viduals to whom it once appertained.
We have usually to content ourselves with the interest resident in an
autograph, with or without further particulars; it is a book, perhaps,
which formed part of the library of a distinguished Elizabethan or
Jacobean writer or public character; but, if it were not, its worth
might be nominal. Again, the book is possibly one of great value, and
exhibits an early autograph and MSS. notes; it would be better without
them. Find the copy of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593, given by Shakespeare
to Lord Southampton, the poet's copy of the _Faery Queen_, 1590-96,
Sir Fulke Greville's copy of Sydney's _Arcadia_, 1590, or a book of
Voyages belonging to Drake or Raleigh, and it is worth a library, and
a good one too. The nearest approach we have yet made to this kind of
combination is the first folio Montaigne and the original edition of
Lord Brooke's works, 1633, with the signature of Jonson, and the
Spenser of 1679 with the notes of Dryden, unless the _Paradise Lost_,
1667, with Milton's presentation to a bookbinder at Worcester be
authentic.

We must not omit in the present connection the copy of the prose
story-book of _Howleglas_, given in 1578 with others by Edmund Spenser
to Gabriel Harvey. But an almost equally covetable possession was the
copy just referred to of Milton's _Paradise Lost_, 1667, which
occurred only the other day at a sale, where it was, as too often
happens, mis-described, and brought L70. It bore on a small slip
inlaid in a fly-leaf: "For my loving ffreind, Mr. Francis Rea, Booke
binder in Worcester these," and on another piece of paper: "Presented
me by the Author to whom I gave two doubl sovereigns" = L4, nearly as
much as the poet had for the copyright. The story of the book is
unknown to us; it seems eminently likely that the first memorandum was
written by Milton; but whether it belonged to a wrapper forwarding the
gift, or to a letter accompanying it, is problematical.

Rea of Worcester must be the same individual who is described as
having re-bound in June 1660 the Jolley and Ashburnham copy of
Higden's _Polychronicon_, printed by Caxton, 1482; but there an
earlier owner, Richard Furney, calls him "one Rede of Worcester."

At Trinity, Cambridge, there is the edition of Spenser, 1679, with a
memorandum on the fly-leaf by Jacob Tonson, testifying to the MSS.
notes in the book being by Dryden, and at Wootton formerly was the
_Faery Queen_, 1596, John Evelyn's cypher in