[302] Lithographed facsimiles of most of these volumes, with some of the quarto editions of the poems (forty-eight volumes in all), were prepared by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, and issued to subscribers by Halliwell-Phillipps between 1862 and 1871. A cheaper set of quarto facsimiles, undertaken by Mr. W. Griggs, and issued under the supervision of Dr. F. J. Furnivall, appeared in forty-three volumes between 1880 and 1889.
[303] Perfect copies range in price, according to their rarity, from £200 to £300. In 1864, at the sale of George Daniel’s library, quarto copies of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and of ‘Merry Wives’ (first edition) each fetched £346 10s. On May 14, 1897, a copy of the quarto of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (printed by James Roberts in 1600) was sold at Sotheby’s for £315.
[304] See p. 183.
[306] Cf. Bibliographica, i. 489 seq.
[308] This copy was described in the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821 (xxi. 449) as in the possession of Messrs. J. and A. Arch, booksellers, of Cornhill. It was subsequently sold at Sotheby’s in 1855 for £163 16s.
[309a] I cannot trace the present whereabouts of this copy, but it is described in the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821, xxi. 449-50.
[309b] The copy seems to have been purchased by a member of the Sheldon family in 1628, five years after publication. There is a note in a contemporary hand which says it was bought for £3 15s., a somewhat extravagant price. The entry further says that it cost three score pounds of silver, words that I cannot explain. The Sheldon family arms are on the sides of the volume, and there are many manuscript notes in the margin, interpreting difficult words, correcting misprints, or suggesting new readings.
[309c] It has been mutilated by a former owner, and the signature of the leaf is missing, but it was presumably G G 3.
[310] Correspondents inform me that two copies of the First Folio, one formerly belonging to Leonard Hartley and the other to Bishop Virtue of Portsmouth, showed a somewhat similar irregularity. Both copies were bought by American booksellers, and I have not been able to trace them.
[311] Cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser., vii. 47.