Dr. Johnson's books were dispersed in a four-days' sale in 1785. A copy of the interesting catalogue has lately been reprinted by The Club. The most valuable specimen, as a mere curiosity, would be the folio with which he beat the bookseller, but we suppose that very little on the whole was obtained for the 662 lots of learned volumes that had sprawled over his dusty floor. The Doctor had but little sympathy with the fashions that were beginning to prevail. He laughs in the _Rambler_ at 'Cantilenus' with his first edition of _The Children in the Wood_, and the antiquary who despaired of obtaining one missing Gazette till it was sent to him 'wrapped round a parcel of tobacco.' 'Hirsutus,' we are told,'very carefully amassed all the English books that were printed in the black character'; the fortunate virtuoso had 'long since completed his Caxton, and wanted but two volumes of a perfect Pynson.' In our own day we can hardly realise the idea of such riches; but the 'Rambler' scouted the notion of slighting or valuing a book because it was printed in the Roman or Gothic type. John Ratcliffe of Bermondsey was one of these 'black-letter dogs.' He had some advantages of birth and position; for, being a chandler and grocer, he could buy these old volumes by weight in the course of his trade. He died in 1776, the master of a whole 'galaxy of Caxtons'; his library is said to have held the essence of poetry, romance and history; it was more precious in flavour to the new _dilettanti_ than the copious English stores of James West, the judicious President of the Royal Society; it was far more refined than the 'omnium gatherum' scattered in 1788 on Major Pearson's death, or Dr. Farmer's ragged regiments of old plays and frowsy ballads, and square-faced broadsides 'bought for thrice their weight in gold.' M. Paris de Meyzieux was the owner of a splendid library. Dibdin has described his third sale, held in London during 1791, when the bibliomaniacs, it was said, used to cool themselves down with ice before they could face such excitement. Of himself he confessed that when he had seen the illuminations of Nicolas Jany, the snow-white 'Petrarch,' the 'Virgil' on vellum, life had no more to offer: 'after having seen only these three books I hope to descend to my obscure grave in perfect peace and happiness.' The _Livre d'Heures_ printed for Francis I., which had belonged to the Duc de la Valliere, was bought by Sir Mark Sykes, and became one of his principal treasures at Sledmere.