bibliographical monument of the
nineteenth or any other century, has been completed and scattered; and
yet to-day, if the general reader were asked, he would probably be of
the belief that the first rank was due to the earlier personage and
collection. There is somehow a prestige about the Roxburghe sale which
time seems incapable of weakening; yet in comparison with its
successor it was a mere handful; and in fact the accumulations even of
Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, vast and precious as they may have
been, were not equal in magnitude or in value to those of Heber, of
whom the most surprising and most interesting trait is his conversance
with the interiors of so many of his treasures; nor should we ever
forget his generosity in lending them to literary workers. The Rev.
Alexander Dyce, who so ably edited our elder dramatists and poets,
could never have accomplished his projects, if Heber had not come to
his assistance with the rare, or even unique, original editions.

We have taken elsewhere an opportunity of recording the probable
obligation under which we all lie to Heber for his offices in
prevailing on the Government under the Regency to arrange the
so-called gift to the country of the library of George III. What an
inestimable boon and advantage it would have been, had he left us his
own magnificent gatherings, with the liberty of exchanging duplicates!
To how many a subsequent collection would such a step have been the
deathblow or rather an insuperable bar! The Britwell and Huth
libraries would have been robbed of half their gems, and the Daniel
sale could not have proved the singular _coup_ and sensation which it
was, had the Heber element been absent.

The flyleaves of an enormous proportion of Heber's books are found
enriched by his scholarly and often very interesting memoranda; they
usually bear a stamp with BIBLIOTHECA HEBERIANA, but never an _ex
libris_. That distinction the accomplished owner resigned to minor
luminaries. The notes are always pertinent and occasionally numerous;
and the pages of the sale catalogue, of which we have no fewer than
thirteen parts, are lifted above mechanical common-place by the
curious and varied matter interspersed from this source, as well as to
a certain extent from the pen of John Payne Collier, who edited the
early poetical and dramatic portions, and attended the auction to
secure some of the rarest old plays for his friend the Duke of
Devonshire.

Heber ha