derness; but we think that its real
history was unknown to him. He was not aware that it was only a
selection by Daniel from a much larger number obtained by Thorpe the
bookseller from a private source, suspected to have been a person in
the employment of the Tollemaches of Helmingham Hall, near Ipswich.
Thorpe parted with the bulk to Mr. Heber for L200, and the latter, in
sending the vendor the money, declared how conscious he was of his
extravagance, and asked whether he had been so fortunate as to secure
"the inheritance of the Stationers' Company!"

A far more extensive collection, though of later date, came some years
afterward into Mr. Huth's possession; it consisted of three hundred
and thirty-four sheet ballads of the Stuart period, which had formed
part of a larger lot bought at a house-sale in the West of England for
fifty shillings. Some went to the British Museum, some elsewhere; Mr.
Huth's share cost him L500!

The Huth catalogue is a disappointing production, owing to the
circumstance that a good deal of useful information was suppressed,
and the opportunity was not taken, where expense was the least object,
to furnish an exhaustive account of the books. It is singular that the
Grenville and Chatsworth catalogues were spoiled much in the same way,
and that Lord Ashburnham's own privately printed account of his books
is a thousandfold inferior to the auctioneer's one.

The Duke of Roxburghe, Mr. Heber, Mr. Grenville, Mr. Daniel, Lord
Spencer, Mr. Miller and Mr. Huth were seven personages who exercised
on the printed book-market in their time (to say nothing of MSS.) a
very notable influence, particularly Heber. One might add the names of
Mr. Jolley, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Corser, who severally between 1810 and
1870 made their competition sensible and raised the standard of prices
for many classes of old English books. It was said in 1845, when the
Bright Library was dispersed, that the advance in realised values led
some collectors to relinquish the pursuit. The formation, not only of
such a library as that of Heber or Harley, but that of Corser or
Daniel or Bright, will be in the future a sheer impossibility from the
absence of the means of acquiring in many branches so large a
proportion of the rarer _desiderata_. To gather together a collection
of books on an extensive scale may always remain feasible; but the
probability seems to be that assemblages of literary property outside
mere works of reference w