ized a total of about L3,000.

[Illustration: _Canonbury Tower, George Daniel's Residence._]

George Daniel is now remembered by but few book-collectors. Mr. W. Carew
Hazlitt knew him very well, and describes him as a retired accountant,
whose idiosyncrasy consisted of _rares morceaux_, _bonnes bouches_,
uniques--copies of books with a _provenance_, or in jackets made for
them by Roger Payne--nay, in the original parchment or paper wrapper, or
in a bit of real mutton which certain men call sheep. He was a person
of literary tastes, and had written books in his day. But his chief
celebrity was as an acquirer of those of others, provided always that
they were old enough or rare enough. An item never passed into his
possession without at once _ipso facto_ gaining new attributes, almost
invariably worded in a holograph memorandum on the fly-leaf. Daniel was
in the market at a fortunate and peculiar juncture, just when prices
were depressed, about the time of the great Heber sale. His marvellous
gleanings came to the hammer precisely when the quarto Shakespeare, the
black-letter romance, the unique book of Elizabethan verse, had grown
worth ten times their weight in sovereigns. Sir William Tite, J. O.
Halliwell, and Henry Huth were to the front. It was in 1864. What a
wonderful sight it was! No living man had ever witnessed the like.
Copies of Shakespeare, printed from the prompters' MSS. and published at
fourpence, fetched L300 or L400. I remember old Joseph Lilly, when he
had secured the famous Ballads, which came from the Tollemaches of
Helmingham Hall, holding up the folio volume in which they were
contained in triumph as someone whom he knew entered the room. Poor
Daniel! he had no mean estimate of his treasures--what he had was always
better than what you had. Books, prints, autographs--it was all the
same. I met him one morning in Long Acre. I had bought a very fine copy
of Taylor, the Water Poet. "Oh, yes, sir," he said, "I saw it; but not
quite so fine as mine." He went up to Highgate to look through the
engravings of Charles Matthews the elder. They were all duplicates--of
course inferior ones. "Damn him, sir!" cried Matthews afterwards to a
friend; "I should like him to have had a duplicate of my wooden leg."

John Payne Collier, who was born a year before Daniel, but who lived
until 1883, was a collector with very similar tastes. He had been a
reporter on the _Morning Chronicle_, and in all probability imbibed s