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r of the stamp of Mr. Hartley was almost sufficient to support such an establishment as Newman's in Holborn or Toovey's in Piccadilly. You might pass the latter, or both, day after day and week after week, and not see a soul enter or leave the premises; all was done by correspondence and flukes and a few real good buyers in the background. Mr. Quaritch in London or M. Fontaine in Paris will clear more in an afternoon by the change of hands of two or three heavy items than a small dealer, even if he is unusually lucky, will do in a twelvemonth out of thousands of petty and troublesome transactions. It is not particularly unusual for a big firm to sell at one sitting four or five thousand pounds worth of property. There are others which have not sold as much during the entire term of their career, and never will. The works which enjoy their turn of public favour are generally recognisable in the catalogues by the type in which they are set forth; and any one who has stood by and witnessed all the changes of the last thirty or forty years observes periodical phenomena in the transfer of typographical honours from one school of authors, or one group of subjects, to another. The most recent auctioneers' catalogues reflect the sentiment of the day in lavishing capitals on trifles from the pens of more or less ephemeral modern writers, and registering with corresponding brevity much of the old English literature, which a few years since was in the ascendant. A rare volume of Elizabethan verse or prose halts after an insignificant brochure by Lamb, Dickens, or Thackeray, which the respective authors would have judged scarcely worth preserving, to which their indifference, in point of fact, constitutes the cause of scarcity and consequent appreciation. So it was once upon a time, to be sure, with the Caxton, the quarto Shakespeare, the ballad, the penny black-letter garland, and many another article which we now hold so precious. The man who could secure Caxtons and Shakespeares for pence, was he happier? Why, no; for he simply followed the market and nobody was envious. He lifted his acquisition off the counter or stall for the best of all reasons--because he fancied it--nay, because he intended to read it when he reached home. A plea from the absolute collector's point of view--I fear, a weak and false one--is occasionally advanced for books which were formerly in fashion and favour; for example, Sylvester's _Du Bartas_
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