Old Dobell is in a class by himself--scholar, antiquarian, poet, and bookseller.[4] He is just the type one would expect to find in a shop on the floor of which books are stacked in piles four or five feet high, leaving narrow tortuous paths through which one treads one's way with great drifts of books on either side. To reach the shelves is practically impossible, yet out of this confusion I have picked many a rare item.
Don't be discouraged if, on your asking for a certain volume, Mr. Dobell gently replies, "No, sorry." That means simply that he cannot put his mental eye on it at the moment. It, or something as interesting, will come along. Don't hurry; and let me observe that the prices of this eighteenth-century bookshop are of the period.
I once sought, for years, a little book of no particular value; but I wanted it to complete a set. I had about given up all hope of securing a copy when I finally found it in a fashionable shop on Piccadilly. It was marked five guineas, an awful price; but I paid it and put the volume in my pocket. That very day I stumbled across a copy in a better condition at Dobell's, marked two and six. I bethought me of Labby's advice and "averaged."
From Dobell came Wordsworth's copy of "Endymion"; likewise a first edition of the old-fashioned love-story, "Henrietta Temple," by Disraeli, inscribed, "To William Beckford with the author's compliments," with many pages of useless notes in Beckford's hand; he seems to have read the volumes with unnecessary care. Nor should I forget a beautiful copy of Thomson's "Seasons," presented by Byron "To the Hon'ble Frances Wedderburne Webster," with this signed impromptu:--
Go!--volume of the Wintry Blast, The yellow Autumn and the virgin Spring. Go!--ere the Summer's zephyr's past And lend to loveliness thy lovely Wing.
The morning's mail of a busy man, marked "personal," takes a wide scope, ranging all the way from polite requests for a loan to brief statements that "a prompt remittance will oblige"; but at the bottom of the pile are the welcome catalogues of the second-hand booksellers--for books, to be interesting, must at least be second-hand. Indeed, as with notes offered for discount, the greater the number of good indorsers the better. In books, indorsements frequently take the form of bookplates. I am always interested in such a note as this: "From the library of Charles B. Foote, with his bookplate."