st-class examples of the best
modern authors. There must be no qualification, nothing secondary,
nothing dubious; and with these provisos, we do not venture to predict
that the competition might not become keener than ever. The same
experience will result here and there, whenever a book forming a
desideratum in more than one cabinet occurs for sale, and is perhaps
the first copy which has been offered. At Sotheby's in June 1896,
Shelley's _Oedipus Tyrannus_, 1820, it is said, was carried under
these circumstances to L130. It was, we believe, one of two copies,
picked up by a well-known amateur for fourpence each. On another
account--its perfectly immaculate state in boards--a large-paper copy
of Byron's poems, 1807, was thought by Mr. Edward Huth not too dear at
L105. It had been acquired by a London bookseller in exchange for one
in morocco from a correspondent in Yorkshire, the latter receiving the
bound book (which cost the vendor L27) and L18 difference, so that
there was a profit on the transaction of L60. Seriously speaking, the
purchase was extravagantly dear, for the book on large paper is at all
events not scarcer than on small. One of the most signal incidents,
however, in modern auctioneering annals was the sale of MSS. copies of
the _Endymion_ and _Lamia_ of Keats in the poet's handwriting for
L1000, and the subsequent offer to the purchasers at that figure of a
large advance for their bargain. These two items are printed, and the
written copies were those employed by the printer, as upon the first
leaf of each MS. were the directions as to size. They were in the
familiar round schoolboy hand, and presented occasional corrections.
We heard a suggestion that there might have once, at all events, been
a duplicate copy in existence. If the lots were worth the money, what
would the manuscript of _Venus and Adonis_ or _Hamlet_ fetch?

The mischief which proceeds from the advertisements through the press
of sensational sale prices is not one for which either the buyers or
the sellers are responsible. It is due to the notorious circumstance
that very few persons are able to discriminate accurately between an
important item in an auction or elsewhere, and another submitted to
their approval, ostensibly and professedly identical, but actually
very different. A certain familiar type of bookseller will tell you
that a copy of such or such a work fetched L50 under the hammer last
week, but that he can let you have his--