The extreme variety of the bookstall is its great attraction, and the chances of netting a rare or interesting book lie, perhaps, not so much in the variety of books displayed as in their general shabbiness. Ten years ago an English journalist picked up a copy of the first edition of Mrs. Glasse's 'Art of Cookery,' in the New Kent Road, for a few pence. It is no longer a shabby folio, but, superbly bound, it was sold with Mr. Sala's books, July 23, 1895, for £10. A not too respectable copy of Charles Lamb's privately-printed volume, 'The Beauty and the Beast,' was secured for a few pence, its market-value being something like £20. A copy of Sir Walter Scott's 'Vision of Don Roderick,' 1816, first edition, in the original boards, was purchased, by Mr. J. H. Slater, in Farringdon Road, in January, 1895, for 2d.—not a great catch, perhaps, but it is one of the rarest of Scott's works; and as the originals of this prolific author are rapidly rising in the market, there is no knowing what it may be worth in the immediate future.
Here is a curious illustration of the manner in which a 'find' is literally picked up. A man who sells books from a barrow in the streets was wheeling it on the way to open for the day, and passed close to a bookseller's assistant who was on his way to work. As the man passed, a small volume fell off into the road, which the assistant kindly picked up, with the intention of replacing it on the barrow. Before doing so, however, he looked at the volume. One glance was enough. 'Here, what do you want for this?' he asked. The dealer, taking a casual glance at the volume, said: 'Oh, thruppence, I suppose, will do.' The money was paid, and the assistant departed with the prize, which was a rare volume by Increase Mather, printed in 1698 at Boston, U.S.A., and worth from £8 to £12. A copy of Fuller's first work, and the only volume of poetry published by that quaint writer, the excessively rare 'David's Hainous Sinne,' 1631, was bought a few years ago for eighteenpence, probably worth half as many pounds.
The coincidences of the bookstall are sometimes very remarkable. Mr. G. L. Gomme relates one which is well worth recording, and we give it in his own words: 'My friend, Mr. James Britten, the well-known plant-lore scholar, has been collecting for some years the set of twenty-four volumes of that curious annual, Time's Telescope. He had two duplicates for 1825 and 1826, and these he gave to me. One day last January I was engaged to dine with him, and in the middle of the same day I passed a second-hand bookshop, and picked out from the sixpenny box a volume of Time's Telescope for 1816. In the evening I showed my treasure with great contentment to my friend, expecting congratulations. But, to my surprise and discomfiture, a mysterious look passed over his face, then followed a quick migration to his bookshelves, then a loud hurrah, and an explanation that this very "find" of mine was the one volume he wanted to complete his set, the one volume he had been in search of for some time.' Another book-collector picked out of a rubbish-heap on a country bookseller's floor a little old book of poetry with the signature of 'A. Pope.' Subsequently he found a manuscript note in a book on the shelves of a public library referring to this very copy, which, the writer of the note stated, had been given him by the poet Pope.
The late Cornelius Walford related an interesting incident, the 'only one of any special significance which has occurred to me during thirty-five years of industrious book-hunting': 'When living at Enfield, I used generally to walk to the Temple by way of Finsbury, Moorgate, Cheapside, and Fleet Street. Every bookshop on the way I was familiar with. On one occasion I thought I would vary the route by way of Long Lane and Smithfield (as, indeed, I had occasionally done before). I was at the time sadly in want of a copy of "Weskett on Insurances," 1781, a folio work of some 600 pages. I had searched and inquired for it for years; no bookseller had ever seen it. I had visited every bookshop in Dublin, in the hope of finding a copy of the pirated (octavo) edition printed there; and but for having seen a copy in a public library, should have come to the conclusion that the book never existed. Some temporary sheds had been erected over the Metropolitan Railway in Long Lane. One, devoted to a meagre stock of old books, was opened that morning. The first book I saw on the rough shelves was Weskett, original edition, price a few shillings. I need hardly say I carried it away. . . . I have never seen or heard of another of the original edition exposed or reported for sale.'
Mr. Shandy père was a bookstaller also, and if Bruscambille's 'Prologue upon Long Noses,' even when obtainable 'almost for nothing,' would fail to excite in every collector the enthusiasm experienced by Mr. Shandy, we can at all events sympathize with him. '"There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom," said the stall-man, who, like many stall-men of to-day, did not hesitate to make a leap in the dark, "except what are chained up in the libraries of the curious." My father flung down the money as quick as lightning, took Bruscambille into his bosom, hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman Street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.'
We have already seen that there were bookstalls as well as bookshops in and about the neighbourhood of Little Britain during the latter part of the seventeenth century. There were bookstalls or booths also in St. Paul's Churchyard long before this period; but books had scarcely become old in the time of Shakespeare, so that doubtless the volumes which were to be had within the shadow of the cathedral were new ones. Booksellers gradually migrated from the heart of London to a more westerly direction. The bookstall followed, not so much as a matter of course as because there was no room for it; land became extremely valuable, and narrow streets, which are also crowded, are not a congenial soil for the book-barrow. The Strand and Holborn and Fleet Street districts, both highways and byways, became a favourite spot for the book-barrow during the last century, and remained such up to quite modern times—until, indeed, the iconoclastic wave of improvements swept everything before it. Holywell Street still remains intact.
