From the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 18th April 1768.

There was at that time probably more of this description of property in Britain than in Virginia. It had become fashionable, as one may see in Hogarth. Such advertisements—they were abundant—might furnish an apt text on which a philosophical historian could speculate on the probable results to this country, had not Mansfield gone to the root of the matter by denying all property in slaves.

So much for the chances which still remain to the devourer of books, if, after having consumed all the solid volumes within his reach, he should be reduced to shreds and patches of literature,—like a ship's crew having resort to shoe-leather and the sweepings of the locker.

Pretenders.

But now to return to the point whence we started—the disposition, and almost the necessity, which the true enthusiast in the pursuit feels to look into the soul, as it were, of his book, after he has got possession of the body. When he is not of the omnivorous kind, but one who desires to possess a particular book, and, having got it, dips into the contents before committing it to permanent obscurity on his loaded shelves, there is, as we have already seen, a certain thread of intelligent association linking the items of his library to each other. The collector knows what he wants, and why he wants it, and that why does not entirely depend on exteriors, though he may have his whim as to that also.

He is a totally different being from the animal who goes to all sales, and buys every book that is cheap. That is a painfully low and grovelling type of the malady; and, fortunately for the honour of literature, the bargain-hunter who suffers under it is not in general a special votary of books, but buys all bargains that come in his way—clocks, tables, forks, spoons, old uniforms, gas-meters, magic lanterns, galvanic batteries, violins (warranted real Cremonas, from their being smashed to pieces), classical busts (with the same testimony to their genuineness), patent coffee-pots, crucibles, amputating knives, wheel-barrows, retorts, cork-screws, boot-jacks, smoke-jacks, melon-frames, bath-chairs, and hurdy-gurdies. It has been said that once, a coffin, made too short for its tenant, being to be had an undoubted bargain, was bought by him, in the hope that, some day or other, it might prove of service in his family. His library, if such it may be termed, is very rich in old trade-directories, justices of peace and registers of voters, road-books, and other useful manuals; but there are very learned books in it too. That clean folio Herodotus was certainly extremely cheap at half-a-crown; and you need not inform him that the ninth book is wanting, for he will never find that out. The day when he has discovered that any book has been bought by another person, a better bargain than his own copy, is a black one in his calendar; but he has a peculiar device for getting over the calamity by bringing down the average cost of his own copy through fresh investments. Having had the misfortune to buy a copy of Goldsmith's History of England for five shillings, while a neighbour flaunts daily in his face a copy obtained for three, he has been busily occupied in a search for copies still cheaper. He has now brought down the average price of his numerous copies of this more agreeable than accurate work to three shillings and twopence, and hopes in another year to get below the three shillings.

Neither is the rich man who purchases fine and dear books by deputy to be admitted within the category of the genuine book-hunter. He must hunt himself—must actually undergo the anxiety, the fatigue, and, so far as purse is concerned, the risks of the chase. Your rich man, known to the trade as a great orderer of books, is like the owner of the great game-preserve, where the sport is heavy butchery; there is none of the real zest of the hunter of the wilderness to be had within his gates. The old Duke of Roxburghe wisely sank his rank and his wealth, and wandered industriously and zealously from shop to stall over the world, just as he wandered over the moor, stalking the deer. One element in the excitement of the poorer book-hunter he must have lacked—the feeling of committing something of extravagance—the consciousness of parting with that which will be missed. This is the sacrifice which assures the world, and satisfies the man's own heart, that he is zealous and earnest in the work he has set about. And it is decidedly this class who most read and use the books they possess. How genial a picture does Scott give of himself at the time of the Roxburghe sale—the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar Terry, he says, "The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the literary entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, however, like much to have the treatise on Dreams by the author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson, the smith, said of the minister's sermon, 'must be neat wark.' The loyal poems by N.T. are probably by poor Nahum Tate, who was associated with Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more honourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. I never saw them, however, but would give a guinea or thirty shillings for the collection."

One of the reasons why Dibdin's expatiations among rare and valuable volumes are, after all, so devoid of interest, is, that he occupied himself in a great measure in catering for men with measureless purses. Hence there is throughout too exact an estimate of everything by what it is worth in sterling cash, with a contempt for small things, which has an unpleasant odour of plush and shoulder-knot about it. Compared with dear old Monkbarns and his prowlings among the stalls, the narratives of the Boccaccio of the book-trade are like the account of a journey that might be written from the rumble of the travelling chariot, when compared with the adventurous narrative of the pedestrian or of the wanderer in the far East. Everything is too comfortable, luxurious, and easy—russia, morocco, embossing, marbling, gilding—all crowding on one another, till one feels suffocated with riches. There is a feeling, at the same time, of the utter useless pomp of the whole thing. Volumes, in the condition in which he generally describes them, are no more fitted for use and consultation than white kid gloves and silk stockings are for hard work. Books should be used decently and respectfully—reverently, if you will; but let there be no toleration for the doctrine that there are volumes too splendid for use, too fine almost to be looked at, as Brummel said of some of his Dresden china. That there should be little interest in the record of rich men buying costly books which they know nothing about and never become acquainted with, is an illustration of a wholesome truth, pervading all human endeavours after happiness. It is this, that the active, racy enjoyments of life—those enjoyments in which there is also exertion and achievement, and which depend on these for their proper relish—are not to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him the true elements of enjoyment, the book-hunter's treasures must not be his mere property, they must be his achievements—each one of them recalling the excitement of the chase and the happiness of success. Like Monkbarns with his Elzevirs and his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in common with all hunters, a touch of the competitive in his nature, and be able to take the measure of a rival,—as Monkbarns magnanimously takes that of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an editio princeps under the mask of a school Corderius.'"

In pursuing the chase in this spirit, the sportsman is by no means precluded from indulgence in the adventitious specialties that delight the commonest bibliomaniac. There is a good deal more in many of them than the first thought discloses. An editio princeps is not a mere toy—it has something in it that may purchase the attention even of a thinking man. In the first place, it is a very old commodity—about four hundred years of age. If you look around you in the world you will see very few movables coeval with it. No doubt there are wonderfully ancient things shown to travellers,—as in Glammis Castle you may see the identical four-posted bedstead—a very creditable piece of cabinet-makery—in which King Malcolm was murdered a thousand years ago. But genuine articles of furniture so old as the editio princeps are very rare. If we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a drinking-can, of that age, is there not something worthy of observance, as indicating the social condition of the age, in those venerable pages, made to look as like the handwriting of their day as possible, with their decorated capitals, all squeezed between two solid planks of oak, covered with richly embossed hog-skin, which can be clasped together by means of massive decorated clasps? And shall we not admit it to a higher place in our reverence than some mere item of household furnishing, when we reflect that it is the very form in which some great ruling intellect, resuscitated from long interment, burst upon the dazzled eyes of Europe and displayed the fulness of its face?

