What, at first sight, struck one most in those books, was the moderateness of their price, compared with their excellent state of preservation. They had evidently not been bought in a lot, at so much a cubic yard, like the rubbish of an auction, and yet the handsomest, the most ancient, the most venerable from their size, folios or quartos, were not marked higher than 2 or 3 shillings; an octavo was sold 1 shilling, the duodecimo six pence: each according to its size. Thus ruled Mr Allen, a methodical man, if ever there was one; and he was all the better for it, since, faithfully patronized by clergymen, scholars and collectors, he renewed his stock at a rate which more assuming speculators might have envied. But how did he get those well bound and well preserved volumes, for which, everywhere else, five or six times more would have been charged? Here also Mr Allen had his method, sure and regular. No one attended more assiduously the auctions which take place every day in London: his stand was marked at the foot of the auctioneer’s desk. The rarest, choicest books passed before his eyes, contended for at often fabulous prices by Quaritch, Sotheran, Pickering, Toovey, and other bibliopolists of the British metropolis; Mr Allen smiled at such extravagance; when once a bid had been made by another, he would not add a penny, had an unknown _Gutenberg_ or _Valdarfer’s Boccaccio_ been at stake. But if occasionally, through inattention or weariness, competition slackened (_habent sua fata libelli_), Mr Allen came forward: _six pence!_, he whispered, and sometimes the article was left him; sometimes even, two consecutive numbers, joined together for want of having separately met with a buyer, were knocked down to him, still for the minimum of six pence which was his maximum. Many of those slighted ones doubtless deserved their fate; but among them might slip some that were not unworthy of the honours of the catalogue, and which, at any other time, buyers more attentive, or less whimsical might perhaps have covered with gold. This, however, did not at all enter into Mr Allen’s calculation: the size was the only rule of his estimate.