rose to £2200, at which point there was a long pause; it then rose in hundreds with very little delay to £3400, at which it was knocked down to a bookseller. The second copy was on paper, and there were those present who said it was better than the other, which had a suspicion attaching to it of having been "restored" with a facsimile leaf. The first bid was again £1000, which the buyer of the previous copy made guineas, and the bidding speedily went up to £2660, at which price the first bidder paused. A third bidder had stepped in at £1960, and now, amid breathless excitement, bid £10 more. This he had to do twice before the book was knocked down to him at £2690.
A scene like this has really very little to do with book-collecting. The beginner must labour hard to distinguish different kinds of printing; he must be able to recognise at a glance even fragments from the press of Caxton. His eye must be accustomed to all the tricks of the trade and others, so that he may tell a facsimile in a moment, or detect a forgery.
But now let us return to the distinctive marks of early printed books. The first is, says M. Rouveyre,—
1. The absence of a separate title-page. It was not till 1476-1480 that the titles of books were
