which we should not otherwise have possessed. The persons of the little drama are six Christ Church men—Arthur Kaye, Walter Bacon, Ed. Stradling, George Dixon, Christopher Codrington, and William Woodward—and in the pride of their learning they make sad fun of the pomposity and ignorance of the poor auctioneers. We must, however, remember that this is a satire and a caricature. Cooper is described as “a man of wonderful and notable gravity,” with a monstrous paunch; and Millington as having a Stentor’s lungs and consummate impudence, a very windbag, whose hollow bellows blow lies.
Woodward took the part of Cooper, and Codrington that of Millington, but when these characters were first pressed upon them, the latter urged that “if a book is bad, I cannot pile encomiums on it, and prefer Wither to Virgil, or Merlin to the Sibyls.” We are told that bids of one penny were taken, and that when the third blow of the hammer has been struck the sale was irrevocable. The auctioneers seem to have offended the ears of the Oxonians by saying “Nepŏtis” and “Stephāni.” At the end of the day Woodward is made to say, “I have spoken, I the great Cooper, whose house is in Little Britain.” Codrington recites a long rhodomontade ending thus: “I check myself and put a curb on the runaway muses. But this mallet, the badge of my profession, I affix as a dedicatory offering to this post—To Oxford and the Arts Millington consecrates these arms.” Dunton draws a favourable portrait of Millington in his “Life and Errors.” He says he “commenced and continued auctions upon the authority of Herodotus, who commends that way of sale for the disposal of the most exquisite and finest beauties to their amorosos; and further informs the world that the sum so raised was laid out for the portions of those to whom nature had been less kind: so that he’ll never be forgotten while his name is Ned, or he, a man of remarkable elocution, wit, sense, and modesty—characters so eminently his, that he would be known by them among a thousand. Millington (from the time he sold Dr. Annesly’s library) expressed a particular friendship to me. He was originally a bookseller, which he left off, being better cut out for an