“The character of the person whose collection this was is so well known, that there is no occasion to say much of him, nor, to any man of judgment that inspects the Catalogue, of the collection itself. Something, however, it becomes us to say of both; and this, I think, may with truth and modesty enough be said, that as few men knew books, and that part of learning which is called _Historia Literaria_, better than himself, so there never appeared in England so choice and valuable a Catalogue to be thus disposed of as this before us. Certain it is, this library contains not a few which never appeared in any auction here before, nor indeed, as I have heard him say, for aught he knew--and he knew as well as any man living--in any printed Catalogue in the world. It was very seldom that he bought any book without some very particular reason. For if any man died, he certainly knew what we call the secret history of learning so well, that if there were but one single passage in an author for which only it was to be valued, it never escaped him. Being a person who collected his books, and not for ostentation or ornament, he seemed no more solicitous about their dress than his own; and therefore you’ll find that a gilt back or a large margin was very seldom any inducement to him to buy. ’Twas sufficient to him that he had the book.... He himself was not a mere nomenclator, and versed only in title-pages, but had made that just and laudable use of his books which would become all those that set up for collectors.... Give me leave to say this of him upon my own knowledge, that he never grudged his money in procuring, nor his time or labour in perusing any book which he thought could be any ways instructive to him; and having the felicity of a memory always faithful, always officious, which never forsook him, though attacked by frequent and severe sickness, and by the worst of all diseases, old age, his desire for knowledge attended him to the last, and he pursued his studies with equal vigour and application to the very extremity of his life.” He had thirteen Caxtons, which sold altogether for less than two guineas, less than these books fetched at Richard Smith’s sale. A curious volume of Tracts, consisting of “The Bellman’s Night Walks” (1632), “The Bellman of London” (1608), “Life of Ned Browne,” “Cut Purse,” &c., sold for 2s. 8d.; Stubbe’s “Anatomie of Abuses” (1585), for 8d.; and Tusser’s “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” (1590) for 4d. In spite of these low prices, the total amount of the sale was £1600, the expenses of the sale--4s. in the pound = £320--being deducted. The catalogue was charged 2s. 6d. The last sale in the seventeenth century to be recorded is that of John Lloyd, Bishop of St. Davids, sold in 1699 by John Bullord at Tom’s Coffee-House.