The Book-Collector / A General Survey of the Pursuit and of those who have engaged in it at Home and Abroad from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

by William Carew Hazlitt

In the copy of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, bound up with an early edition of Venus and Adonis, a former owner represents with perfect justice, that although he gave three-halfpence for the two volumes in one, a corner of a leaf was defective; and there has been furthermore a profound arithmetical computation that if this gentleman and his heirs or assigns had invested the amount in good securities, the capital at this moment would have reached the vicinity of £1000. In a copy of Stow's Survey, 1633, which once belonged to Sir Thomas Davies, Lord Mayor of London in 1676, we encounter a memorandum on the fly-leaf: "I pray, put in the loose leaues Carefully. John Meriton. For Mr. Richardson, bookbinder in Scalding Alley." Richardson bound for Pepys. In an odd volume of Sandford and Merton, which fell in Dr. Burney's way, and which he gave to his daughter—Johnson's "little Burney"—he wrote:—

"See, see, my dear Fan,

Here comes, spick and span,

Little Sandford and Merton,

Without stain or dirt on;

'Tis volume the second,

Than the first better reckoned;

Pray read it with glee,

And remember C. B.

"April 18, 1786."