The Book-Collector Part 17

CHAPTER XVI

Foundations of bibliography--Commencement of advertising books through catalogues and lists at end of other publications--Cla.s.ses of literature princ.i.p.ally in demand--Origin of sales by public compet.i.tion--A book-lottery in 1661--The book-auction in London makes a beginning--The practice extends to the provinces and Scotland (1680-95)--First sale-catalogue where Caxtons were separately lotted (1682)--Catalogue of a private library appended to a posthumous publication (1704)--Mystery surrounding the sources whence the Harleian Library was supplied with its early English rarities--An explanation--Indebtedness of the Heber Collection to private purchasers on a large scale--Vast additions to our knowledge since Heber's time--The modern auction-marts--Penny and other biddings at auctions--An average auction-room--Watching the Ashburnham sale--The collector behind the scenes--Key to certain prices--The Frost and the Boom--Difficulty of gauging quotations without practical experience--The _Court of Appeal_--The Duke of Wellington pays 105 for a s.h.i.+lling pamphlet--A few more words about the Frere sale in ill.u.s.tration of the Boom and something else--The Rig.

THE earliest method of communication between holders and vendors of books and probable buyers of them related to the issue of new works, or, at most, to such as were not out of date. Maunsell's celebrated folio, of which he was not apparently encouraged to proceed with more than certain sections, and which did not comprise the subjects most interesting to us, came out in 1595 in two parts, and was, notwithstanding its imperfect fulfilment, the most comprehensive enterprise of the kind in our language down to comparatively recent times. These matters usually took the form of notices, accompanying a published volume, of others already in print or in preparation by the same firm. No possessor or observer of old English books can fail to have met with such advertis.e.m.e.nts; but, as we have said, they limit themselves, as a rule, to current literature and the ventures of the immediate stationer or printer. To some copies of Marmion's _Antiquary_, 1641, we find attached a slip containing an announcement by Thomas Dring of old plays on sale by him at the White Lion in Chancery Lane, and inserted posterior to the issue of this particular drama, which does not bear Dring's name; and we all know the list of dramatic performances appended to _Tom Tyler and his Wife_, 1661, and probably emanating from Kirkman the bookseller, where we discern items belonging to an earlier period--of some of which we know nothing further. This catalogue, the material for which Kirkman had personally brought together by the expenditure of considerable time and labour, was re-issued in 1671, and from about that time Clavell and other members of the trade circulated periodical accounts of all the novelties of the season, but almost entirely in those cla.s.ses which seem to have then appealed to the public: Law, Science, and Divinity--just the sections with which Maunsell in 1595 began and ended.

The absence of the machinery supplied by the auction long necessitated a practice which not only survived sales by inch of candle and under the hammer, but which still prevails, of disposing of libraries and small collections _en bloc_ to the trade, and the dedication by the particular buyer of a serial catalogue to his purchase. Executors and others long possessed no other means of realisation; the Harleian printed books were thus dispersed; and even those of Heber, almost within our own memory, engrossed the resources of two or three firms of salesmen. The conditions under which a library was acc.u.mulated in former days were not less different than those under which it pa.s.sed into other hands; the possibilities of profit were infinitesimal; a heavy loss was almost a certainty. But then men bought more generally for the mere love of the objects or for purposes of study. The speculative element had yet to arise.

Evelyn, in his famous letter to Pepys, August 12, 1689, speaks of Lord Maitland's library as certainly the n.o.blest, most substantial, and accomplished, that ever pa.s.sed _under the spear_. This was within two decades or so of the commencement of the system of selling literary effects by auction. We are aware that in the Bristol records of the fourteenth century the trumpet, introduced from France, is mentioned as a medium for the realisation of property in the same way; and there was the much later _inch-of-candle_ principle--a perhaps unconscious loan from King Alfred's alleged time-candles, which are referred to by his biographer a.s.ser--a work suspected of being unauthentic, yet on that account may have none the less suggested the idea to some one.

