£4900 for the second edition of the Mainz Psalter, 1459, appears (as we have observed) to be the largest sum ever paid in this country for a single work; and the vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible follows, £900 behind; at least at the price of £4000 it fell to Mr. Quaritch at the Ashburnham sale in 1897. But for the _Manesse Liederbuch_, a thirteenth-century MS. of national ballads, carried away by the French from Heidelberg in 1656, and found among the Ashburnham MSS., the German Government practically paid in 1887 £18,000. What may be termed a bad second was the Duke of Hamilton's Missal, sold to the German Government in 1887 for £10,000; but that also belongs to the manuscript class.
It must be an absolute truism to state that at the present moment the American is a material factor in influencing the book-market. He is less so, perhaps, in the sort of way in which he assisted the booksellers of a bygone generation in reducing or realising their stocks; but he has come to the front more than ever as a competitor for the prizes. There was a day when countless Transatlantic libraries were in course of formation; but they are now fairly complete, and, moreover, they have the means at hand, not formerly available, of filling up the gaps at home.
Our American kinsfolk have undoubtedly become masters of an almost countless number of bibliographical gems, and have been content to pay handsomely for them. We do not hear of any sensible reflux of old books from the States, but that might happen hereafter under the influence of financial depression. At the same time, there is perhaps nothing on the other side of the Atlantic which is not represented in duplicate here, unless it be in an instance or two, as, for example, the perfect Caxton _Morte Arthur_, 1485; and even those volumes, which are of signal rarity, are almost without exception in repositories accessible to all.
Returning for a moment to the commercial aspect of our present topic, the Transatlantic acquirer at any cost makes the fixture of high, even ridiculous, prices for certain books impossible. Beyond the _maximum_ there is a higher _maximum_ still. Who would have dreamed of a first edition of Burns, although uncut, bringing, as it did just lately (February 1898) in an Edinburgh auction-room, £572, or a sixpenny volume on Ploughs by one Small, £30, because it bore on the title, _Rob^t. Burns, Poet_, in the great man's own hand, as well as a holograph memorandum attached to flyleaf? In the case of the Kilmarnock Burns of 1786 the sole excuse of the purchaser was its uncut state, for it is a comparatively common book. It was acquired by Mr. Lamb of Dundee, a hotel-keeper, of one Mr. Braidwood for £60. A second copy in paper covers, also uncut, exists; but the general condition is not so good.