e time since, and has been on the decline.
Shelley's "Queen Mab," 1st ed. 1813, was sold at London for L22.10, and
his "Refutation of Deism," 1814, was sold at L33, at a London sale in
1887. In New York, many first editions of Shelley's poems brought the
following enormous prices in 1897.

Shelley's Adonais, 1st ed. Pisa, Italy, 1821, $335.
Alastor, London, 1816, $130.
The Cenci, Italy, 1819, $65.
Hellas, London, 1822, $13.

But these were purely adventitious prices, as was clearly shown in the
sale at the same auction rooms, a year or two earlier, of the following:

Shelley's Adonais, 1st ed. Pisa, 1821, $19.
Alastor, London, 1816, $32.
The Cenci, Italy, 1819, $21.
Hellas, London, 1822, $2.

The sales occasionally made at auction of certain books at extraordinary
prices, prove nothing whatever as to the real market value, for these
reasons: (1) The auctioneer often has an unlimited bid, and the price is
carried up to an inordinate height. (2) Two or more bidders present,
infatuated by the idea of extreme rarity, bid against one another until
all but one succumb, when the price has reached a figure which it is a
mild use of terms to call absurd. (3) Descriptions in sale catalogues,
though often entirely unfounded, characterising a book as "excessively
rare;" "only -- copies known," "very scarce," "never before offered at
our sales," etc., may carry the bidding on a book up to an unheard-of
price.

The appeal always lies to the years against the hours; and many a poor
book-mad enthusiast has had to rue his too easy credulity in giving an
extravagant sum for books which he discovers later that he could have
bought for as many shillings as he has paid dollars. Not that the
_rarissimi_ of early printed books can ever be purchased for a trifle;
but it should ever be remembered that even at the sales where a few--a
very few--bring the enormous prices that are bruited abroad, the mass of
the books offered are knocked down at very moderate figures, or are even
sacrificed at rates very far below their cost. The possessor of one of
the books so advertised as sold at some auction for a hundred dollars or
upwards, if he expects to realise a tithe of the figure quoted, will
speedily find himself in the vocative.

While there are almost priceless rarities not to be found in the market
by any buyer, let the book collector be consoled by the knowledge that
good books, in good editions, were neve