Abroad the _trumpet_ or the _cry_ appear among the commercial states of the Middle Ages to have been the usual forms. In the particulars of a sale of galleys by auction at Venice in 1332,[6] the property was cried beforehand on behalf of the Government, and the buyer, till he paid the price reached, furnished a surety. This process was known as the _incanto_; and it is curious enough that in the sale-catalogue of Francis Hawes, Esq., a South Sea Company director, in 1722, the goods are said to be on sale _by cant_ or auction. But the modern Italian still speaks of an auction as an _asta_ (the Roman _hasta_). Some of these types are ill.u.s.trated by Lacroix in his _Moeurs et Usages_. In France they anciently had the bell and the crier (the Roman _praeco_).

In London, firms of commercial brokers long continued to hold their sales of goods by inch of candle; but the Roman practice seems to have survived down to comparatively modern days in Spain and Portugal, if not in France and Italy. In 1554, Junius Rabirius, a French jurist, published at Paris, with a metrical inscription to Henry II. of France, a Latin treatise on the origin of _Hastae and Auctions_, in which he enters at some length into the system pursued by the ancients, and still retained in the sixteenth century by the Latin communities of Europe. This is probably the earliest monograph which we possess on the present branch of the subject. It is a tolerably dull and uninforming one.

Some of us are aware by practical experience how deplorably tedious a normal modern auction under the hammer is, although it extends only at the utmost from one to five or six in the afternoon. But, like some of the Continental sales of to-day, the old-fas.h.i.+oned affair spread, with a break for refreshment, over twice the s.p.a.ce of time, and was conducted, previous to the introduction of the hammer, by _inch of candle_. This system was somewhat less inconvenient than it at first sight strikes us as being, since the property was lotted to a much larger extent in parcels and bundles, and the biddings were apt to be comparatively fewer. Another way of saying that the early auction appealed less to private than to professional buyers, and not merely in that, but in every aspect. The same remark still applies to the dispersion of all miscellaneous collections of secondary importance, unless an amateur chooses to compete for a dozen articles, which he does not want, for the sake of one, which he does.

The steadily acc.u.mulating volume of literary production in the seventeenth century inspired two successive movements, which we regard to-day as peremptory necessities and matters of course, but which, so long as books were scarcer, and the demand for them correspondingly restricted, failed to strike any one as likely to prove popular and advantageous. These movements were the second-hand department and the auction-room. It is a sufficiently familiar fact that during the reign of Charles II. both sprang into existence, although among the Hollanders the usage of putting up books to public compet.i.tion had commenced three-quarters of a century prior; but in 1661 there do not appear to have been any facilities for disposing of libraries or collections, as in that year John Ogilby, the historian, arranged to sell his books--the remainder of his own publications--through the medium of a lottery. It was within a very brief interval, however, that the sale by auction is shown to have become an accomplished fact.

The earliest of which an actual catalogue has come down to us is that of Dr. Lazarus Seaman, sold by Cooper in 1676; but there were in all probability anterior experiments, and side by side with the auctioneer grew up the professional ancestor of the Thorpes and the Rodds--the men who supplied Burton, Drummond, Evelyn, Pepys, Selden, and many more, with the rarities which are yet a.s.sociated with their names. The system of selling under the hammer in its various stages of development and different ramifications is not an unimportant factor in our modern social and commercial life; it did not require many years from its introduction into the metropolis to recommend it to the provinces and to Scotland; and we possess catalogues of libraries or properties dispersed in this manner at Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and elsewhere in the last quarter of the last but one century; and in one case at least of this kind of property being offered at a fair.[7] Occasionally, as in the case of Secondary Smith, 1682, a precocious feeling for the early English school reveals itself; but, for the most part, the articles accentuated by the old-fas.h.i.+oned auctioneer are foreign cla.s.sics, history, and theology--the literary wares, in fact, in vogue. Annexed to the _Memoirs of Thomas_ (or _Tom_) _Brown_, 1704, is a very unusual feature--a catalogue of his library.

Within about five-and-twenty years of the supposed starting-point of the auction, the modern practice of the London auctioneer being engaged to conduct sales in the country, even in important provincial towns, seems to have fairly commenced, for in 1700 Edward Millington of Little Britain sold at Cambridge the library of Dr. Cornwall of Clapton in Northamptons.h.i.+re. In the preliminary matter attached to the catalogue, Millington remarks that "he always esteems it a privilege to exercise his lungs amongst his friends."