His Achievements in the Creation of Libraries.

So much, then, for the benefit which the class to whom these pages are devoted derive to themselves from their peculiar pursuit. Let us now turn to the far more remarkable phenomena, in which these separate and perhaps selfish pursuers of their own instincts and objects are found to concur in bringing out a great influence upon the intellectual destinies of mankind. It is said of Brindley, the great canal engineer, that,—when a member of a committee, where he was under examination, a little provoked or amused by his entire devotion to canals, asked him if he thought there was any use of rivers,—he promptly answered, "Yes, to feed navigable canals." So, if there be no other respectable function in life fulfilled by the book-hunter, I would stand up for the proposition that he is the feeder, provided by nature, for the preservation of literature from age to age, by the accumulation and preservation of libraries, public or private. It will require perhaps a little circumlocutory exposition to show this, but here it is.

A great library cannot be constructed—it is the growth of ages. You may buy books at any time with money, but you cannot make a library like one that has been a century or two a-growing, though you had the whole national debt to do it with. I remember once how an extensive publisher, speaking of the rapid strides which literature had made of late years, and referring to a certain old public library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated how he had himself freighted for exportation, within the past month, as many books as that whole library consisted of. This was likely enough to be true, but the two collections were very different from each other. The cargoes of books were probably thousands of copies of some few popular selling works. They might be a powerful illustration of the diffusion of knowledge, but what they were compared with was its concentration. Had all the paper of which these cargoes consisted been bank-notes, they would not have enabled their owner to create a duplicate of the old library, rich in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers.

This impossibility of improvising libraries is really an important and curious thing; and since it is apt to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buying books, in quantities generally far beyond the available means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy of some special consideration. A man who sets to to form a library will go on swimmingly for a short way. He will easily get Tennyson's Poems—Macaulay's and Alison's Histories—the Encyclopædia Britannica—Buckle on Civilisation—all the books "in print," as it is termed. Nay, he will find no difficulty in procuring copies of others which may not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or of the retailer of new books. Of Voltaire's works—a little library in itself—he will get a copy at his call in London, if he has not set his mind on some special edition. So of Scott's edition of Swift or Dryden, Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, and the like. One can scarcely suppose a juncture in which any of these cannot be found through the electric chain of communication established by the book-trade. Of Gibbon's and Hume's Histories—Jeremy Taylor's works—Bossuet's Universal History, and the like, copies abound everywhere. Go back a little, and ask for Kennet's Collection of the Historians—Echard's History, Bayle, Moreri, or Father Daniel's History of France, you cannot be so certain of immediately obtaining your object, but you will get the book in the end—no doubt about that.

Everything has its caprices, and there are some books which might be expected to be equally shy, but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality, are as plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are Famianus Strada's History of the Dutch War of Independence—one of the most brilliant works ever written, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan's. There is Buchanan's own history, very common even in the shape of the early Scotch edition of 1582, which is a highly favourable specimen of Arbuthnot's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis, and Raynal's Philosophical History of the East and West Indies, without which no book-stall is to be considered complete, and which seem to be possessed of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements, since, month after month, in fair weather or foul, they are to be seen at their posts dry or dripping.

So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects some five thousand volumes or so of select works. If he is miscellaneous in his taste, he may get on pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and then his troubles will arise. He has easily got Baker's and Froissart's and Monstrelet's Chronicles, because there are modern reprints of them in the market. But if he want Cooper's Chronicle, he may have to wait for it, since its latest form is still the black-letter. True, I did pick up a copy lately, at Braidwood's, for half-a-guinea, but that was a catch—it might have caused the search of a lifetime. Still more hopeless it is when the collector's ambition extends to The Ladder of Perfection of Wynkin de Worde, or to his King Rycharde Cure de Lion, whereof it is reported in the Repertorium Bibliographicum, that "an imperfect copy, wanting one leaf, was sold by auction at Mr Evans's, in June 1817, to Mr Watson Taylor for £40, 19s." "Woe betide," says Dibdin, "the young bibliomaniac who sets his heart upon Breton's Flourish upon Fancie and Pleasant Toyes of an Idle Head, 1557, 4to; or Workes of a Young Wyt trussed up with a Fardell of Pretty Fancies!! Threescore guineas shall hardly fetch these black-letter rarities from the pigeon-holes of Mr Thorpe. I lack courage to add the prices for which these copies sold." But he has some comfort reserved for the hungry collector, in the intimation that The Ravisht Soul and the Blessed Weaper, by the same author, may be had for £15.[51] It creates a thrilling interest to know, through the same distinguished authority, that the Heber sale must have again let loose upon the world "A merry gest and a true, howe John Flynter made his Testament," concerning which we are told, with appropriate solemnity and pathos, that "Julian Notary is the printer of this inestimably precious volume, and Mr Heber is the thrice-blessed owner of the copy described in the Typographical Antiquities."

Such works as the Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly contradicting that fundamental principle of political economy, that the supply is always equal to the demand.

He, indeed, who sets his mind on the possession of any one of these rarities, may go to his grave a disappointed man. It will be in general the consolation of the collector, however, that he is by no means the "homo unius libri." There is always something or other turning up for him, so long as he keeps within moderate bounds. If he be rich and ravenous, however, there is nothing for it but duplicating—the most virulent form of book-mania. We have seen that Heber, whose collection, made during his own lifetime, was on the scale of those public libraries which take generations to grow, had, with all his wealth, his liberality, and his persevering energy, to invest himself with duplicates, triplicates—often many copies of the same book.

