past-master of Quixotic enterprise. That such books did at one time exercise considerable influence over adventurous spirits is undoubted. They were the only novels of the day, the only bit of light reading to be had in the interval between one tourney and another.

Passing by a large and almost complete collection of the separately published works of Robin Greene, that unfortunate who bought a groat's worth of wit with a million of repentance, we come to the Voyages and Travels, and note, as before, the differences in prices. Hakluyt's 'Collection of Voyages,' 2 vols., folio, 1589-99, brought £4. 14s. 6d. (the Holding sale, January 17, 1895, £16; the Langham sale, June 19, 1894, £375, second edition, 3 vols., folio, which contained the map by Molyneux, of which only twelve copies are known. This copy belonged to the first issue, without the cartouche about Sir Francis Drake, which was subsequently added); 'Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas his Pilgrimes,' 5 vols., folio, 1625-26, £42 (the Toovey sale, February 26, 1894, £51); 'Sir Francis Drake Revived,' 1652, and 'The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake,' 1652, the two pieces 7s. (the Hawley sale, July 2, 1894, £6 5s.); 'Cooke's Voyages,' 8 vols., 4to., 1773-84, with the large plates bound in two folio volumes, £63 (December 5, 1893, at Christie's, £3 12s., and on many other occasions for about the same amount); Eden's 'History of Travayle in the West and East Indies,' London, 1577, £6 10s. (the Thornhill sale, April 15, 1889, £10 5s.; the Wimpole Sale, June 29, 1888, £18 10s., original binding); Vancouver's 'Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean,' 3 vols., 4to., and folio atlas of plates, 1798, £8 18s. (the Holding sale, January 17; l895, £5 5s.). It would be more than tedious to pursue this comparative analysis further. Suffice it to say that as a rule the prices realized in 1812 for books of travel were greater than would be realized now under similar circumstances, especially when the journeys undertaken were about the foot-worn Continent of Europe or in the various English counties. Pennant's 'Journey from Chester to London,' for example, is now a book of small account, yet the Duke of Roxburghe's copy sold for £7 15s.

Works relating to America are, curiously enough, almost absent from the Duke's catalogue, and it may fairly be taken for granted that at the beginning of the present century no one cared much about them. This will explain the extreme scarcity of many of these books now, for what people think lightly of they take no care to preserve. Hundreds and thousands of Americana must have been torn to fragments or otherwise destroyed in past days. Often of small size, they would escape the notice of lovers of folios, nor is their general appearance sufficiently imposing to appeal to those who value a book strictly in proportion to its external beauty. The Duke had only a few works of travel in any way relating to America, and as the list may be interesting, I have thought it best to transcribe it verbatim et literatim: