hich you are prepared to pay for each. Should you do so, probably
it will be taken to indicate that you are prepared to pay the price
named, and the book when found will be offered to you at that price (or a
few shillings less to give the idea of a bargain) when you might have had
it at a considerably lower figure. Remember also that the very fact of a
book being sought for enhances its price. Suppose that a country
bookseller sees an advertisement in the trade journal asking for a copy
of a certain obscure sixteenth-century work, and that he recollects he
has a copy somewhere in stock. He finds it among his shelves marked,
possibly, five shillings. When he answers the advertisement it is more
than likely that he will ask a pound or even two for it. At the same
time, however, you must consider whether or not the book is worth as much
to you. It may be a little known and, to the world at large, a valueless
book, and you may have to wait some years before you are able to secure a
copy; whereas by advertising for it you may procure a copy almost
immediately. Do you prefer to take the chance of having to wait years for
a book which you urgently want, or to pay a longish price and possess it
at once?

There is another point to be considered. Should you ever part with your
collection _en bloc_, or should your executors dispose of it, this volume
will be an item of the collection of works in which you specialise. As
such it will be much more likely to realise the larger than the smaller
price, especially as the disposal of a collection of books upon a
definite subject attracts to the rostrum other collectors of a like class
of works.

Surely every book-collector is in his heart of hearts a specialist. Have
you ever taken into your hands some choice gem of your collection without
wishing that there were others in your library of the same genus? Is
there not some one volume among your books that demands your first
consideration when new shelving is put up, when your books are
re-arranged; the volume to which you would fly first of all if a fire
broke out in your sanctum? Brother bookman, I can almost hear you turn in
your chair at the awful prospect of having to make choice between your
beloved tomes! Indeed I am with you whole-heartedly, for there are two
books, two priceless gems, rescued (the one from Austria, the other
France) after years of patient search, two books which ever strive for
the ascendancy in my bibliophilic a