It is rare that the private collector runs himself absolutely into this quagmire, and has so far exhausted the market that no already unpossessed volume turns up in any part of the world to court his eager embraces. The limitation constitutes, however, a serious difficulty in the way of rapidly creating great public libraries. We would obtain the best testimony to this difficulty in America, were our brethren there in a condition to speak or think of so peaceful a pursuit as library-making. In the normal condition of society there—something like that of Holland in the seventeenth century—there are powerful elements for the promotion of art and letters, when wealth gives the means and civilisation the desire to promote them. The very absence of feudal institutions—the inability to found a baronial house—turns the thoughts of the rich and liberal to other foundations calculated to transmit their name and influence to posterity. And so we have such bequests as John Jacob Astor's, who left four hundred thousand dollars for a library, and the hundred and eighty thousand which were the nucleus of the Smithsonian Institution. Yes! Their efforts in this direction have fully earned for them their own peculiar form of laudation as "actually equal to cash." Hence, as the book-trade and book-buyers know very well, the "almighty dollar" has been hard at work, trying to rear up by its sheer force duplicates of the old European libraries, containing not only all the ordinary stock books in the market, but also the rarities, and those individualities—solitary remaining copies of impressions—which the initiated call uniques. It is clear, however, that when there is but one copy, it can only be in one place; and if it have been rooted for centuries in the Bodleian, or the University of Tubingen, it is not to be had for Harvard or the Astorian. Dr Cogswell, the first librarian of the Astorian, spent some time in Europe with his princely endowment in his pocket, and showed himself a judicious, active, and formidable sportsman in the book-hunting world. Whenever, from private collections, or the breaking-up of public institutions, rarities got abroad into the open market, the collectors of the old country found that they had a resolute competitor to deal with—almost, it might be said, a desperate one—since he was in a manner the representative of a nation using powerful efforts to get possession of a share of the literary treasures of the Old World.

In the case of a book, for instance, of which half-a-dozen copies might be known to exist, the combatants before the auctioneer would be, on the one side, many an ambitious collector desiring to belong to the fortunate circle already in possession of such a treasure; but on the other side was one on whose exertions depended the question, whether the book should henceforth be part of the intellectual wealth of a great empire, and should be accessible for consultation by American scholars and authors without their requiring to cross the Atlantic. Let us see how far, by a brief comparison, money has enabled them to triumph over the difficulties of their position.

It is difficult to know exactly the numerical contents of a library, as some people count by volumes, and others by the separate works, small or great; and even if all should consent to count by volumes, the estimate would not be precise, for in some libraries bundles of tracts and other small works are massed in plethoric volumes for economy, while in affluent institutions every collection of leaves put under the command of a separate title-page is separately bound in cloth, calf, or morocco, according to its rank. The Imperial Library at Paris is computed to contain above eight hundred thousand volumes; the Astorian boasts of approaching a hundred thousand: the next libraries in size in America are the Harvard, with from eighty thousand to ninety thousand; the Library of Congress, which has from sixty thousand to seventy thousand; and the Boston Athenæum, which has about sixty thousand.

There are many of smaller size. In fact, there is probably no country so well stocked as the States with libraries of from ten thousand to twenty thousand volumes,—the evidence that they have bought what was to be bought, and have done all that a new people can to participate in the long-hoarded treasures of literature which it is the privilege of the Old World to possess. I know that, especially in the instance of the Astorian Library, the selections of books have been made with great judgment, and that, after the boundaries of the common crowded market were passed, and individual rarities had to be stalked in distant hunting-grounds, innate literary value was still held an object more important than mere abstract rarity, and, as the more worthy quality of the two, that on which the buying power available to the emissary was brought to bear.

The zeal and wealth which the citizens of the States have thrown into the limited field from which a library can be rapidly reaped, are manifested in the size and value of their private collections. A volume, called The Private Libraries of New York, by James Wynne, M.D., affords interesting evidence of this phenomenon. It is printed on large thick paper, after the most luxurious fashion of our book clubs, apparently for private distribution. The author states, however, that "the greater part of the sketches of private libraries to be found in this volume, were prepared for and published in the Evening Post about two years since. Their origin is due to a request on the part of Mr Bigelow, one of the editors of the Post, to the writer, to examine and sketch the more prominent private collections of books in New York."

Such an undertaking reveals, to us of the old country, a very singular social condition. With us, the class who may be thus offered up to the martyrdom of publicity is limited. The owners of great houses and great collections are doomed to share them with the public, and if they would frequent their own establishments, must be content to do so in the capacity of librarians or showmen, for the benefit of their numerous and uninvited visitors. They generally, with wise resignation, bow to the sacrifice, and, abandoning all connection with their treasures, dedicate them to the people—nor, as their affluence is generally sufficient to surround them with an abundance of other enjoyments, are they an object of much pity.

But that the privacy of our ordinary wealthy and middle classes should be invaded in a similar shape, is an idea that could not get abroad without creating sensations of the most lively horror. They manage these things differently across the Atlantic, and so here we have "over" fifty gentlemen's private collections ransacked and anatomised. If they like it, we have no reason to complain, but rather have occasion to rejoice in the valuable and interesting result.

It is quite natural that their ways of esteeming a collection should not be as our ways. There is a story of a Cockney auctioneer, who had a location in the back settlements to dispose of, advertising that it was "almost entirely covered with fine old timber." To many there would appear to be an equal degree of verdant simplicity in mentioning among the specialties and distinguishing features of a collection—the Biographia and Encyclopædia Britannica, Lowndes's Manual, the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, Boyle, Ducange, Moreri, Dodsley's Annual Register, Watt's Bibliotheca, and Diodorus Siculus.

The statement that there is in Dr Francis's collection a "complete set of the Recueil des Causes Célèbres, collected by Maurice Mejan, in eighteen volumes—a scarce and valuable work"—would throw any of our black-letter knight-errants into convulsions of laughter. There are also some instances of perhaps not unnatural confusion between one merely local British celebrity and another, as where it is set forth that in Mr Noyes's collection "there is a fine copy of Sir Robert Walpole's works, in five large quarto volumes, embellished with plates." But under all this inexperience of the ways of the craft as it is cultivated among us, and unconsciousness of such small parochial distinctions as may hold between Sir Robert Walpole, our Prime Minister, and Horace Walpole, the man of letters and trinkets, the book contains a quantity of valuable and substantial matter, both as a record of rich stores of learning heaped up for the use of the scholar, and marvellous varieties to dazzle the eyes of the mere Dibdinite. The prevailing feature throughout is the lavish costliness and luxury of these collections, several of which exceed ten thousand volumes. Where collections have grown so large that, on the principles already explained, their increase is impeded, the owner's zeal and wealth seem to have developed themselves in the lavish enshrining and decorating of such things as were attainable.[52]

The descriptions of a remorseless investigator like this have a fresh individuality not to be found here, where our habitual reserve prevents us from offering or enjoying a full, true, and particular account of the goods of our neighbours, unless they are brought to the hammer,—and then they have lost half the charm which they possessed as the household gods of some one conspicuous by position or character, and are little more estimable than other common merchandise. It would be difficult to find, among the countless books about books produced by us in the old country, any in which the bent of individual tastes and propensities is so distinctly represented in tangible symbols; and the reality of the elucidation is increased by the sort of innocent surprise with which the historian approaches each "lot," evidently as a first acquaintance, about whom he inquires and obtains all available particulars, good-humouredly communicating them in bald detail to his reader. Here follows a sketch—and surely a tempting one—of a New York interior:—

