Smith’s _Virginia_, 1624. Dr. F. Bernard (1698), 4s. 2d. Hunter (1813), £27, 6s. A large paper copy sold at the Beckford sale (1883) for £605 (dedication copy to the Duchess of Richmond, in old brown morocco, covered with gold tooling, with the Duchess’s arms forming the centre ornaments). Eliot Bible of 1661-63. Dr. L. Seaman (1676), 19s. Wimpole library (Lord Chancellor Hardwicke), 1888, £580--Quaritch. At this Wimpole sale (Christie’s) a volume of twelve tracts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relating to America sold for £555. A curious incident occurred at Messrs. Sotheby’s in July 1897, during the sale of the library of Mr. Cyril Dunn Gardner. A volume of Sermons, which included “A Sermon preached at Plimmoth in New England, Dec. 9, 1621,” was put up, and the biddings, commencing at 5s., were carried on till £1, 17s. was reached, when the lot was knocked down at that amount. A dispute arising, it was put up again, and was eventually bought by Messrs. H. Stevens and Son for £87. FOOTNOTE: [57] Mr. Blades has given full particulars of all the sales in his “Life and Typography of William Caxton” (1863); but there have been many sales since the publication of his great work, and particulars of these are given chiefly from two valuable articles, entitled _Caxtoniana_, by Mr. Frederic Norgate, which were published in _The Library_, Nos. 8 and 9 (August and September 1889). That accurate bibliographer has kindly allowed the author to see and use his manuscript corrections and additions to these articles. CHAPTER X PRICES OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS The first edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (folio, 1623) has been rising in price from the commencement of the nineteenth century; but the enormous prices now paid do not date further back than 1864, when a specially fine copy was bought by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts at George Daniel’s sale for £716, 2s. This amount was paid on account of the height of the book and of its great beauty, and possibly the circumstance of the year being the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth had something to do with it, but this sale had the effect of raising the price of all copies permanently.