gland's Helicon_, collected by John Bodenham, London, 1600;
Breton's _Workes of a young Wyt_; _The Paradice of Dainty Devises_,
London, 1595; _XII Mery fests of the Wyddow Edyth_, London, 1573; and
many other scarce and choice books.

Steevens's library was sold by auction by Mr. King at his great room,
King Street, Covent Garden, on May 13th, 1800, and ten following days.
The catalogue contained nineteen hundred and forty-three lots, which
realised two thousand seven hundred and forty pounds, fifteen shillings.
A copy of the catalogue marked with the prices of the books and the
names of the purchasers is preserved in the British Museum.

Although Dibdin considered that 'enormous sums were given for some
volumes that cost Steevens not a twentieth part of their produce,' the
prices were very small compared with those which could be obtained for
the same books at the present time. The first folio of Shakespeare's
works fetched only twenty-two pounds, and Charles I.'s copy of the
second folio, as already mentioned, but eighteen guineas. Of the first
editions of the separate quarto plays, _Othello_ sold for twenty-nine
pounds, eight shillings; _King Lear_ and the _Merry Wives of Windsor_
for twenty-eight pounds each; _Henry the Fifth_ for twenty-seven pounds,
six shillings; _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ for twenty-five pounds, ten
shillings; and _Much Ado about Nothing_ for the same sum. The first
edition of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ went for three pounds, nineteen
shillings. Steevens's copies of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ and the
_Sonnets_ fetched respectively three hundred and thirty guineas and two
hundred and fifteen guineas at the sale of the library of George Daniel
in 1864. Other prices obtained for some of the rare books were eleven
pounds, fifteen shillings for _England's Helicon_; ten pounds, fifteen
shillings for Barnabe Googe's _Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonnettes_; and
seven pounds, ten shillings for Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_.

Steevens, who led a very retired life in his house at Hampstead Heath,
was the reverse of an amiable man; and while he was very polite and
courteous to his literary friends in private, he made bitter attacks
upon them in print. Dibdin says of him that 'his habits were indeed
peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed
the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His
attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He wo