pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and
skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and
on that of his Irish friends with great success.

His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely
restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr.
Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a
fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at
whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a
book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was
seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller,
£25 for the Editio Princeps of _Venus and Adonis_. He already had the
edition of 1596--a friend had given it him--bound up with
Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very
naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined
Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that
belief, and only gave £25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His
copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets
(1609) and the first edition of the _Rape of Lucrece_ for two guineas,
and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of
Elizabethan plays.

Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing
habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother
book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their
libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they
were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781,
which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the
pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely
pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (£1 7s.), as it