, he was considerably less aware of the fact.
Osborne's shop, like that of Jacob Tonson[192:B] at the end of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, was at the Gray's
Inn Road gate of, or entrance to, Gray's Inn. His greatest _coup_ was
the purchase of the Harleian Collection of books--the manuscripts were
bought by the British Museum for L10,000--for L13,000, in 1743. It is
said on good authority that the Earl of Oxford gave L18,000 for the
binding of only a part of them. In 1743-44, the extent of this
extraordinary collection was indicated by the 'Catalogus Bibliotheca
Harleianae,' in four volumes. The first two, in Latin, were compiled by
Dr. Johnson at a daily wage, and the third and fourth (which are a
repetition of the first two), in English, are by Oldys. A charge of 5s.
was made for the first two volumes, which caused a good deal of
grumbling among the trade, and was resented 'as an avaricious
innovation,' but Osborne replied that the volumes could be either
returned in exchange for books or for the original purchase-money. He
was also charged with rating his books at too high a price, but a glance
through the catalogue will prove this to be an unjust accusation. The
copy of the Aldine Plato, 1513, on vellum, for which Lord Oxford gave
100 guineas, is priced by Osborne at L21. The sale of the books appears
to have been extremely slow, and Johnson assured Boswell that 'there was
not much gained by the bargain.' Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes' (iii.
649-654) gives a list of the libraries which Osborne absorbed into his
stock at different times, but few of these are anything more than names
at the present day. Osborne is satirized in the 'Dunciad,' but,
according to Johnson, was so dull that he could not feel the poet's
gross satire. Sir John Hawkins states that Osborne used to boast that he
was worth L40,000, and doubtless this was true. His

'Bushy bob, well powder'd every day,
Bloom'd whiter than a hawthorn hedge in May,'

was one of his acquired peculiarities. Nichols tells us that the
expression 'rum books' arose from Osborne's sending unsaleable volumes
to Jamaica in exchange for rum.

But whilst Tom Osborne was _the_ bookseller of Holborn, there were many
others well established here during the last century, and whose names
have been handed down to us by the catalogues which they published.
William Cater, for instance, was issuing catalogues from Holborn in
1767, when h