"Mr Burton's library contains nearly sixteen thousand volumes. Its proprietor had constructed for its accommodation and preservation a three-storey fire-proof building, about thirty feet square, which is isolated from all other buildings, and is connected with his residence in Hudson Street by a conservatory gallery. The chief library-room occupies the upper floor of this building, and is about twenty-five feet in height. Its ceiling presents a series of groined rafters, after the old English style, in the centre of which rises a dome-skylight of stained glass. The sides of the library are fitted up with thirty-six oak book-cases of a Gothic pattern, which entirely surround it, and are nine feet in height. The space between the ceiling and the book-cases is filled with paintings, for the most part of large size, and said to be of value. Specimens of armour and busts of distinguished authors decorate appropriate compartments, and in a prominent niche, at the head of the apartment, stands a full-length statue of Shakespeare, executed by Thom, in the same style as the Tam o' Shanter and Old Mortality groups of this Scotch sculptor.

"The great specialty of the library is its Shakespeare collection; but, although very extensive and valuable, it by no means engrosses the entire library, which contains a large number of valuable works in several departments of literature.

"The number of lexicons and dictionaries is large, and among the latter may be found all the rare old English works so valuable for reference. Three book-cases are devoted to serials, which contain many of the standard reviews and magazines. One case is appropriated to voyages and travels, in which are found many valuable ones. In another are upwards of one hundred volumes of table-talk, and numerous works on the fine arts and bibliography. One book-case is devoted to choice works on America, among which is Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia Totius Orbis Regionum, published in folio at Basle in 1537, which contains full notes of Columbus, Vespucci, and other early voyagers. Another department contains a curious catalogue of authorities relating to Crime and Punishment; a liberal space is devoted to Facetiæ, another to American Poetry, and also one to Natural and Moral Philosophy. The standard works of Fiction, Biography, Theology, and the Drama, are all represented.

"There is a fair collection of classical authors, many of which are of Aldine and Elzevir editions. Among the rarities in this department is a folio copy of Plautus, printed at Venice in 1518, and illustrated with woodcuts."

The author thus coming upon a Roman writer of plays, named Plautus, favours us with an account of him, which it is unnecessary to pursue, since it by no means possesses the interest attached to his still-life sketches. Let us pass on and take a peep at the collection of Chancellor Kent, known in this country as the author of Kent's Commentary:—

"To a lawyer, the Chancellor's written remarks on his books are, perhaps, their most interesting feature. He studied pen in hand, and all of his books contain his annotations, and some are literary curiosities. His edition of Blackstone's Commentaries is the first American edition, printed in Philadelphia in 1771. It is creditable to the press of that time, and is overlaid with annotations, showing how diligently the future American commentator studied the elegant work of his English predecessor. The general reader will find still more interest in the earlier judicial reports of the State of New York, printed while he was on the bench. He will find not merely legal notes, but biographical memoranda of many of the distinguished judges and lawyers who lived at the commencement of the century, and built up the present system of laws.

"In proceeding from the legal to the miscellaneous part of the library, the visitor's attention will, perhaps, be attracted by an extensive and curious collection of the records of criminal law. Not merely the English state trials and the French causes célèbres are there, but the criminal trials of Scotland and of America, and detached publications of remarkable cases, Newgate Calendars, Malefactors' Register, Chronicles of Crime, with ghastly prints of Newgate and Old Bailey, with their executions. The Chancellor is not responsible for this part of the library, which owes its completeness to the morbid taste of his successor, who defends the collection as best illustrating the popular morals and manners of every period, and contends that fiction yields in interest to the gloomy dramas of real life."

The practice attributed to the Chancellor of annotating his books is looked on by collectors as in the general case a crime which should be denied benefit of clergy. What is often said, however, of other crimes may be said of this, that if the perpetrator be sufficiently illustrious, it becomes a virtue. If Milton, for instance, had thought fit to leave his autograph annotations on the first folio Shakespeare, the offence would not only have been pardoned but applauded, greatly to the pecuniary benefit of any one so fortunate as to discover the treasure. But it would be highly dangerous for ordinary people to found on such an immunity. I remember being once shown by an indignant collector a set of utterly and hopelessly destroyed copies of rare tracts connected with the religious disputes of Queen Elizabeth's day, each inlaid and separately bound in a thin volume in the finest morocco, with the title lengthways along the back. These had been lent to a gentleman who deemed himself a distinguished poet, and he thought proper to write on the margin the sensations caused within him by the perusal of some of the more striking passages, certifying the genuineness of his autograph by his signature at full length in a bold distinct hand. He, worthy man, deemed that he was adding greatly to the value of the rarities; but had he beheld the owner's face on occasion of the discovery, he would have been undeceived.

There are in Dr Wynne's book descriptions, not only of libraries according to their kind, but according to their stage of growth, from those which, as the work of a generation or two, have reached from ten to fifteen thousand, to the collections still in their youth, such as Mr Lorimer Graham's of five thousand volumes, rich in early editions of British poetry, and doubtless, by this time, still richer, since its owner was lately here collecting early works on the literature of Scotland, and other memorials of the land of his fathers. Certainly, however, the most interesting of the whole is the library of the Rev. Dr Magoon, "an eminent and popular divine of the Baptist Church." He entered on active life as an operative bricklayer. There are, it appears, wall-plates extant, and not a few, built by his hands, and it was only by saving the earnings these brought to him that he could obtain an education. When an English mechanic finds out that he has a call to the ministry, we can easily figure the grim ignorant fanatical ranter that comes forth as the result. If haply he is able to read, his library will be a few lean sheepskin-clad volumes, such as Boston's Crook in the Lot, Fisher's Marrow of Modern Divinity, Brooks's Apples of Gold, Bolton's Saint's Enriching Examination, and Halyburton's Great Concern. The bricklayer, however, was endowed with the heavenly gift of the high æsthetic, which no birth or breeding can secure, and threw himself into that common ground where art and religion meet—the literature of Christian medieval art. Things must, however, have greatly changed among our brethren since the days of Cotton Mather, or even of Jonathan Edwards, when a person in Dr Magoon's position could embellish his private sanctuary in this fashion.

