LEIGH.

The neglect of our early literature continued, as we have said, down
to the second half of the eighteenth century. Prior to that time, all
the information at our command tends to show that collectors almost
uniformly restricted themselves to the books current in or about their
own time, as we find even Pepys asking Bagford to secure for him, not
Caxtons or Elizabethan books, but items which we should now regard
with comparative or absolute indifference. While some insignificant
trifle, which had happened to go out of print, was sought with
avidity, while editions of the classics and Continental writers, long
since converted to waste paper, were objects of keen rivalry, the most
precious examples of ancient English and Scotish typography and poetry
were obtainable for pence.

A very interesting side to the subject before us is the share
claimable in it by the fair sex. In our two _Rolls of Book-Collectors_
we have included the names of several ladies, who in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, as well as in the earlier part of the
present, established a title to rank among possessors of libraries in
a larger or smaller measure. Two of the most prominent names are
probably those of Miss Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Yorkshire,
and Mrs. Rylands of Manchester, the latter not only the acquirer of
the Althorp treasures, but of a most valuable body of books, ancient
and modern, in augmentation of them. This feature in the annals of
collecting is the more to be borne in mind, in that it has in recent
days declined almost to disappearance, and may be said to be limited
to a few gentlewomen, who pursue special studies, like the Hon. Alicia
Amherst and Mrs. Earle, and bring together for use or reference the
works illustrative of them.

A study of the writer's _Rolls of Book-Collectors_, which embrace over
two thousand names, will satisfy any one that the hereditary or
transmitted collections in this country are very few, if we limit
ourselves to libraries of note, and do not compensate for the long
catalogue of old libraries which have been dispersed even in our own
time. Are there really more than the Miller and the Huth, unless we
add the Spencer or Althorp, kept intact and amplified, yet in the
hands of a stranger? Book-collecting by individuals is, then, mainly a
personal affair, which begins and ends with a life. The continuance
even of the two libraries above mentioned in private hands cannot be
regar