Excerpt from The Stowe Catalogue, Priced and Annotated

The avidity with which catalogues of sales by auction of collections vastly inferior in interest and importance to that of Srows have, from time to time, been sought for by persons of taste, has suggested the publication of the following pages. The object of the Editor has been to furnish a volume of somewhat deeper interest than a mere priced catalogue; and with this view he has endeavoured, so far as patient and diligent research might enable him so to do, to put upon record such facts as seemed calculated to illustrate the origin, history, merits, and intrinsic value of the subjects calling for particular remark at his bands. In his comments upon the characteristic traits of the articles specially referred to, the Editor has studied to observe a rigid impartiality; and if, occasionally, his judgment may be found at variance with that of their possessors, it must be home in mind that he lays no claim to infallibility for his opinions. His desire has been to provide a trustworthy manual for the amateur and man of taste, to assist him not only in ascertaining the existing value of objects of art [and vertu, but in tracing to their new owners those that have lately been dispersed. It is only by a careful perusal of priced catalogues of the sales of collections of works of this description, that the amateur, who has not leisure to attend and purchase for himself, can arrive at a proximate acquaintance with the cost at which it is possible to obtain them. The bookseller, the picture-dealer, and the connoisseur, must all graduate in this branch of bibliography, if they would correctly inform themselves of the value of the objects in which they are respectively interested. The catalogues of the collections of Mr. Heber, Sir Mark M. Sykes, Horace Walpole, Mr. Beckford, and many other distinguished amateurs, are now rarely to be obtained, and never except at prices enormously beyond their original cost; whilst copies annotated with the pen are only to be purchased at a sacrifice which few virtuosi will in these days care to incur.

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