Other Elizabethan books fetched very large prices. Greene's Arbasto (1584), a unique copy, went for £820; Gwydonius (1584) for £770; Morando (1584) for £680; Planetomachia (1585) for £900; and the unique copy of A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) for £1200. A copy of Tottel's Miscellany, second edition, fetched £2400; Nash's Unfortunate Traveller (1594), £680; and the first edition of The Paradyse of Dainty Devises, £1700. Copies of the Arcadia (1590) and of Astrophel and Stella (circa 1595) were sold for £1000 and £2700 respectively.
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The other Shakespeare lots were sold at less astonishing figures. A copy of the First Folio, slightly defective, sold for £2300; £2400 was given for a fine copy of the Third Folio, Much Ado About Nothing, the Quarto of 1600, sold for £2200; and The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, the anonymous play used by Shakespeare in producing his own Richard III., for £2000.
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The Heber Collection of broadsheets and ballads was purchased by Mr. Smith for £6400. This collection, comprising eighty-eight pieces, is a portion of the great collection, a larger collection, half of which passed, under the terms of Mr. Huth's will, to the British Museum. It contains many pieces of remarkable beauty and interest.
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Other interesting items in the sale were three minor works of the "Laureate," John Skelton, printed by Pynson, the three bound together in a single volume, which was bought for £1780; the Amoretti and Epithalamium of Spenser (1595), £1200; The Shepheardes Calendar (1579), £1280; Reynard the Fox (Caxton, 1481), £5900; The Cordyale, or the Four Last Things (Caxton, 1479), £1900; Tullye of Old Age (Caxton, 1481), £1800; Gray's Elegy (1751), £750; Paradise Lost (1667), £460.
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This sale marks the triumph and the reduction to the absurd of book-collecting. The absurdity of picture-dealing is already manifest; prices have long ceased to have the least relation to the merit of the work purchased. It is out of mere snobisme and not from any love of art that people will give fifty thousand pounds for a picture by a second-rate eighteenth-century artist. The same spirit has invaded the book-collecting world. The amateur who collects books out of a genuine love of literature had better retire as gracefully as he may. There is no place for him in the topsy-turvy universe where fifteen thousand pounds is paid for a little volume of poems. One left the sale with a curious feeling of bewilderment and indignation, almost vowing that one would never look at an old book again.
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