Those works which represent the maximum value during recent years have been:--
(i.) The earliest examples of printing, at all events in book-form; _Missæ Speciales_, and other smaller books executed by Gutenberg previous to 1455, or at all events to the Bible ascribed to that date; Gutenberg's Bible, otherwise known as the Mazarin Bible, 1455, re-issued by Fust and Schoeffer in 1456; the Psalters of 1457 and 1459, designed for the Cathedral and Benedictine monastery of Mainz respectively; the _Chronicles_ of Monstrelet on vellum; _Lancelot du Lac_ on vellum, 1488; the Sarum _Missal_, 1492, 1497, 1504; Caxton's two _Troy-Books_, two _Jasons_, _Arthur_, _Speculum Vitæ Christi_ and _Doctrinal of Sapience_ on vellum, _Canterbury Tales_ and other separate works of Chaucer, _Paris and Vienne_, &c.; _Book of St. Albans_, 1486, and other works printed there, 1480-1534; Tyndale's _New Testament_, 1526; Coverdale's _Bible_, 1535; Boece's _Chronicles of Scotland_ on vellum, 1536; the Huth Ballads; Montaigne's _Essais_, 1580; the same in English, 1603, 1613; Spenser's _Faëry Queen_, 1590-96; Constable's _Diana_, 1592; Bacon's _Essays_, 1597, 1598; Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, 1st quartos, _Sonnets_, and the collected _Plays_, 1593-1623. (ii.) Shelton's _Don Quixote_, 1612-20; first editions of Daniel, Drayton, Lodge, Watson, Barnfield, Breton, &c.; Milton's _Comus_, 1637, _Lycidas_, 1638, _Paradise Lost_, 1667; Walton's _Complete Angler_, 1653, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, 1678, and any other capital or standard authors of the seventeenth century, particularly Lovelace, Carew, Suckling, down to Locke's _Essay on the Human Understanding_, which, though a common book, has lately grown a dear one by sheer force of companionship.
There seems a disposition to look more indifferently on volumes which have no certificate or passport. Secondarily, as in the case of Florio's version of Montaigne, items are admitted as hangers-on and interpreters of great authors.
The last copy of the _Faëry Queen_, 1590-96, offered for sale, an extraordinarily fine one, brought £84, of _Robinson Crusoe_, £75. The British Museum paid for the _Book of Common Prayer_, 1603, a year earlier than any edition so far described, £175. It was obtained by the vendor from a sale at Sotheby's, where its liturgical interest was overlooked.
