about their dress than his own; and therefore you’ll find that a gilt back or a large margin was very seldom any inducement to him to buy. ’Twas sufficient to him that he had the book.... He himself was not a mere nomenclator, and versed only in title-pages, but had made that just and laudable use of his books which would become all those that set up for collectors.... Give me leave to say this of him upon my own knowledge, that he never grudged his money in procuring, nor his time or labour in perusing any book which he thought could be any ways instructive to him; and having the felicity of a memory always faithful, always officious, which never forsook him, though attacked by frequent and severe sickness, and by the worst of all diseases, old age, his desire for knowledge attended him to the last, and he pursued his studies with equal vigour and application to the very extremity of his life.”
He had thirteen Caxtons, which sold altogether for less than two guineas, less than these books fetched at Richard Smith’s sale. A curious volume of Tracts, consisting of “The Bellman’s Night Walks” (1632), “The Bellman of London” (1608), “Life of Ned Browne,” “Cut Purse,” &c., sold for 2s. 8d.; Stubbe’s “Anatomie of Abuses” (1585), for 8d.; and Tusser’s “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” (1590) for 4d. In spite of these low prices, the total amount of the sale was £1600, the expenses of the sale—4s. in the pound = £320—being deducted.
The catalogue was charged 2s. 6d.
The last sale in the seventeenth century to be recorded is that of John Lloyd, Bishop of St. Davids, sold in 1699 by John Bullord at Tom’s Coffee-House.
When auctions were first started conditions of sale were formulated, and with the exception of a little elaboration, they remain pretty much what they were at first; but there were certain peculiarities which are worthy of mention.