A glimpse of the method of collecting by the Hon. John North, one of the sons of Lord North of Kirtling, and born in 1645, is afforded by his brother and biographer, Roger North, who says that he gradually acc.u.mulated, commencing about 1666, a large collection of books, princ.i.p.ally Greek, and generally bought them himself, spending much time in company with his relation in booksellers' shops, and not objecting to possess duplicates, if other copies in better condition were found or were presented to him by friends. Mr. North flourished during the halcyon days of the cla.s.sics. The literature of his own country probably interested him little. North, however, was so far a true book-lover, inasmuch as he sought what pleased himself.

It affords a pleasanter impression of the pursuit when one perceives individuals of all ranks and callings buying themselves personally, either at the book-shop or the saleroom, in the selection of their periodical acquisitions. The marked copies of the older auction catalogues are distinguished by the names of some of our most eminent collectors, but at present gentlemen prefer to give their commissions to their booksellers from want of leisure or other motives.

I have alluded to the sale by auction of Dr. Seaman's library in 1676, which took place at his house in Warwick Court, Warwick Lane. The address to the reader, presumably by Cooper, commences:--

"It hath not been usual here in England to make sale of Books by way of Auction, or who will give most for them: But it having been practised in other Countreys to the Advantage both of Buyers and Sellers; It was therefore conceived (for the Encouragement of Learning) to publish the Sale of these Books this manner of way."

The Catalogue is not divided into days, but the fifth condition says, "That the Auction will begin the 31st of October, punctually at Nine of the Clock in the Morning, and Two in the afternoon, and this to continue daily until all the Books be Sold; Wherefore it is desired, that the Gentlemen, or those deputed by them, may be there precisely the Hours appointed, lest they should miss the opportunity of Buying those Books, which either themselves or their Friends desire."

In 1682 Thomas Parkhurst, in offering for sale the libraries of several eminent men, announces that the catalogues might be had _gratis_ at the Bible on London Bridge (his place of business as a bookseller), and he takes occasion to introduce (perhaps for the first time) that courageous form of statement so popular to this day among the fraternity as to the collection being the finest ever sold or to be sold, and the opportunity by consequence being one which would never probably recur.

But the present writer does not enter minutely into this branch of the subject, which Mr. Lawler has made his own.

It has always been, and must always remain, a mystery whence the Harleian exemplars of a large number of unique or almost unique volumes belonging to the early vernacular literature of Great Britain were obtained. In some cases they are traceable to anterior owners and catalogues; but a considerable residue first come to the front here, and the explanation seems to be that the practice of registering unregarded trifles, as they were then deemed to be, in large parcels was necessarily fatal to individuality and to the survival of clues.

To a certain extent the same disappointment awaits us in more recent days, till, in fact, the demand for old poetry, romances, and plays made the few extant copies objects of interest to the trade sufficient to ent.i.tle them to prominence in their lists and in those published by the auctioneers. It may have been the catalogue of Joseph Ames, 1760, which was among the earliest to raise such items to the dignity of separate lots, thought by the purchasers at the time worth a s.h.i.+lling or two; but the noted sale of Mr. West in 1773 is ent.i.tled to rank as the foremost in those days, where the books and tracts, long since discovered to be represented by one or two accidental survivors, and grown dearer than gold a hundredfold, began to draw figures indicative of increased curiosity and appreciation.

The most eminent of the earlier race of auctioneers in London, who confined their attention to properties belonging to the fine arts, were William Cooper, a man of considerable literary taste and culture, whom we have seen disposing of Dr. Seaman's books in 1676; Edward Millington, Robert Scott, and John Dunton, of whom we know more than of his predecessors and contemporaries through his publications, and especially his _Life and Errors_. Commercial rivalry and jealousy arose among the members of the fraternity before the inst.i.tution had grown at all old, and complaints were also made against gentlemen-bidders. In the preface to the catalogue of a French library, where he takes occasion to animadvert severely on his contemporary and confrere Scott, Millington refers to the third condition of sale, requiring all buyers to give in their place of abode, "to prevent the inconveniences that have more or less. .h.i.therto attended the Undertakers, and also the Purchasers, by reason that several persons, out of Vanity and Ostentation, have appeared and bought, to the damage and disappointment of the Parties they outbid, and have not been so kind to their own Reputation, or just to the Proprietors, as to pay for and fetch them away." This was in 1687.

