The Romance of Book-Collecting

book is extolled at length, and there are pages of lamentation and woe

as Hobbes of Malmesbury, his 'Leviathan,' 'a very large and famous beast,' is knocked down, by mistake, for the miserable sum of five pieces of silver.

An exhaustive chapter on early book auctions would necessarily commence with the dispersion of the stock of Bonaventure and Abraham Elze...