'The two books you commissioned me to get were knocked down at L1 15s. and 10s. respectively,' said a bookseller to a well-known collector only the other day; 'and if you insist upon having them at these prices, plus the commission, you must have them. But as a matter of fact they cost me L1 over and above the total of L2 5s.' The reply to the collector's demand for an explanation was, 'Smith agreed to let me have these two books if I did not oppose his bidding for the Fielding.' It is scarcely necessary to say that the total cost, with the L1 thrown in, was much below the original commission, whilst the Fielding ran up to considerably over the price Smith intended to have given. By striking a balance, the two cronies each obtained what he wanted. An arrangement of this sort is nearly invariably the explanation of two extreme prices being paid for equally good copies of one book in a single season. In 1781 a portion of the library formed by Ralph Sheldon, of Weston, Warwickshire, chiefly in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, was sold at Christie's, but the auctioneer throughout appears to have been victimized by the knock-out system. One of the lots, comprising a large collection of scarce old plays in fifty-six volumes, quarto, was knocked down to one bookseller for L5 5s.; he then passed it on to another for L18, and the collection was sold on the spot to Henderson the actor for L31 10s. At this same sale the English Bible, 1537, realized 13s.; two copies of the Common Prayer Book, 1552, 8s.; the First Folio Shakespeare, with two other books, L2 4s.; the 'Legenda Aurea,' printed by Notary, 1503, 10s. 6d. It would not be difficult to extend this list of illustrations, but perhaps one example is as good as a hundred.