one, Devon, to Sotheby's. The sale
comprised 1,660 lots, representing several thousand volumes, the total
being L3,276 17s. 6d. It was especially rich in books and old tracts of
the early seventeenth century relating to the English voyages to
America, and some of these realized very high figures. Although the
library was undoubtedly founded by Drake, it was evidently continued by
his descendants. Bacon, Baron of Verulam, was a distinguished
book-collector, as the shelves of his chambers in Gray's Inn would have
testified. Archbishop Parker, than whom 'a more determined book-fancier
never existed in Great Britain,' and Gabriel Harvey, the friend of
Spenser, and the object of Tom Nash's withering scorn, were among the
most inveterate book-collectors of Elizabethan London. Had Harvey--whose
books usually contain his autograph on the title-page, and not a few of
which were given him by Spenser--studied his books less, and the proper
study of mankind a little more, he might have shown his talents off to a
better advantage than in his conflicts with Nash. In the Bodleian there
is a set of old tales and romances which Spenser lent Harvey, taking as
a hostage, apparently, Harvey's copy of Lucian in four volumes. Harvey
had a very poor opinion of such 'foolish' books, but he does not seem to
have returned them to their rightful owner. The fire which destroyed Ben
Jonson's MSS. undoubtedly consumed many of his printed books, but
examples from his library, with 'Sum Ben Jonson' inscribed, are
sometimes met with. Shakespeare may have had a library, but we have no
evidence that he possessed even a copy of his own plays in quarto. The
Elizabethan poets and dramatists were prodigious contributors to the
press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get
some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical
booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little
portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he
were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that
I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his
stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him,
but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his little
finger points backward to his boy, who must be his interpreter; and so
all day, gaping like a dumb image, he sits without motion, except at
such times as he goes to dinner or supper, for th