It seems to have been a considerable time after the first inst.i.tution of the auction before a fixed place of business was appointed for the sale of literary and artistic properties consigned to a particular party for realisation. We find taverns and coffee-houses much in request for this purpose during the former half of the last century.

The library of printed books and MSS. belonging to Thomas Britton, "small-coal man," were sold about 1720 at Tom's Coffee-House, and about the same date portions of Thomas Rawlinson's stupendous collections, of which the dispersion extended over a dozen years, came to the hammer at the Paul's Head Tavern in Carter Lane.

It is improbable that any early auction catalogue of consequence has disappeared, and looking at those which we have, say, from the outset to 1700, we at once perceive the comparatively limited business transacted in this direction during a lengthened term of years, and the numerous instances where a not very considerable catalogue embraces three or four properties. Collections were, as a rule, made on a smaller scale prior to the Harley epoch.

The practice of publis.h.i.+ng booksellers' and auctioneers' catalogues, rudimentary as it was at the outset, succeeded by the more systematic descriptive accounts of public and private collections, gradually extended the knowledge of the surviving volumes of early literature, and laid the foundation of a National Bibliography. We shall probably never fully learn our amount of obliged indebtedness to Richard Heber, who in his own person, from about 1800 to 1833, consolidated and concentrated an immense preponderance of the acquisitions of anterior collectors, and with them gained innumerable treasures, which came to him through other channels. His marvellous catalogue must have proved a revelation at the time, and to-day it is a work of reference at once instructive and agreeable.

What must strike any one who has attentively considered the Heber library, even if it is not a case of having had the catalogue at his elbow, as I have, in a manner, all his life, is the presence there of so large a number of items of which no trace occurs in earlier lists, and of which no duplicates have since presented themselves. It is perfectly marvellous how Heber acc.u.mulated the vast bibliographical treasures brought to light, and of which his catalogue is the record achievement; he must have been not only indefatigable in his own person, but must have furnished encouragement to many others, who met with rare books, to afford him the first refusal.

On the other hand, hundreds of early English books and tracts which this indefatigable and munificent of collectors never succeeded in obtaining, items and authors whose t.i.tles and names were hitherto utterly unknown, have within the last two generations come piecemeal into the market, to delight alike, yet in a different way, the bibliographer and the amateur. The accidental and almost miraculous survival of literary relics of past ages is curious on account of the purely casual manner in which they present themselves from season to season, as well as from the strange hands in which many of them are found--often persons of obscure character and in humble life, who have one, two, or half-a-dozen books of which all had somehow eluded the researches of every collector. Cases are known in which a single article has come to light in this manner, a unique publication of the Plantagenet or Tudor era, maybe in sorry state, maybe just as it left the press two or three centuries ago, but anyhow a monument and a revelation.

The almost exclusive sources of intelligence on these questions are the correspondence of the period, a portion of which is printed in the volumes of 1813 devoted to Aubrey's Collections, and another in Nichols's _Anecdotes_. There we perceive that Lord Oxford was indebted for many rarities to John Bagford and other private purveyors of printed books as well as MSS. In a letter of 1731 to Hearne, his Lords.h.i.+p mentions his impression that he had forty-two Caxtons at that date. He seems to have possessed seventy-three examples of Wynkyn de Worde.[8]

With respect to some of the college libraries at Oxford, Cambridge, and even Dublin, it is easier to arrive at the facts, so far as they go, or, in other words, many of the rare and important acquisitions of those inst.i.tutions came to them at a period anterior to what may be termed the bibliographical era, and were often contemporary gifts from the authors of the volumes or from early owners of them.

The value of the auction became manifest at a comparatively early date, when a clear demand for certain descriptions of literary property had set in, particularly when the formation of the Harleian library was in progress. In 1757 the representatives of Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls under James I., proposed to sell his MSS., and eventually negotiated with a cheesemonger, who offered 10 for the collection as waste paper. Paterson, the auctioneer, fortunately heard of the affair, dissuaded the family from it, and prepared a careful catalogue of the articles, by which he realised to the owners 356.

