these cases is involved in equal
uncertainty and difficulty. The second Psalter of 1459 brought at the
Syston Park sale L4950. Mr. Quaritch still holds it (1897), and asks
L5250. The British Museum possesses both impressions. This was the
highest figure ever reached by a single lot in this country.
Gutenberg's Bible follows, copies on vellum and paper having produced
from L1500 to L4000; the vellum copies are deemed more valuable, but
of those issued by Gutenberg himself we seem to have only examples on
paper. The Huth copy of the latter type, from the Sykes and H. Perkins
libraries cost its late owner L3650. Mr. Grenville for his gave L500.
As we have already remarked, the book has a tendency to become
commoner. The Ashburnham Fust and Schoeffer Bible of 1462 brought
L1500; at the Comte de Brienne's sale in 1724, where Hearne refers to
the "vast prices," the Earl of Oxford gave for the same book L112.

The _History of King Arthur_, printed by Caxton, 1485, for which Lord
Jersey's ancestor gave L2, 12s. 6d. about 1750 to Osborne, was carried
at the Osterley Park sale in 1885 to L1950, the British Museum
underbidding; while the _Troy-Book_ in English from the same press
fetched L1820; and at the dispersion of a curious lot of miscellanies,
apparently derived from Darlaston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire, an
imperfect, but very large and clean, copy of the first edition of the
_Canterbury Tales_, by Caxton, was adjudged to Mr. Quaritch at L1020,
a second one, by an unparalleled coincidence presenting itself at the
same place of sale a few months later, only four leaves wanting, but
not so fine, and being knocked down at L1800 to the same buyer. The
Asburnham Chaucers and other works from the same press were (with one
or two exceptions) so poor, that it was surprising that they sold
even so well as they did.

We descend to relatively moderate quotations when we come to the
Daniel (now Huth) Ballads in 1864 (L750); the L670 and L810 bidden for
the Caxton's _Gower_ at the Selsey sale in 1871 and the Osterley Park
sale in 1885 respectively; the L600 paid for the _Book of St. Albans_,
1486, wanting two leaves, in 1882; and the L420 at which Mr. Quaritch
estimated the _Troy-Book_ of 1503. The price asked for the original
MS. of the _Towneley Mysteries_ in 1892, L820, strikes one as
reasonable by comparison.

But amounts which we venture to think unduly extravagant have of late
years been obtained at Christies's rooms for c