ὀΚαι γαρ ὀ ταὼς διὰ τὸ σπάνίον θαῦμάζεταί.
(The peacock is admired on account of its rarity.)
Hearne speaks of Richard Rawlinson as 'vir antiquis moribus ornatus, perque eam viam euns, quæ ad immortalem gloriam ducit.'
[143:A] The first edition of this play, 1597, sold in 1864 for £341 5s.; it is the only copy known.
[143:B] Thomas Jolley picked up a volume which contained a first edition of both 'Venus and Adonis' and the 'Sonnets,' for less than 3s. 6d. in Lancashire! The former alone realised £116 in 1844, and is now in the Grenville collection, British Museum. The copy of the former in the above list was purchased at Baron Bolland's sale in 1840 for £91; at Bright's sale for £91 10s., when it became Daniel's. The 'Sonnets,' also Daniel's copy, had belonged to Narcissus Luttrell, who gave 1s. for it.
BOOKSTALLS AND BOOKSTALLING.
OF the numerous ways and means of acquiring books open to the book-hunter in London, there is none more pleasant or popular than that of Bookstalling. To the man with small means, and to the man with no means at all, the pastime is a very fascinating one. East, west, north, and south, there is, at all times and in all seasons, plenty of good hunting-ground for the sportsman, although the inveterate hunter will encounter a surfeit of Barmecides' feasts. Nearly every book-hunter has been more or less of a bookstaller, and the custom is more than tinctured with the odour of respectability by the fact that Roxburghe's famous Duke, Lord Macaulay the historian, and Mr. Gladstone the omnivorous, have been inveterate grubbers among the bookstalls. Macaulay was not very communicative to booksellers, and when any of them would hold up a book, although at the other end of the shop, he could tell by the cover, or by intuition, what it was all about, and would say 'No,' or 'I have it already.' Leigh Hunt was a bookstaller, for he says: 'Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair. "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired."' The first Lord Lytton had a fancy for these plebeian book-marts; whilst Southey had a mania for them almost: he could not pass one without 'just running his eye over for one minute, even if the coach which was to take him to see Coleridge at Hampstead was within the time of starting.'
