borrower, and dares not
speak with him in the gate. If he had a book-plate he would say, "Oh!
certainly I will lend you this volume, if it has not my book-plate in
it; of course, one makes a rule never to lend a book that has." He
would say this, and feign to look inside the volume, knowing right
well that this safeguard against the borrower is there already.
To have a book-plate gives a collector great serenity and
self-confidence. We have laboured in a far more conscientious spirit
since we had ours than we did before. A learned poet, Lord De Tabley,
wrote a fascinating volume on book-plates, some years ago, with
copious illustrations. There is not, however, one specimen in his book
which I would exchange for mine, the work and the gift of one of the
most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It
represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad
sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is
coiled around him, with the motto, _Gravis cantantibus umbra_. I will
not presume to translate this tag of an eclogue, and I only venture to
mention such an uninteresting matter, that my indulgent readers may
have a more vivid notion of what I call my library. Mr. Abbey's fine
art is there, always before me, to keep my ideal high.

To possess few books, and those not too rich and rare for daily use,
has this advantage, that the possessor can make himself master of them
all, can recollect their peculiarities, and often remind himself of
their contents. The man that has two or three thousand books can be
familiar with them all; he that has thirty thousand can hardly have a
speaking acquaintance with more than a few. The more conscientious
he is, the more he becomes like Lucian's amateur, who was so much
occupied in rubbing the bindings of his books with sandal-wood and
saffron, that he had no time left to study the contents. After all,
with every due respect paid to "states" and editions and bindings and
tall copies, the inside of the volume is really the essential part of
it.

The excuses for collecting, however, are more than satire is ready to
admit. The first edition represents the author's first thought; in it
we read his words as he sent them out to the world in his first heat,
with the type he chose, and with such peculiarities of form as he
selected to do most justice to his creation. We often discover little
individual points in a first edition, which never occur again