perchance Lord Oxford, to
some of their rarities, does not stand alone. He had many followers;
but the scale of operations diminished as the orthodox collector
multiplied and prices rose. Sir John Fenn, editor of the _Paston
Letters_, whom we have named above, was a disciple, however, and
Martin of Palgrave was another. Many years since, for a proposed new
_Biographia Britannica_ by Murray of Albemarle Street, the present
writer collected all the known particulars of Bagford himself, who
spent his last days in the Charterhouse. His episcopal client or
patron died in 1714.

Before we condemn these biblioclasts, let us recollect one thing. It
is not so much that they have rendered books imperfect by the
abstraction of leaves or title-pages, as that they have actually
preserved the sole testimony for the existence of hundreds of books,
tracts, and broadsheets of which we should have otherwise known
nothing, amid the wholesale destruction of early literature, which was
not arrested till the close of the last century, and still proceeds in
a modified form and degree. Not many years since the _Troy-Book_
printed by Caxton was discovered hanging up in a water-closet at
Harrogate; a portion had disappeared, but the remainder was secured,
and was sold to a dealer in Manchester for thirty guineas. It must be,
and is, Bagford's apology that he sacrificed to his typographical
scheme material which was almost universally neglected, and for which
there might seem, two hundred years ago, scarcely any prospect of a
future call. Yet, oddly enough, this very person was one of the
pioneers, by his labours and example, in bringing back a taste for the
older English school; he appeared at a juncture when sufficient time
had elapsed for the destruction by various agencies of a vast
proportion of the products of the press; but until the fashion, which
he and others set, had begun to spread, it remained unknown how much
was reduced from its original volume, and how much had perished. We
have the less pretence for censuring the biblioclasts of the past,
who could only use the eyes and experience of their own epoch, when
instances are reported from time to time of the same ruthless
practices even by those who might have been expected to know better;
and there is more than one way of viewing the present notorious
tendency to exterminate the old theology on the plea that it is
worthless, since a generation may arise which will upbraid us for
hav