or that one which
would usually fetch L2, brought L20 by reason of some mentioned
technicality, because he does not know. A man who has devoted his life
to the study of books and prices is aware that there are occasions
when very ordinary property realises silly prices, and that there are
others when the rarest and most valuable articles are given away.
Sometimes, again, the company is not _unanimous_ enough, and a
sovereign's worth may go for more than a sovereign, or, if there is
perfect friendship among those present, a first folio Shakespeare may
drop at a dozen pounds; but then there is, you know, _the court of
appeal_, which reassesses the amount to be finally paid. Not
invariably. We have our very selves not so long since, on a hot
Saturday afternoon, sat at the auctioneer's table, and made nearly a
clean sweep of a library of old English plays, where the maximum bid
was eighteen pence, and there was a buzz through the room when one, no
better than the rest, was accidentally carried to 14s.

But to the artificial inflation of prices in our salerooms there is
more than one side and one key. There was not so long since an
instance at Christie's, and a second at Sotheby's, where the high
quotations were entirely due to the competition of a so-called
interloper, who bade, as he thought, on the judgment of the room, and
was signally handicapped. Again, something has ere now been carried to
a prodigious figure owing to an unlimited commission inadvertently
given to two agents. The old Duke of Wellington once gave L105 in this
way for a shilling pamphlet, and even then the bidding was only
stopped by arrangement. However, of all the miraculous surprises, the
most signal on record was one of the most recent--the Frere sale at
Sotheby's in 1896, already alluded to, where the prices realised for
books in very secondary preservation set all records and precedents at
thorough defiance. The phenomenon, if it could be referred to any
cause, arose from the peculiar atmosphere and surroundings; it was a
_bona fide_ old library, formed partly by the Freres of Roydon Hall,
Norfolk, and partly by their relative Sir John Fenn, editor of the
_Paston Letters_, and a rather noted antiquary of the eighteenth
century. It was all straight and fair, so far as one could see; there
was no "rigging," and the competition was simply insane. A portion of
the Paston Correspondence struck us as cheap by comparison at L400; it
was that which was o