_and as soon as possible_, with any others which you
think proper for the place, and to my taste, and good enough to please
yours. You cannot imagine how greatly my _passion increases_ for this
sort of things; it is such that it may appear _ridiculous_ in the eyes
of many; but you are my friend, and will only think of satisfying my
wishes." Again--"Purchase for me, without thinking farther, all that you
discover of rarity. My friend, do not spare my purse." And, indeed, in
another place he loves Atticus both for his promptitude and cheap
purchases: _Te multum amamus, quod ea abs te diligenter, parvoque curata
sunt_.

Our collectors may not be displeased to discover at their head so
venerable a personage as Cicero; nor to sanction their own feverish
thirst and panting impatience with all the raptures on the day of
possession, and the "saving of rents" to afford commanding prices--by
the authority of the greatest philosopher of antiquity.

A fact is noticed in this article which requires elucidation. In the
life of a true collector, the selling of his books is a singular
incident. The truth is, that the elegant friend of Cicero, residing in
the literary city of Athens, appears to have enjoyed but a moderate
income, and may be said to have traded not only in books, but in
gladiators, whom he let out, and also charged interest for the use of
his money; circumstances which Cornelius Nepos, who gives an account of
his landed property, has omitted, as, perhaps, not well adapted to
heighten the interesting picture which he gives of Atticus, but which
the Abbe Mongault has detected in his curious notes on Cicero's letters
to Atticus. It is certain that he employed his slaves, who, "to the
foot-boy," as Middleton expresses himself, were all literary and skilful
scribes, in copying the works of the best authors for his own use: but
the duplicates were sold, to the common profit of the master and the
slave. The state of literature among the ancients may be paralleled with
that of the age of our first restorers of learning, when printing was
not yet established; then Boccaccio and Petrarch, and such men, were
collectors, and zealously occupied in the manual labour of
transcription; immeasurable was the delight of that avariciousness of
manuscript, by which, in a certain given time, the possessor, with an
unwearied pen, could enrich himself by his copy: and this copy an estate
would not always purchase! Besides that a manuscript se