ind a
man of Ratcliff's status acquiring thirty Caxtons. He lived just to
see a rise in their value, yet a very slight and fluctuating one; for
at last he went into the open market and purchased a few lots at
West's auction in 1773, and the Caxtons thus obtained re-sold after
Ratcliff's death in one or two cases at a lower rate. He had inflated
the market; the competitors were not more than two or three. But the
time was soon to come when such persons could no longer afford to hold
this kind of property--when it became fashionable for dukes and earls
and men of large property to make our early typography an object of
research; and so it continued down to the present time, till the
agricultural depression arrived to create another organic change, and
to direct these, as well as other costly luxuries, into new channels.
Not the chandler, or the Government official, or the private gentleman
of modest means, but the great manufacturer or the merchant-prince
entered on the scene, and wrested from the landowner his
long-cherished possessions. The West and Ratcliff sales (1773-76) were
the two golden opportunities, however, of which the advisers of George
III. wisely availed themselves to purchase volumes at what we have
been taught to consider nominal prices; and there they are in the
British Museum to-day, a recollection of one of the better traits in
the character of that prince. When we say that the market for Caxtons
in 1776 was beginning to expand, we mean that the day for getting such
things for a few pence or a shilling or two had gone by. Here, for
example, are some of the quotations from the Ratcliff auction:--

L s. d.

Chronicles of Englande, fine copy, 1480 5 5 0
Doctrinal of Sapyence, 1489 8 8 0
The Boke called Cathon, 1483 5 5 0
Tullius de Senectute, in Englyshe, 1481 14 0 0
The Game and Playe of Chesse 16 0 0
The Boke of Jason 5 10 0
Legenda Aurea; or, the Golden Legend, 1483 9 15 0

These figures make even some of those in the West auction, 1773,
appear by comparison rather extravagant. For his Majesty's agent at
the latter gave as much as L14 for the romance of _Paris and Vienne_,
from the Caxton press, 1485. True, it seems to be unique, and might
to-day require its purchaser, if it were for sale, to have L500 in his
pocket or at his bank to secure