“Come, sirs, and view this famous Library; ’Tis pity learning should discouraged be: Here’s bookes (that is, if they were but well sold) I will maintain ’t are worth their weight in gold. Then bid apace, and break me out of hand: Ne’er cry you don’t the subject understand. For this I’ll say--howe’er the case may hit,-- Whoever buys of me--I’ll teach ’em wit.” Although the London booksellers went into the country to sell books, there were some local auctioneers, as, for instance, Michael Johnson (the father of Dr. Samuel Johnson), who kept a bookstall in Lichfield, and attended the neighbouring towns on market days. Johnson’s address to his customers is taken from “A Catalogue of Choice Books, ... to be sold by auction, or he who bids most, at the Talbot, in Sidbury, Worcester,” and is quoted from Clarke’s _Repertorium Bibliographicum_ (1819)-- “TO ALL GENTLEMEN, LADIES, AND OTHERS IN OR NEAR WORCESTER,--I have had several auctions in your neighbourhood, as Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Evesham, &c., with success, and am now to address myself and try my fortune with you.--You must not wonder that I begin every Day’s Sale with small and common books; the reason is a room is some time a filling, and persons of address and business, seldom coming first, they are entertainment till we are full; they are never the last books of the best kind of that sort for ordinary families and young persons, &c. But in the body of the Catalogue you will find Law, Mathematicks, History: and for the learned in Divinity there are Drs. Souter, Taylor, Tillotson, Beveridge, and Flavel, &c., the best of that kind: and to please the Ladies I have added store of fine pictures and paper hangings, and, by the way, I would desire them to take notice that the pictures shall always be put up by the noon of that day they are to be sold, that they may be view’d by day light. I have no more but to wish you pleas’d and myself a good sale, who am Your Humble Servant, M. JOHNSON.” The sale took place in the evening, commencing at six o’clock and continuing till all the lots were sold.