"The chief characteristic of the collection is its numerous works on the history, literature, and theory of art in general, and of Christian architecture in particular. There is scarcely a church, abbey, monastery, college, or cathedral; or picture, statue, or illumination, prominent in Christian art, extant in Italy, Germany, France, or the British Islands, that is not represented either by original drawings or in some other graphic form.

"In addition to these works, having especial reference to Christian art, are many full sets of folios depicting the leading galleries of ancient, medieval, and modern art in general. Some of these, as the six elephant folios on the Louvre, are in superb bindings; while many others, among which are the Dresden Gallery and Retzsch's Outlines, derive an additional value from once having formed a part of the elegant collection of William Reginald Courtenay.

"But what renders this collection particularly valuable, is its large number of original drawings by eminent masters which accompany the written and engraved works. Amongst these are two large sepia drawings, by Amici, of the Pantheon and St Peter's at Rome. These drawings were engraved and published with several others by Ackermann. Both the originals, and the engravings executed from them, are in the collection. The original view near the Basilica of St Marco, by Samuel Prout, the engraving of which is in Finden's Byron, and the interior of St Marco, by Luke Price, the engraving of which is in Price's Venice Illustrated, grace the collection. There is likewise a superb general view of Venice, by Wyld; a fine exterior view of Rheims Cathedral, by Buckley; an exterior view of St Peter's at Caën, by Charles Vacher; and the interior of St Germain des Prés at Paris, by Duval."

The early history of the American settlements is naturally the object around which many of these collections cluster; but the scraps of this kind of literature which have been secured have a sadly impoverished aspect in comparison with the luxurious stores which American money has attracted from the Old World.[53] Here one is forcibly reminded of those elements in the old-established libraries of Europe which no wealth or zeal can achieve elsewhere, because the commodity is not in the market.

America had just one small old library, and the lamentation over the loss of this ewe-lamb is touching evidence of her poverty in such possessions. The Harvard Library dates from the year 1638. In 1764 the college buildings were burned, and though books are not easily consumed, yet the small collection of five thousand volumes was overwhelmed in the general ruin. So were destroyed many books from the early presses of the mother country, and many of the firstlings of the transatlantic printers; and though its bulk was but that of an ordinary country squire's collection, the loss has been always considered national and irreparable.

It is, after all, a rather serious consideration—which it never seems as yet to have occurred to any one to revolve—how entirely the new states of the West and the South seem to be cut off from the literary resources which the Old World possesses in her old libraries. Whatever light lies hidden beneath the bushel in these venerable institutions, seems for ever denied to the students and inquirers of the new empire rising in the antipodes, and consequently to the minds of the people at large who receive impressions from students and inquirers. Books can be reprinted, it is true; but where is the likelihood that seven hundred thousand old volumes will be reprinted to put the Astorian Library on a par with the Imperial? Well, perhaps some quick and cheap way will be found of righting it all when the Aerial Navigation Company issues its time-bills, and news come of battles "from the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue."

In the meantime, what a lesson do these matters impress on us of the importance of preserving old books! Government and legislation have done little, if anything, in Britain, towards this object, beyond the separate help that may have been extended to individual public libraries, and the Copyright Act deposits. Of general measures, it is possible to point out some which have been injurious, by leading to the dispersal or destruction of books. The house and window duties have done this to a large extent. As this statement may not be quite self-evident, a word in explanation may be appropriate. The practice of the department having charge of the Assessed Taxes has been, when any furniture was left in an unoccupied house, to levy the duty—to exempt only houses entirely empty. It was a consequence of this that when, by minority, family decay, or otherwise, a mansion-house had to be shut up, there was an inducement entirely to gut it of its contents, including the library. The same cause, by the way, has been more destructive still to furniture, and may be said to have lost to our posterity the fashions of a generation or two. Tables, chairs, and cabinets first grow unfashionable, and then old; in neither stage have they any friends who will comfort or support them—they are still worse off than books. But then comes an after-stage, in which they revive as antiquities, and become exceeding precious. As Pompeiis, however, are rare in the world, the chief repositories of antique furniture have been mansions shut up for a generation or two, which, after more fashions than generations have passed away, are reopened to the light of day, either in consequence of the revival of the fortunes of their old possessors, or of their total extinction and the entry of new owners. How the house and window duties disturbed this silent process by which antiques were created is easily perceived.

One service our Legislature has done for the preservation of books in the copies which require to be deposited under the Copyright Act at Stationers' Hall for the privileged libraries. True, this has been effected somewhat in the shape of a burden upon authors, for the benefit of that posterity which has done no more for them specially than it has for other people of the present generation. But in its present modified shape the burden should not be grudged, in consideration of the magnitude of the benefit to the people of the future—a benefit the full significance of which it probably requires a little consideration to estimate. The right of receiving a copy of every book from Stationers' Hall has generally been looked on as a benefit to the library receiving it. The benefit, however, was but lightly esteemed by some of these institutions, the directors of which represented that they were thus pretty well supplied with the unsaleable rubbish, while the valuable publications slipped past them; and, on the whole, they would sell their privilege for a very small annual sum, to enable them to go into the market and buy such books, old and new, as they might prefer. The view adopted by the law, however, was, that the depositing of these books created an obligation if it conferred a privilege, the institution receiving them having no right to part with them, but being bound to preserve them as a record of the literature of the age.[54]

If the rule come ever to be thoroughly enforced, it will then come to pass that of every book that is printed in Britain, good or bad, five copies shall be preserved in the shelves of so many public libraries, slumbering there in peace, or tossed about by impatient readers, as the case may be. For the latter there need not perhaps be much anxiety; it is for the sake of those addicted to slumbering in peaceful obscurity that this refuge is valuable. There is thus at least a remnant saved from the relentless trunk-maker. If the day of resuscitation from the long slumber should arrive, we know where to find the book—in a privileged library. The recollection just now occurs to me of a man of unquestionable character and scholarship, who wrote a suitable and intelligent book on an important subject, and at his own expense had it brought into the world by a distinguished publisher, prudently intimating on the title-page that he reserved the right of translation. Giving the work all due time to find its way, he called at the Row, exactly a year after the day of publication, to ascertain the result. He was presented with a perfectly succinct account of charge and discharge, in which he was credited with three copies sold. Now, he knew that his family had bought two copies, but he never could find out who it was that had bought the third. The one mind into which his thoughts had thus passed, remained ever mysteriously undiscoverable. Whether or not he consoled himself with the reflection that what might have been diffused over many was concentrated in one, it is consolatory to others to reflect that such a book stands on record in the privileged libraries, to come forth to the world if it be wanted.