Take another case. In 1856 the Wolfrestons decided on parting with a lot of old books and pamphlets which an ancestor had collected under the Stuarts, or even earlier, and would, as one of them informed us, have gladly accepted 30 for the whole. But they were sent to Sotheby's, and realised 750.

On the other hand, instances are by no means unknown, in spite of what the auctioneers may a.s.sert, where it has suited a bookseller to give for a library or a parcel of books a sum at all events sufficient to tempt the owner, who has always before his eyes, in the case of a sale under the hammer, a variety of risks and draw-backs, which an immediate cheque, even for a lower amount, at once removes.

After all, the book-lover must, as a rule, be satisfied with the pleasure attendant on temporary possession.

Of the houses which lend themselves in our own day, and have done so during the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, to the incessant redistribution of literary acquisitions, and have gradually reduced an originally rather rudimentary principle to a sort of fine art, so much has been written by a succession of gentlemen interested in these specialities that we could hardly add much that was new, or treat this aspect of the topic without repeating others or ourselves.

A point which merits a pa.s.sing mention, however, is the history of the bidding at these scenes of compet.i.tion. It has been remarked as a singular circ.u.mstance that in the seventeenth century penny biddings were usual; but it was the silver penny of those days, and we have to remember the higher purchasing value of money. Twopenny and threepenny advances succeeded, and although these have long ceased in London, they yet survive in the provinces, where the lots are less important.

Some of the princ.i.p.al houses now decline even sixpence, a s.h.i.+lling being the _minimum_ offer entertained. The twopenny bidding still prevailed in 1731, as a priced copy of the sale catalogue of Robert Gray, M.D.,[9] shows. An offer of threepence is still not unknown in the provinces, as we have intimated above in our notice of an episode in Lincolns.h.i.+re--not the Spalding one, but a second about the same point of time.

One of the not least interesting and curious aspects of the auction system is the diversity of motives inducing owners to part with their property. A study of the t.i.tle-pages or covers of catalogues admits us ostensibly to the confidence of this or that collector. We should not otherwise become aware that some fairly obscure gentleman or lady was leaving his or her actual abode, that Balbus was changing the character of his library, that his friend so-and-so, owing to a failure of health, had found it necessary to settle in a more genial climate, or that "a well-known amateur," of whom we never heard before, was selling his duplicates. What does it signify? Literary acquisitions, in common with everything else, are constantly pa.s.sing from one hand to another. Of course, if the last proprietor is deceased, if it is an executor's affair, it is just as well to mention the fact, as it places the operation on a clearer footing, and there is little, if any, suspicion of nursing; but with ordinary lots of books, where the party or parties interested may be living, it seems preferable to describe the objects of compet.i.tion purely and simply as so many items for sale. The reason for the step is immaterial, more especially as there is a p.r.o.neness to receive the one tendered, if not with indifference, with incredulity.

A singular entry in one of the sale catalogues of Edward Jeffery, of Warwick Street, Golden Square, under 1788, is a property described as "the _lounging_ books of a gentleman," in the near vicinity of which we come across "the Parliamentary and const.i.tutional library of a man of fas.h.i.+on."

Of course, where a famous or capital a.s.semblage of literary treasures is for sale, it is quite proper and expedient on every account to connect with it the name on which it confers, and which may even confer on it, distinction. But it is different when Mr. Jones is changing his lines, or Mr. Brown is removing into the country or out of it, or the executors of the late Mr. Robinson have given instructions for the submission of his effects to the hammer.

_Qu'importe?_ Who cares?

The composition of an average auction-room, where the property is miscellaneous, is a curious and not unedifying study. One beholds a large, closely-packed room, where the atmosphere is not too salubrious, and yet the names which the auctioneer proclaims as those of the buyers are not numerous, are not even in all cases the names of persons present. The reason is that booksellers or their representatives often attend sales for the sake of watching the market or of noting the prices, and are on the spot when a lot occurs which suits them, or for which they have a commission. It is not perhaps too much to say that if the company should be reduced by 75 per cent. the quotations would remain unaltered, for a certain proportion are dummies beyond a moderate figure, and a certain proportion never open their mouths. The latter are spectators, or proprietors, or individuals whose biddings are given from the rostrum by proxy. An experienced dealer will probably guess for whom the salesman or his clerk is acting, and will be guided by such a hint in his own course of proceeding.

