harming presentation copy
from Josephine of Voltaire's _Henriade_--What makes the interest
in autographs--Ineptitudes--The reviewer's copy--Latter-day
vandalism--Arms on books--Prefaces and
Dedications--_Imprimaturs_.

WHAT may be treated as the casual accessories of books of nearly all
periods and countries--the autograph inscription testifying to the
ownership or signalising a gift from one possessor to another--have
manifold and diversified elements of interest and attraction. These
features offer a graduated scale of importance, just as it happens.
The question depends on the donor, or the recipient, or the article
given and received; and where all these combine to augment the charm
and to complete the spell, the issue is electrifying. No more
impressive corroboration of this truth could well be desired or
produced than the Henry VIII. _Prayer-Book_ of 1544 on vellum, from
the Fountaine Collection, with the MSS. notes and autographs of the
King, the Princess Mary, Prince Edward, and Queen Catherine Parr. It
fetched about 600 guineas at Christie's in 1894.

In the _Bibliographer_, _Bookworm_, and his own _Collections_, the
writer has formerly assembled together notices of all the most
remarkable examples of English books, both printed and in MS., with
inscriptions, _marginalia_, and other records of prior and successive
possession, brought within his reach during more than thirty years
past. There are not unreasonably people who may not see in an ordinary
copy of a volume much tangible interest, yet who are prepared to
recognise the value, and even importance, of one with the autograph
and memoranda of some illustrious personage, of some great warrior or
statesman, or of a famous man of letters, artist, or sculptor. The
accidental and secondary feature in the work takes precedence of the
rest; he pays for the sentiment and association. The direct human
interest resident in such a relic is apt, in the opinion of many, to
surpass that of the finest binding; for one has here the very
characters traced long ago by the holder; one can imagine him (or her)
seated at the table engaged in the task of leaving to the times to
come this memento. The book is the casual receptacle; perchance in
itself it is of inconsiderable worth; but the manuscript accessions
are as an embalmment and a sanctification. The copy is not as others;
it has descended to us as a part of a precious inheritance, of which
the mer