Nor is the resuscitation of a book unsuited to its own age, but suited to another, entirely unexampled. That beautiful poem called Albania was reprinted by Leyden, from a copy preserved somewhere: so utterly friendless had it been in its obscurity, that the author's history, and even his name, were unknown; and though it at once excited the high admiration of Scott, no scrap of intelligence concerning it could be discovered in any quarter contemporary with its first publication. The Discourse on Trade by Roger North, the author of the amusing Lives of Lord-Keeper Guildford and his other two brothers, was lately reprinted from a copy in the British Museum, supposed to be the only one existing. Though neglected in its own day, it has been considered worthy of attention in this, as promulgating some of the principles of our existing philosophy of trade. On the same principle, some rare tracts on political economy and trade were lately reprinted by a munificent nobleman, who thought the doctrines contained in them worthy of preservation and promulgation. The Spirit of Despotism, by Vicesimus Knox, was reprinted, at a time when its doctrines were popular, from a single remaining copy: the book, though instructive, is violent and declamatory, and it is supposed that its author discouraged or endeavoured to suppress its sale after it was printed.

In the public duty of creating great libraries, and generally of preserving the literature of the world from being lost to it, the collector's or book-hunter's services are eminent and numerous. In the first place, many of the great public libraries have been absolute donations of the treasures to which some enthusiastic literary sportsman has devoted his life and fortune. Its gradual accumulation has been the great solace and enjoyment of his active days; he has beheld it, in his old age, a splendid monument of enlightened exertion, and he resolves that, when he can no longer call it his own, it shall preserve the relics of past literature for ages yet to come, and form a centre whence scholarship and intellectual refinement shall diffuse themselves around. We can see this influence in its most specific and material shape, perhaps, by looking round the reading-room of the British Museum—that great manufactory of intellectual produce, where so many heads are at work. The beginning of this great institution, as everybody knows, was in the fifty thousand volumes collected by Sir Hans Sloane—a wonderful achievement for a private gentleman at the beginning of the last century. When George III. gave it the libraries of the kings of England, it gained, as it were, a better start still by absorbing collections which had begun before Sloane was born—those of Cranmer, Prince Henry, and Casaubon. The Ambrosian Library at Milan was the private collection of Cardinal Borromeo, bequeathed by him to the world. It reached forty thousand volumes ere he died, and these formed a library which had arisen in free, natural, and symmetrical growth, insomuch as, having fed it during his whole life, it began with the young and economic efforts of youth and poverty, and went on accumulating in bulk and in the costliness of its contents as succeeding years brought wealth and honours to the great prelate. What those merchant princes, the Medici, did for the Laurentian Library at Florence is part of history. Old Cosmo, who had his mercantile and political correspondents in all lands, made them also his literary agents, who thus sent him goods too precious to be resold even at a profit. "He corresponded," says Gibbon, "at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often imported by the same vessel." The Bodleian started with a collection which had cost Sir Thomas Bodley £10,000, and it was augmented from time to time by the absorption of tributary influxes of the same kind. Some far-seeing promoters of national museums have reached the conclusion that it is not a sound ultimate policy to press too closely on the private collector. He is therefore permitted, under a certain amount of watchful inspection, to accumulate his small treasury of antiquities, shells, or dried plants, in the prospect that in the course of time it will find its way, like the feeding rills of a lake, into the great public treasury.[55]

In many instances the collectors whose stores have thus gone to the public, have merely followed their hunting propensities, without having the merit of framing the ultimate destiny of their collections, but in others the intention of doing benefit to the world has added zest and energy to the chase. Of this class there is one memorable and beautiful instance in Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, who lived and laboured so early as the days of Edward III., and has left an autobiographical sketch infinitely valuable, as at once informing us of the social habits, and letting us into the very inner life, of the highly endowed student and the affluent collector of the fourteenth century. His little book, called Philobiblion, was brought to light from an older obscure edition by the scholar printer Badius Ascensius, and was the first fruit of his press when he set it up in Paris in the year 1499. An English translation of it was published in 1832. It is throughout adorned with the gentle and elevated nature of the scholar, and derives a still nobler lustre from the beneficent purpose to which the author destined the literary relics which it was the enjoyment of his life to collect and study. Being endowed with power and wealth, and putting to himself the question, "What can I render to the Lord for all that he hath conferred on me?" he found an answer in the determination of smoothing the path of the poor and ardent student, by supplying him with the means of study. "Behold," he says, "a herd of outcasts rather than of elect scholars meets the view of our contemplations, in which God the artificer, and nature his handmaid, have planted the roots of the best morals and most celebrated sciences. But the penury of their private affairs so oppresses them, being opposed by adverse fortune, that the fruitful seeds of virtue, so productive in the unexhausted field of youth, unmoistened by their wonted dews, are compelled to wither. Whence it happens, as Boetius says, that bright virtue lies hid in obscurity, and the burning lamp is not put under a bushel, but is utterly extinguished for want of oil. Thus the flowery field in spring is ploughed up before harvest; thus wheat gives way to tares, the vine degenerates to woodbine, and the olive grows wild and unproductive." Keenly alive to this want, he resolved to devote himself, not merely to supply to the hungry the necessary food, but to impart to the poor and ardent scholar the mental sustenance which might possibly enable him to burst the bonds of circumstance, and, triumphing over his sordid lot, freely communicate to mankind the blessings which it is the function of cultivated genius to distribute.

The Bishop was a great and powerful man, for he went over Europe commissioned as the spiritual adviser of the great conqueror, Edward III. Wherever he went on public business—to Rome, France, or the other states of Europe—"on tedious embassies and in perilous times," he carried about with him "that fondness for books which many waters could not extinguish," and gathered up all that his power, his wealth, and his vigilance brought within his reach. In Paris he becomes quite ecstatic: "Oh blessed God of gods in Zion! what a rush of the glow of pleasure rejoiced our heart as often as we visited Paris—the Paradise of the world! There we longed to remain, where, on account of the greatness of our love, the days ever appeared to us to be few. There are delightful libraries in cells redolent of aromatics—there flourishing greenhouses of all sorts of volumes: there academic meads trembling with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing up and down: there the promontories of Parnassus and the porticos of the stoics."