Where the goods on sale are of a prevailingly low standard, the scene varies in compliance with the circ.u.mstances, and the purchasers' names in the priced catalogue are almost without exception the names of booksellers, who make their account by going in for heavy lots and rough stuff--an excellent vocation thirty years ago, but now a fairly forlorn hope and quest. The bargain is no longer to the man who can buy for a s.h.i.+lling and sell for a pound, but to him who has the courage and means to buy for fifty pounds what he can sell for five times fifty by virtue of his knowledge and connection.

To watch carefully and studiously a big sale such as that of the Ashburnham library, of which two out of three portions are now scattered, is a bibliographical, if not a commercial, education in little. We attended in person throughout, and observed with interest and profit the curious working, unappreciable to those not practically versed in books, and acquainted with the result only through paragraphs in the newspapers. A spectator with some preparatory training could see how and why certain lots fetched such and such abnormal figures; and a leading agency in this direction was the unfortunate employment--unfortunate for himself, not for the owner or the auctioneer--by a leading buyer of an agent who had to win his purchases from men stronger than himself. Thus the Caxton's _Jason_, instead of bringing perhaps 1000, ran up to more than twice that sum, while, if it was re-sold under different conditions, it might not even reach the lower amount. Still more striking were the offers for such things as the first English edition of More's _Utopia_ (51), a volume which has repeatedly sold for a couple of guineas; while, on the other hand, a handsomely bound copy of Bourrienne's _Memoires_ in ten volumes went for 11s., and other ordinary works in proportion.

The names in the booksellers' ledgers and in the auctioneers'

catalogues as buyers of old or scarce literature are not by any means necessarily always the names of collectors. They are often those of middlemen, through whose hands a volume pa.s.ses before it reaches its ultimate destination--pa.s.ses in many cases from one of these channels to another. This is, of course, another mode of saying that the number of actual book-holders on their own permanent account is comparatively limited, and so it is. A call on the part of two or three persons for a particular cla.s.s of work or subject immediately puts the whole trade on its mettle; everything directly or indirectly connected with the new topic is bought up or competed for with extraordinary and abrupt eagerness; the entire fraternity is bent on supplying the latest demand; and prices rise with proportionate rapidity to an extravagant height. The market consists of a couple or trio of individuals, who might be insensible to the excitement which they have occasioned if it were not for the offers from all sides which pour in upon them from day to day; and in a season or so it is all over; quotations are as before; and the running is on something different. Books of Emblems, Catholic Literature, Gardening and Agriculture, Occult Sciences, Early Poetry, Old Plays, Americana, Bewick, Cruikshank, the modern novelists, have all had their day. But the cry and the want are largely artificial. The customers are few; the caterers are many. Such a criticism applies only to the rarer and costlier _desiderata_.

The characteristics and frequent surprises of auction figures largely proceed from the pressure brought to bear from without by bidders who are in the background, who often possess slight bibliographical knowledge, and whose resources enable them to furnish their representatives with generous instructions. These compet.i.tors are usually restricted to prominent sales, where the capital items are numerous, and the name of the proprietor is that of a departed celebrity, or at all events, where certain copies, whether of ma.n.u.scripts or printed books, are submitted to public compet.i.tion after a lengthened period of detention in the hands of the late holder. The Ashburnham sale (now completed) afforded abundant proof of the influence on the market of a collector who began to form his library before many of us were born, and who succeeded not only in securing many treasures at present almost beyond reach, but in doing so at fairly moderate prices. But even when the late Lord Ashburnham went to what was in his time considered an extreme figure, he or his estate generally gained. For example, his _Parzival and t.i.turell_, 1477, which cost Mr. Quaritch 30, and was sold to his Lords.h.i.+p for 45 or less (Lord Ashburnham did not object to a discount), was reacquired by the former for 81, and the set of Walton's _Angler_, which is understood to have cost 200, realised four times that amount.

