birth,
learning, or genius, and all men who were proud to call Richard Heber
friend. He was a mighty hunter of books. He was genial, scholarly,
generous. Out-of-door men will be pleased to know that he was active
physically. He was a tremendous walker, and enjoyed tiring out his
bailiff by an all-day tramp.

Of many good things said of him this is one of the best: 'The learned
and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his
library.' Thus was it possible for Scott very truthfully to say to
Heber, 'Thy volumes open as thy heart.'

No life of this Prince of Book-Hunters has been written, I believe.
Some one with access to the material, and a sympathy with the love of
books as books, should write a memoir of Heber the Magnificent. It
ought not to be a large volume, but it might well be about the size of
Henry Stevens's _Recollections of James_ _Lenox_. And if it were
equally readable it were a readable book indeed.

Dibdin thought that Heber's tastes were so catholic as to make it
difficult to classify him among hunters of books. The implication is
that most men can be classified. They have their specialties. What
pleases one collector much pleases another but little or not at all.
Collectors differ radically in the attitude they take with respect to
their volumes. One man buys books to read, another buys them to gloat
over, a third that he may fortify them behind glass doors and keep the
key in his pocket. Therefore have learned words been devised to make
apparent the varieties of motive and taste. These words begin with
_biblio_; you may have a _biblio_ almost anything.

Two interesting types of maniac are known respectively as the
bibliotaph and the biblioclast. A biblioclast is one who indulges
himself in the questionable pleasure of mutilating books in order more
sumptuously to fit out a particular volume. The disease is English in
origin, though some of the worst cases have been observed in America.
Clergymen and presidents of colleges have been known to be seized with
it. The victim becomes more or less irresponsible, and presently runs
mad. Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical memory, who mutilated
not less than ten thousand volumes to form his vast collection of
title-pages. John Bagford died an unrepentant sinner, lamenting with
one of his later breaths that he could not live long enough to get
hold of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out of that.

The bibliotaph buries bo