The most powerful instrument in his policy was encouraging and bringing round him, as dependents and followers, the members of the mendicant orders—the labourers called to the vineyard in the eleventh hour, as he calls them. These he set to cater for him, and he triumphantly asks, "Among so many of the keenest hunters, what leveret could lie hid? What fry could evade the hook, the net, or the trawl of these men? From the body of divine law down to the latest controversial tract of the day, nothing could escape the notice of these scrutinisers." In further revelations of his method he says, "When, indeed, we happened to turn aside to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers had convents, we were not slack in visiting their chests and other repositories of books; for there, amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most exalted riches treasured up; there, in their satchels and caskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that fell from the master's table for the little dogs, but, indeed, the shew-bread without leaven—the bread of angels containing all that is delectable." He specially marks the zeal of the Dominicans or Preachers; and in exulting over his success in the field, he affords curious glimpses into the ways of the various humble assistants who were glad to lend themselves to the hobby of one of the most powerful prelates of his day.[56]

The manner in which Richard of Bury dedicated his stores to the intellectual nurture of the poor scholar, was by converting them into a library for Durham College, which merged into Trinity of Oxford. It would have been a pleasant thing to look upon the actual collection of manuscripts which awakened so much recorded zeal and tenderness in the great ecclesiastic of five hundred years ago; but in later troubles they became dispersed, and all that seems to be known of their whereabouts is, that some of them are in the library of Baliol.[57] Another eminent English prelate made a worthy, but equally ineffectual, attempt to found a great university library. This was the Rev. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who gave what was called "the noblest library in England" to the newly founded college of St John's. It was not a bequest. To make his gift secure, it was made over directly to the college, but as he could not part with his favourites while he lived, he borrowed the whole back for life. This is probably the most extensive book loan ever negotiated; but the Reformation, and his own tragic destiny, were coming on apace, and the books were lost both to himself and his favourite college.[58]

The Preservation of Literature.

The benefactors whose private collections have, by a generous act of endowment, been thus rendered at the same time permanent and public, could be counted by hundreds. It is now, however, my function to describe a more subtle, but no less powerful influence which the book-hunter exercises in the preservation and promulgation of literature, through the mere exercise of that instinct or passion which makes him what he is here called. What has been said above must have suggested—if it was not seen before—how great a pull it gives to any public library, that it has had an early start; and how hard it is, with any amount of wealth and energy, to make up for lost time, and raise a later institution to the level of its senior. The Imperial Library of Paris, which has so marvellously lived through all the storms that have swept round its walls, was founded in the fourteenth century. It began, of course, with manuscripts; possessing, before the beginning of the fifteenth century, the then enormous number of a thousand volumes. The reason, however, of its present greatness, so far beyond the rivalry of later establishments, is, that it was in active operation at the birth of printing, and received the first-born of the press. There they have been sheltered and preserved, while their unprotected brethren, tossed about in the world outside, have long disappeared, and passed out of existence for ever.

Among the popular notions passing current as duly certified axioms, just because they have never been questioned and examined, one is, that, since the age of printing, no book once put to press has ever died. The notion is quite inconsistent with fact. When we count by hundreds of thousands the books that are in the Paris Library, and not to be had for the British Museum, we know the number of books which a chance refuge has protected from the general destruction, and can readily see, in shadowy bulk, though we cannot estimate in numbers, the great mass which, having found no refuge, have disappeared out of separate existence, and been mingled up with the other elements of the earth's crust.

We have many accounts of the marvellous preservation of books after they have become rare—the snatching of them as brands from the burning; their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach. It would be interesting, also, to have some account of the progress of destruction among books. A work dedicated apparently to this object, which I have been unable to find in the body, is mentioned under a very tantalising title. It is by a certain John Charles Conrad Oelrichs, author of several scraps of literary history, and is called a Dissertation concerning the Fates of Libraries and Books, and, in the first place, concerning the books that have been eaten—such I take to be the meaning of "Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum Fatis, imprimis libris comestis." This is nearly as tantalising as the wooden-legged Britisher's explanation to the inquisitive Yankee, who solemnly engaged to ask not another question were he told how that leg was lost, and was accordingly told that "it was bitten off."

Nor is there anything to allay the curiosity thus excited in finding that the French, in the all-comprehensive spirit of their classification and nomenclature, include the book-eater with the decorous title Bibliophage, seeing that in so gossiping a work as Peignot's Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, all that is communicated under this department is, "Bibliophage signifie celui qui mange des livres." We are not favoured with any examples explanatory of the kind of books most in demand by those addicted to this species of food, nor of the effect of the different classes of books on the digestive organs.

Religious and political intolerance has, as all the world knows, been a terrible enemy to literature, not only by absolute suppression, but by the restraints of the licenser. So little was literary freedom indeed understood anywhere until recent days, that it was only by an accident after the Revolution that the licensing of books was abolished in England. The new licenser, Edmond Bohun, happened in fact to be a Jacobite, and though he professed to conform to the Revolution Settlement, his sympathies with the exiled house disabled him from detecting disaffection skilfully smothered, and the House of Commons, in a rage, abolished his office by refusing to renew the Licensing Act. Of the extent to which literature has suffered by suppression, there are no data for a precise estimate. It might bring out some curious results, however, were any investigator to tell us of the books which had been effectually put down after being in existence. It would of course be found that the weak were crushed, while the strong flourished. Among the valuable bibliographical works of Peignot, is a dictionary of books which have been condemned to the flames, suppressed, or censured. We do not require to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the burnings and condemnations have been in their effect on the giants of literature. The first name of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubigné the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crébillon, and so on, down to Voltaire and Wicliffe.

Wars and revolutions have of course done their natural work on many libraries, yet the mischief effected by them has often been more visible than real, since they have tended rather to dispersion than destruction. The total loss to literature by the dispersion of the libraries of the monastic establishments in England, is probably not nearly so great as that which has accompanied the chronic mouldering away of the treasures preserved so obstinately by the lazy monks of the Levant, who were found by Mr Curzon at their public devotions laying down priceless volumes which they could not read, to protect their dirty feet from the cold floor. In the wildest times the book repository often partakes in the good fortune of the humble student whom the storm passes over. In the hour of danger, too, some friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety may interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of the French libraries were certainly in terrible danger when Robespierre had before him the draft of a decree, that "the books of the public libraries of Paris and the departments should no longer be permitted to offend the eyes of the republic by shameful marks of servitude." The word would have gone forth, and a good deal beyond the mere marks of servitude would have been doubtless destroyed, had not the emergency called forth the courage and energies of Renouard and Didot.[59]

There are probably false impressions abroad as to the susceptibility of literature to destruction by fire. Books are not good fuel, as, fortunately, many a housemaid has found, when, among other frantic efforts and failures in fire-lighting, she has reasoned from the false data of the inflammability of a piece of paper. In the days when heretical books were burned, it was necessary to place them on large wooden stages, and after all the pains taken to demolish them, considerable readable masses were sometimes found in the embers; whence it was supposed that the devil, conversant in fire and its effects, gave them his special protection. In the end it was found easier and cheaper to burn the heretics themselves than their books.