The auction mart, where literary property of all kinds changes hands, possesses its slang vocabulary, and knows alike the _Frost_ and the _Boom_--not to mention the _Fluke_. In the notices which occur in the press the public sees only one side, only the high quotations. The public are of course, as a rule, dest.i.tute of bibliographical knowledge, and so is the normal journalist. He marches into the room after some sale, asks for the priced catalogue, scans the pages, and makes notes of the highest figures, which are as often as not misprinted by him in the organ by which he is employed. He does not say that a lot which was worth 20 went for 2, or that one which would usually fetch 2, brought 20 by reason of some mentioned technicality, because he does not know. A man who has devoted his life to the study of books and prices is aware that there are occasions when very ordinary property realises silly prices, and that there are others when the rarest and most valuable articles are given away.

Sometimes, again, the company is not _unanimous_ enough, and a sovereign's worth may go for more than a sovereign, or, if there is perfect friends.h.i.+p among those present, a first folio Shakespeare may drop at a dozen pounds; but then there is, you know, _the court of appeal_, which rea.s.sesses the amount to be finally paid. Not invariably. We have our very selves not so long since, on a hot Sat.u.r.day afternoon, sat at the auctioneer's table, and made nearly a clean sweep of a library of old English plays, where the maximum bid was eighteen pence, and there was a buzz through the room when one, no better than the rest, was accidentally carried to 14s.

But to the artificial inflation of prices in our salerooms there is more than one side and one key. There was not so long since an instance at Christie's, and a second at Sotheby's, where the high quotations were entirely due to the compet.i.tion of a so-called interloper, who bade, as he thought, on the judgment of the room, and was signally handicapped. Again, something has ere now been carried to a prodigious figure owing to an unlimited commission inadvertently given to two agents. The old Duke of Wellington once gave 105 in this way for a s.h.i.+lling pamphlet, and even then the bidding was only stopped by arrangement. However, of all the miraculous surprises, the most signal on record was one of the most recent--the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896, already alluded to, where the prices realised for books in very secondary preservation set all records and precedents at thorough defiance. The phenomenon, if it could be referred to any cause, arose from the peculiar atmosphere and surroundings; it was a _bona fide_ old library, formed partly by the Freres of Roydon Hall, Norfolk, and partly by their relative Sir John Fenn, editor of the _Paston Letters_, and a rather noted antiquary of the eighteenth century. It was all straight and fair, so far as one could see; there was no "rigging," and the compet.i.tion was simply insane. A portion of the Paston Correspondence struck us as cheap by comparison at 400; it was that which was offered at Christie's some time since, and bought in at about the same figure.

There were one or two singular errors in the catalogue. An Elizabethan edition of Sir John Mandeville's Travels was ascribed to 1503 and the press of Wynkyn de Worde, and the Tylney Psalter, belonging to the fifteenth century, was stated in a note by a former possessor to be of the age of Richard Coeur de Lion. One of the most unaccountable blunders in an auctioneer's catalogue which we can call to mind was the description of a Sarum service book as a grammatical treatise. But solecisms of various kinds are periodical. A German book is said to be printed at Gedruckt, and a copy of Sir John Mandeville in Italian is entered as _Questo_, that being its compiler's frugal method of giving the t.i.tle (_Questo e il libro_).

One striking feature in the Frere sale was that it was only a part of the library, and that not the part which the auctioneers'

representative saw at Roydon. Some further instalments occurred at another saleroom a few months later; and perhaps there is yet more to come. But in a bibliographical respect the dispersion proved of interest, as many of the items, formerly Sir John Fenn's, had remained imperfectly known and described; and it was not absolutely certain that they survived.

An element in the modern auctions which is patent to all fairly conversant with such _mysteria_, and has become one not less indispensable than normal, is what is commonly known as the _Rig_. A Rig is a sale which departs or declines from the strict line of _bona fides_ so far as not to be precisely what the forefront of the catalogue avouches it, and by one or two houses it is discountenanced.

Nevertheless it exists, and will continue from the nature of things to do so; and we observe in the very opening decade of auctions, in the very infancy of the system, a trace or germ of this commencing impurity or abuse. For some of the catalogues, so far back as 1678, purport to register within their covers the libraries of certain n.o.blemen or gentleman "and others" (_aliorumque_, in the Latin diction then so much in favour), and so it has been ever since. When we go to the rooms and lift up our voices, we do not always know whose property we are trying to secure; nor, if our own judgment is worth anything, does it greatly signify.