which he left in Paris when he came to London, and which were confiscated by the French Government on his death in 1665, were included in this catalogue. According to M. Delisle,34 Sir Kenelm’s books eventually reached the French national library. The proceeds of the sale of 3878 lots was only £908, and this does not look as if there were many of Digby’s books, nobly bound by Le Gascon, in this sale.
In 1681 Edward Millington’s name came into notice as the seller, in May of that year, of the libraries of Lawson, Fawkes, Stockden, and Brooks.
Richard Chiswell sold in 1682 the Bibliotheca Smithiana, or library of Richard Smith, Secondary of the Poultry Compter, who is better known to us as the author of the useful “Obituary” published by the Camden Society in 1849. This was probably the finest library brought to the hammer up to this date. Oldys wrote of the possessor, that “for many years together [he] suffered nothing to escape him that was rare and remarkable”; and he added, that his “extraordinary library makes perhaps the richest catalogue of any private library we have to show in print, making above four hundred pages in a very broad-leaved and close-printed quarto.” Richard Chiswell sold the library in May “at the auction house known by the name of the Swan, in Great St. Bartholomew’s Close.”
The auctioneer made the following remarks in his Address to the Reader—
“Though it be needless to recommend what to all intelligent persons sufficiently commends itself, yet perhaps it may not be unacceptable to the ingenious to have some short account concerning this so much celebrated, so often desired, so long expected library, now exposed to sale. The gentleman that collected it was a person infinitely curious and inquisitive after books; and who suffered nothing considerable to escape him that fell within the compass of his learning, for he had not the vanity