CHAPTER IX

At the Auction-Rooms--Their Changeable Temperature--My Finds in Wellington Street--Certain Conclusions as to the Rarity of Old English Books--Curiosities of Cataloguing and Stray Lots--A Little Ipswich Recovery--A Narrow Escape for some Very Rare Volumes in 1865--A Few Remarkable Instances of Good Fortune for Me--Not for Others--Three Very Severe 'Frosts'--A Great Boom--Sir John Fenn's Wonderful Books at last brought to Light--An Odd Circumstance about One of Them--The Writer moralises--A Couple of Imperfect Caxtons bring £2900--The Gentlemen behind the Scene and Those at the Table--Books converted into _Vertu_--My Intervention on One or Two Occasions--The Auctioneers' World--The 'Settlement' Principle--My Confidence in Sotheby's as Commission Agents--My Three _Sir Richard Whittingtons_--_A Reductio ad Absurdum_--The House in Leicester Square and Its Benefactions in My Favour--Change from the Old Days-- Unique A.B.C.'s and Other Early School Books--the Somers Tracts--Mr Quaritch and His Bibliographical Services to Me--His Independence of Character--The British Museum--My Resort to It for My Venetian Studies Forty Years Ago--The Sources of Supply in the Printed Book Department--My Later Attitude toward It as a Bibliographer--The Vellum Monstrelet and Its True History--Bookbinders--Leighton, Riviere, Bedford, Pratt--Horrible Sight which I witnessed at a Binder's--My Publishers--Dodsley's Old Plays--My Book on the Livery Companies of London--Presentation-Copies, 150