practised from very early days down to our own, when we may easily
remember how Lamb and Coleridge used to fill the blank leaves of a
work of common interest, as it kept passing to and fro like a
messenger, till the worth of the manuscript matter left that of the
printed far behind indeed. In a mild kind of way this sort of thing
was already going on in the sixteenth century. A copy of the English
version of the _Paraphrase_ of Erasmus on the New Testament, 1548,
passes similarly between two Tudor-period intimates, and there is
this: "Mr. Dunes, I woulde wish you to peruse V. chapter of Marke, and
there you shall finde great comforte to your soules health. Thus fare
you well in the Lorde. Wyllyam Byrde."

In the copy of Shakespeare's _Passionate Pilgrim_, 1599, bound up with
an early edition of _Venus and Adonis_, a former owner represents with
perfect justice, that although he gave three-halfpence for the two
volumes in one, a corner of a leaf was defective; and there has been
furthermore a profound arithmetical computation that if this gentleman
and his heirs or assigns had invested the amount in good securities,
the capital at this moment would have reached the vicinity of L1000.
In a copy of Stow's _Survey_, 1633, which once belonged to Sir Thomas
Davies, Lord Mayor of London in 1676, we encounter a memorandum on the
fly-leaf: "I pray, put in the loose leaues Carefully. John Meriton.
For Mr. Richardson, bookbinder in Scalding Alley." Richardson bound
for Pepys. In an odd volume of _Sandford and Merton_, which fell in
Dr. Burney's way, and which he gave to his daughter--Johnson's "little
Burney"--he wrote:--

"See, see, my dear Fan,
Here comes, spick and span,
Little Sandford and Merton,
Without stain or dirt on;
'Tis volume the second,
Than the first better reckoned;
Pray read it with glee,
And remember C. B.

"April 18, 1786."

Beauty has been said to depend on Variety, and so we ought not to
object to examples selected from widely different sources.

[Illustration: BOOK SALE AT SOTHEBY'S AUCTION ROOMS

_From the original Water-colour Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson,
in possession of Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London_]

Horace's _multa renascentur_ comes into our mind when we stumble on a
remark by Wodhull the collector in an _Acta Apostolorum_ printed at
Oxford in 1715: "In May, 1810, Mr. Leigh, auctioneer, told me that a
copy of this edition had lately s