the more
eminent moderns. The literary _eclat_ stimulates the biddings.

Those works which represent the maximum value during recent years have
been:--

(i.) The earliest examples of printing, at all events in book-form;
_Missae Speciales_, and other smaller books executed by Gutenberg
previous to 1455, or at all events to the Bible ascribed to that date;
Gutenberg's Bible, otherwise known as the Mazarin Bible, 1455,
re-issued by Fust and Schoeffer in 1456; the Psalters of 1457 and
1459, designed for the Cathedral and Benedictine monastery of Mainz
respectively; the _Chronicles_ of Monstrelet on vellum; _Lancelot du
Lac_ on vellum, 1488; the Sarum _Missal_, 1492, 1497, 1504; Caxton's
two _Troy-Books_, two _Jasons_, _Arthur_, _Speculum Vitae Christi_ and
_Doctrinal of Sapience_ on vellum, _Canterbury Tales_ and other
separate works of Chaucer, _Paris and Vienne_, &c.; _Book of St.
Albans_, 1486, and other works printed there, 1480-1534; Tyndale's
_New Testament_, 1526; Coverdale's _Bible_, 1535; Boece's _Chronicles
of Scotland_ on vellum, 1536; the Huth Ballads; Montaigne's _Essais_,
1580; the same in English, 1603, 1613; Spenser's _Faery Queen_,
1590-96; Constable's _Diana_, 1592; Bacon's _Essays_, 1597, 1598;
Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, 1st quartos, _Sonnets_,
and the collected _Plays_, 1593-1623. (ii.) Shelton's _Don Quixote_,
1612-20; first editions of Daniel, Drayton, Lodge, Watson, Barnfield,
Breton, &c.; Milton's _Comus_, 1637, _Lycidas_, 1638, _Paradise Lost_,
1667; Walton's _Complete Angler_, 1653, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_,
1678, and any other capital or standard authors of the seventeenth
century, particularly Lovelace, Carew, Suckling, down to Locke's
_Essay on the Human Understanding_, which, though a common book, has
lately grown a dear one by sheer force of companionship.

There seems a disposition to look more indifferently on volumes which
have no certificate or passport. Secondarily, as in the case of
Florio's version of Montaigne, items are admitted as hangers-on and
interpreters of great authors.

The last copy of the _Faery Queen_, 1590-96, offered for sale, an
extraordinarily fine one, brought L84, of _Robinson Crusoe_, L75. The
British Museum paid for the _Book of Common Prayer_, 1603, a year
earlier than any edition so far described, L175. It was obtained by
the vendor from a sale at Sotheby's, where its liturgical interest was
overlooked.

The question of prices in all