Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and writings.  Thus are commentators made.  They learn in suffering what they observe in the margin.  Malone may have been driven to his 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, L25 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 L25 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 (L1 7s.), as it wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves than he had supposed.  ‘Poor Mr. Beauclerk,’ he writes, ’seems never to have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found out the imperfections.’  Malone was far too good a book-collector to suggest a third method of discovering a book’s imperfections—­namely, reading it.  Beauclerk’s library only realized L5,011, and as the Duke of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of L5,000, there must have been after payment of the auctioneer’s charges a considerable deficit.

But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator:  he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke.  On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke’s place, the Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days.  The following extract from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: