'
Dr. Johnson's books were dispersed in a four-days' sale in 1785. A copy
of the interesting catalogue has lately been reprinted by The Club. The
most valuable specimen, as a mere curiosity, would be the folio with
which he beat the bookseller, but we suppose that very little on the
whole was obtained for the 662 lots of learned volumes that had sprawled
over his dusty floor. The Doctor had but little sympathy with the
fashions that were beginning to prevail. He laughs in the _Rambler_ at
'Cantilenus' with his first edition of _The Children in the Wood_, and
the antiquary who despaired of obtaining one missing Gazette till it was
sent to him 'wrapped round a parcel of tobacco.' 'Hirsutus,' we are
told,'very carefully amassed all the English books that were printed in
the black character'; the fortunate virtuoso had 'long since completed
his Caxton, and wanted but two volumes of a perfect Pynson.' In our own
day we can hardly realise the idea of such riches; but the 'Rambler'
scouted the notion of slighting or valuing a book because it was printed
in the Roman or Gothic type. John Ratcliffe of Bermondsey was one of
these 'black-letter dogs.' He had some advantages of birth and position;
for, being a chandler and grocer, he could buy these old volumes by
weight in the course of his trade. He died in 1776, the master of a whole
'galaxy of Caxtons'; his library is said to have held the essence of
poetry, romance and history; it was more precious in flavour to the new
_dilettanti_ than the copious English stores of James West, the judicious
President of the Royal Society; it was far more refined than the 'omnium
gatherum' scattered in 1788 on Major Pearson's death, or Dr.
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