Thus books can be burned, but they don't burn, and though in great fires libraries have been wholly or partially destroyed, we never hear of a library making a great conflagration like a cotton mill or a tallow warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house seeming irretrievably on fire, until the flames, coming in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over this joint barrier, and sank defeated. When anything is said about the burning of libraries, Alexandria at once flares up in the memory; but it is strange how little of a satisfactory kind investigators have been able to make out, either about the formation or destruction of the many famous libraries collected from time to time in that city. There seems little doubt that Cæsar's auxiliaries unintentionally burnt one of them; its contents were probably written on papyrus, a material about as inflammable as dried reeds or wood-shavings. As to that other burning in detail, when the collection was used for fuel to the baths, and lasted some six weeks—surely never was there a greater victim of historical prejudice and calumny than the "ignorant and fanatical" Caliph Omar al Raschid. Over and over has this act been disproved, and yet it will continue to be reasserted with uniform pertinacity in successive rolling sentences, all as like each other as the successive billows in a swell at sea.[60]

Apart, however, from violence and accident, there is a constant decay of books from what might be called natural causes, keeping, like the decay of the human race, a proportion to their reproduction, which varies according to place or circumstance; here showing a rapid increase where production outruns decay, and there a decrease where the morbid elements of annihilation are stronger than the active elements of reproduction. Indeed, volumes are in their varied external conditions very like human beings. There are some stout and others frail—some healthy and others sickly; and it happens often that the least robust are the most precious. The full fresh health of some of the folio fathers and schoolmen, ranged side by side in solemn state on the oaken shelves of some venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who expect mouldy decay; the stiff hard binding is as angular as ever,—there is no abrasion of the leaves, not a single dog-ear or a spot, or even a dust-border on the mellowed white of the margin. So, too, of those quarto civilians and canonists of Leyden and Amsterdam, with their smooth white vellum coats, bearing so generic a resemblance to Dutch cheeses, that they might be supposed to represent the experiments of some Gouda dairyman on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life and an established position in society are the secret of their excellent preservation and condition. Their repose has been little disturbed by intrusive readers or unceremonious investigators, and their repute for solid learning has given them a claim to attention and careful preservation. It has sometimes happened to me, as it probably has to many another inquisitive person, to penetrate to the heart of one of these solid volumes and find it closed in this wise:—As the binder of a book is himself bound to cut off as little as possible of its white margin, it may take place, if any of the leaves are inaccurately folded, that their edges are not cut, and that, as to such leaves, the book is in the uncut condition so often denounced by impatient readers. So have I sometimes had to open with a paper-cutter the pages which had shut up for two hundred years that knowledge which the ponderous volume, like any solemn holder-forth whom no one listens to, pretended to be distributing abroad from its place of dignity on the shelf. Sometimes, also, there will drop out of a heavy folio a little slip of orange-yellow paper covered with some cabalistic-looking characters, which a careful study discovers to be a hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that the dealer from whom the volume was purchased, about the time of some crisis in the Thirty Years' War, would be rather gratified than otherwise should the purchaser be pleased to remit to him the price of it.

Though quartos and folios are dwindling away, like many other conventional distinctions of rank, yet are authors of the present day not entirely divested of the opportunity of taking their place on the shelf like these old dignitaries. It would be as absurd, of course, to appear in folio as to step abroad in the small-clothes and queue of our great-grandfathers' day, and even quarto is reserved for science and some departments of the law. But then, on the other hand, octavos are growing as large as some of the folios of the seventeenth century, and a solid roomy-looking book is still practicable. Whoever desires to achieve a sure, though it may be but a humble, niche in the temple of fame, let him write a few solid volumes with respectably sounding titles, and matter that will rather repel the reader than court him to such familiarity as may beget contempt. Such books are to the frequenter of a library like country gentlemen's seats to travellers, something to know the name and ownership of in passing. The stage-coachman of old used to proclaim each in succession—the guide-book tells them now. So do literary guide-books in the shape of library-catalogues and bibliographies, tell of these steady and respectable mansions of literature. No one speaks ill of them, or even proclaims his ignorance of their nature, and your "man who knows everything" will profess some familiarity with them, the more readily that the verity of his pretensions is not likely to be tested. A man's name may have resounded for a time through all the newspapers as the gainer of a great victory or the speaker of marvellous speeches—he may have been the most brilliant wit of some distinguished social circle—the head of a great profession—even a leading statesman; yet his memory has utterly evaporated with the departure of his own generation. Had he but written one or two of these solid books, now, his name would have been perpetuated in catalogues and bibliographical dictionaries; nay, biographies and encyclopædias would contain their titles, and perhaps the day of the author's birth and death. Let those who desire posthumous fame, counting recollection as equivalent to fame, think of this.

It is with no desire to further the annihilation or decay of the stout and long-lived class of books of which I have been speaking, that I now draw attention to the book-hunter's services in the preservation of some that are of a more fragile nature, and are liable to droop and decay. We can see the process going on around us, just as we see other things travelling towards extinction. Look, for instance, at school-books, how rapidly and obviously they go to ruin. True, there are plenty of them, but save of those preserved in the privileged libraries, or of some that may be tossed aside among lumber in which they happen to remain until they become curiosities, what chance is there of any of them being in existence a century hence? Collectors know well the extreme rarity and value of ancient school-books. Nor is their value by any means fanciful. The dominie will tell us that they are old-fashioned, and the pedagogue who keeps a school, "and ca's it a acaudemy," will sneer at them as "obsolete and incompatible with the enlightened adjuncts of modern tuition;" but if we are to consider that the condition of the human intellect at any particular juncture is worth studying, it is certainly of importance to know on what food its infancy is fed. And so of children's play-books as well as their work-books; these are as ephemeral as their other toys. Retaining dear recollections of some that were the favourites, and desiring to awaken from them old recollections of careless boyhood, or perhaps to try whether your own children inherit the paternal susceptibility to their beauties, you make application to the bookseller—but, behold, they have disappeared from existence as entirely as the rabbits you fed, and the terrier that followed you with his cheery clattering bark. Neither name nor description—not the announcement of the benevolent publishers, "Darton, Harvey, and Darton"—can recover the faintest traces of their vestiges.[61] Old cookery-books, almanacs, books of prognostication, directories for agricultural operations, guides to handicrafts, and other works of a practical nature, are infinitely valuable when they refer to remote times, and also infinitely rare.