ntelligence. Then, again,
there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want
to exhaust, to know to the very bottom. And besides, of course I must
have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my
moments of leisure and pleasure,--my scarce and precious editions, my
luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in
their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love
because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old
associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about;
books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but
peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us
do part.

Don't you see I have given you a key to the way my library is made up, so
that you can apriorize the plan according to which I have filled my
bookcases? I will tell you how it is carried out.

In the first place, you see, I have four extensive cyclopaedias. Out of
these I can get information enough to serve my immediate purpose on
almost any subject. These, of course, are supplemented by geographical,
biographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, including of
course lexicons to all the languages I ever meddle with. Next to these
come the works relating to my one or two specialties, and these
collections I make as perfect as I can. Every library should try to be
complete on something, if it were only on the history of pin-heads. I
don't mean that I buy all the trashy compilations on my special subjects,
but I try to have all the works of any real importance relating to them,
old as well as new. In the following compartment you will find the great
authors in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and Hesiod
downward to the last great English name.

This division, you see, you can make almost as extensive or as limited as
you choose. You can crowd the great representative writers into a small
compass; or you can make a library consisting only of the different
editions of Horace, if you have space and money enough. Then comes the
Harem, the shelf or the bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked
prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it,
and would bag in case of fire before all the rest, just as Mr. Townley
took the Clytie to his carriage when the anti-Catholic mob threatened his
house in 1780. As for the foundlings like my Hede