But amounts which we venture to think unduly extravagant have of late years been obtained at Christies's rooms for certain books, such as Lady Elizabeth Tirrwhyt's Prayers, 1574, bound in gold, and said to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth (1220 guineas);[4] Henry VIII.'s Prayers, 1544, printed on vellum,[5] and enriched with notes by the King, the Queen, Prince Edward, and Princess Mary (610 guineas, as above mentioned); and a third folio Shakespeare, 1663-64, with both titles, but represented as being almost unique in that state, £435. What a contrast to the old prices! Even in our time and memory, the first folio could be had in fine state for £50 or £60, the second for £5, 5s., the third for £50, and the fourth for £5, 5s. George Daniel, we are informed by his representatives, gave about £220 for his first Shakespeare to William Pickering, and Mr. Corser kept his 1632 book in his dining-room at Stand Rectory among the commoner volumes, although it was a fine copy. A middling set now fetches £600 or thereabout.
The earlier standard both for English and foreign rarities was undoubtedly much lower. In Osborne's Catalogue for 1751, the Toledo Missal, described as the scarcest volume in the world, was valued only at £35. In the Heber, and even in the Bright sale, from £10 to £25 secured some of the greatest gems in ancient English literature.
At the Frere auction at Sotheby's, 1896, however, the realisation of the Fenn books beat every record, considering that the copies were generally so poor; and it was hard indeed to see where the value was in a Herbert's Ames accompanied by an extra volume of typographical fragments, of which many were mutilated and many were worthless (£255).
The Book of St. Albans, 1486, as it is usually designated, has descended a little from its original rank as a first-class rarity owing to the successive discovery of unknown copies. The romance connected with the acquisition of the Grenville one has been more than once printed; but the Chronicles of England, from the same press, especially on vellum, maintains its reputation for the utmost rarity, although there were two impressions; and the same may be said of the issues by William of Mecklin, Caxton, and Gerard de Leeu, all and any of which could not, if complete, fail to command very high prices even on paper.
£4900 for the second edition of the Mainz Psalter, 1459, appears (as we have observed) to be the largest sum ever paid in this country for a single work; and the vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible follows, £900 behind; at least at the price of £4000 it fell to Mr. Quaritch at the Ashburnham sale in 1897. But for the Manesse Liederbuch, a thirteenth-century MS. of national ballads, carried away by the French from Heidelberg in 1656, and found among the Ashburnham MSS., the German Government practically paid in 1887 £18,000. What may be termed a bad second was the Duke of Hamilton's Missal, sold to the German Government in 1887 for £10,000; but that also belongs to the manuscript class.
It must be an absolute truism to state that at the present moment the American is a material factor in influencing the book-market. He is less so, perhaps, in the sort of way in which he assisted the booksellers of a bygone generation in reducing or realising their stocks; but he has come to the front more than ever as a competitor for the prizes. There was a day when countless Transatlantic libraries were in course of formation; but they are now fairly complete, and, moreover, they have the means at hand, not formerly available, of filling up the gaps at home.
Our American kinsfolk have undoubtedly become masters of an almost countless number of bibliographical gems, and have been content to pay handsomely for them. We do not hear of any sensible reflux of old books from the States, but that might happen hereafter under the influence of financial depression. At the same time, there is perhaps nothing on the other side of the Atlantic which is not represented in duplicate here, unless it be in an instance or two, as, for example, the perfect Caxton Morte Arthur, 1485; and even those volumes, which are of signal rarity, are almost without exception in repositories accessible to all.
Returning for a moment to the commercial aspect of our present topic, the Transatlantic acquirer at any cost makes the fixture of high, even ridiculous, prices for certain books impossible. Beyond the maximum there is a higher maximum still. Who would have dreamed of a first edition of Burns, although uncut, bringing, as it did just lately (February 1898) in an Edinburgh auction-room, £572, or a sixpenny volume on Ploughs by one Small, £30, because it bore on the title, Robt. Burns, Poet, in the great man's own hand, as well as a holograph memorandum attached to flyleaf? In the case of the Kilmarnock Burns of 1786 the sole excuse of the purchaser was its uncut state, for it is a comparatively common book. It was acquired by Mr. Lamb of Dundee, a hotel-keeper, of one Mr. Braidwood for £60. A second copy in paper covers, also uncut, exists; but the general condition is not so good.
There are in London and other English centres, however, American export and commission agents, independently of those houses which make shipments to the States a collateral branch of their business. It has been the cry, ever since we can recollect, that our cousins were draining the old country of its books, and yet the movement continues—continues with this difference, that the Americans have now plenty of ordinary stock, and are more anxious to limit their acquisitions to rarities. The number of public and private libraries has become very considerable; the most familiar names are Lenox, Carter-Brown, Tower, and Pope, the last the purchaser of the King Arthur printed by Caxton in 1485, and formerly in the Harleian and Osterley Park collections. There is an occasional reflux of exportations, and we should like to hear one day of the Arthur being among them.
One not very pleasant aspect of American and other plutocratic competition has been to convert most of the capital old English books from literature into vertu. What else is it, when two imperfect Chaucers bring £2900, and a Walton's Angler, £415, and where for the second and third folio Shakespeares persons are found willing to give a profit on £500 or £600?