who impose on themselves no restraint
save perchance in the direction of theology, science, and _arcana_.
They stop peremptorily at the _belles lettres_. Singer, Mitford,
Bliss, Bandinel, Forster, Cosens, Ireland, Crossley, Sir John Simeon,
were more or less of this school. At a still greater altitude we meet
with a yet stronger tendency to draw the line at character or
condition, and there occur to us the names, under the former head, of
Capell, Malone, Douce, Bright, Chalmers, Collier, Ouvry, Bolton
Corney, David Laing, E. F. Rimbault, Halliwell-Phillipps, Frederick
Locker, W. H. Miller, Henry Cunliffe, R. S. Turner, and Henry Huth.
From the same point of view, nearly in the clouds are discovered a
small knot of fastidious _dilettanti_, who purchase a volume in the
same spirit as they might do a picture or a piece of majolica; and of
this minority Sir Andrew Fountaine, Sir David Dundas, and Samuel
Addington may perhaps be accepted as types.

The most interesting, and it may with permission be added, intelligent
type of book-collector, however, seems to be that where, after a
certain measure of preparatory thought and training, one confines
acquisitions for permanent ownership to volumes for which the acquirer
has a genuine personal relish. In general, the principle of forming a
library on this wholesome basis would be found not only more useful,
but more economical, since the rarest and costliest articles are by no
means, on the whole, the most interesting or the most instructive. In
any case, the inconsiderate emulation by one collector of others, who
may have different objects and perhaps ampler resources, is a course
to be avoided. Even here there is more than a single source or ground
of inducement to purchase. Setting aside the mere book of reference,
which has to be multiplied to suit various exigencies, there may be
said to be three classes of literary property which rationally appeal
to our sympathy: (i) the volume which commends itself by its
intrinsic value and charm; (ii) that which has grown dear from
lengthened companionship and possibly hereditary link; (iii) and that
which, unimportant so far as its internal claims and merits are
concerned, bears on its face the evidence of having once belonged to a
favourite of our own or a world's hero.

One persuasive argument in favour of adopting the miscellaneous or
typical course in the choice of a library is the rapid growth of the
difficulty of meeting with t