Books to the right of him,
Books to the left of him,
Books behind him,
Volleyed and tumbled,
while he answered inquiries for books from clergymen and students, or gruffly bargained with a boy or an old woman for a dilapidated lot of old books. He had a curious quizzical way with strangers, who at once set him down as an oddity, and his impatience with ignoramuses and bores gave him the repute of crustiness, which was redeemed by suavity enough whenever he met with people of intelligence.
Gowans issued scores of catalogues of his stock, in which titles were often illustrated by notes, always curious and often amusing, credited to "Western Memorabilia," a work which no bookseller or man of letters had ever heard of, but which was shrewdly suspected to have been a projected scrap-book of the observations and opinions of William Gowans.
There was another eccentric book-dealer's shop in Nassau street kept by one John Doyle, who aimed so high in his profession as to post over his door a sign reading "The Moral Centre of the Intellectual Universe." This establishment was notably full of old editions of books of English history and controversial theology.
The most famous second-hand book-shop in Boston was Burnham's, whose fore-name was Thomas Oliver Hazard Perry, shortened into "Perry Burnham" by his familiars. He was a little, pale-faced, wiry, nervous man, with piercing black eyes and very brusque manners. In old and musty books he lived and moved and had his being, for more than a generation. He exchanged a stuffy, narrow shop in Cornhill for more spacious quarters in Washington street, near School street, where he bought and sold books with an assiduous devotion to business, never trusting to others what he could do himself. He was proud of his collection and its extent. He bought books and pamphlets at auction literally by the cart-load, every thing that nobody else wanted being bid off to Burnham at an insignificant price, almost nominal. He got a wide reputation for selling cheaply, but he always knew when to charge a stiff price for a book, and to stick to it. Once when I was pricing a lot of miscellaneous books picked out for purchase, mostly under a dollar a volume, we came to a copy of "The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America," 1st edition, Philadelphia, 1781, of which two hundred copies only were printed, by order of Congress. This copy was in the original boards, uncut, and with the autograph of Timothy Pickering on the title page. "If the Congress Library wants that book," said Mr. Burnham, "it will have to pay eight dollars for it." I took it, well pleased to secure what years of search had failed to bring. The next year my satisfaction was enhanced when an inferior copy of the same book was offered at twenty dollars.
Burnham died a wealthy man, having amassed a million dollars in trade and by rise in real estate, as he owned the land on which the Parker House stands in Boston.
Among Philadelphia dealers in second-hand books, one John Penington was recognized as most intelligent and honorable. He was a book-lover and a scholar, and one instinctively ranked him not as a bookseller, but as a gentleman who dealt in books. On his shelves one always found books of science and volumes in foreign languages.
Another notable dealer was John Campbell, a jolly, hearty Irish-American, with a taste for good books, and an antipathy to negroes, as keen as the proverbial hatred of the devil for holy water. Campbell wrote a book entitled "Negromania," published in 1851, in which his creed was set forth in strong language. He was a regular bidder at book auctions, where his burly form and loud voice made him a prominent figure.
Of notable auction sales of books, and of the extravagant prices obtained for certain editions by ambitious and eager competition, there is little room to treat. The oft-told story of the Valdarfer Boccaccio of 1471, carried off at the Roxburghe sale in 1812, at £2,260 from Earl Spencer by the Marquis of Blandford, and re-purchased seven years after at another auction for £918, has been far surpassed in modern bibliomania. "The sound of that hammer," wrote the melodramatic Dibdin, "echoed through Europe:" but what would he have said of the Mazarin Bible of Gutenberg and Fust (1450-55) sold in 1897, at the Ashburnham sale, for four thousand pounds, or of the Latin Psalter of Fust and Schoeffer, 2d ed. 1459, which brought £4,950 at the Syston Park sale in 1884? This last sum (about twenty-four thousand dollars) is the largest price ever yet recorded as received for a single volume. Among books of less rarity, though always eagerly sought, is the first folio Shakespeare of 1623, a very fine and perfect copy of which brought £716.2 at Daniel's sale in 1864. Copies warranted perfect have since been sold in London for £415 to £470. In New York, a perfect but not "tall" copy brought $4,200 in 1891 at auction. Walton's "Compleat Angler," London, 1st ed. 1653, a little book of only 250 pages, sold for £310 in 1891. It was published for one shilling and sixpence. The first edition of Robinson Crusoe brought £75 at the Crampton sale in 1896.
The rage for first editions of very modern books reached what might be called high-water mark some time since, and has been on the decline. Shelley's "Queen Mab," 1st ed. 1813, was sold at London for £22.10, and his "Refutation of Deism," 1814, was sold at £33, at a London sale in 1887. In New York, many first editions of Shelley's poems brought the following enormous prices in 1897.