ting'; the ink and paper were
procured from Holland; and Carte the historian was sent to France 'to
rummage for MSS. of Thuanus.'

Oldys has a few notes upon curious collections which he thought might be
diverting to a 'satirical genius.' A certain Templar, he says, had a good
library of astrology, witchcraft, and magic. Mr Britton, the small-coal
man, had an excellent set of chemical books,'and a great parcel of music
books, many of them pricked with his own hand.' The famous Dryden, and
Mr. Congreve after him, had collected old ballads and penny story-books.
The melancholy Burton, and Dr. Richard Rawlinson, and the learned Thomas
Hearne, had all been as bad in their way. Mr. Secretary Pepys gave a
great library to Magdalen College at Cambridge: but among the folios
peeped out little black-letter ballads and 'penny merriments, penny
witticisms, penny compliments, and penny godlinesses.' 'Mr. Robert
Samber,' says Oldys, 'must need turn virtuoso too, and have his
collection: which was of all the printed tobacco-papers he could anywhere
light on.'

For 'curiosity or dotage' none could beat Mr. Thomas Rawlinson, whose
vast collections were dispersed in seventeen or eighteen auctions before
the final sale in 1733. Mr. Heber in the present century is a modern
example of the same kind. 'A book is a book,' he said: and he bought all
that came in his way, by cart-loads and ship-loads, and in whole
libraries, on which in some cases he never cast his eyes. The most
zealous lovers of books have smiled at his duplicates, quadruplicates,
and multiplied specimens of a single edition.

Thomas Rawlinson, for all his continual sales, blocked himself out of
house and home by his purchases: his set of chambers at Gray's Inn was so
completely filled with books that his bed had to be moved into the
passage. Some thought that he was the 'Tom Folio' of Addison's
caricature, in which it was assumed that the study of bibliography was
only fit for a 'learned idiot.' Hearne defended his friend from the
charge of pedantry, and declared that the mistake could only be made by a
'shallow buffoon.'

Rawlinson had a miserly craving after good books. If he had twenty copies
of a work he would always open his purse for 'a different edition, a
fairer copy, a larger paper.' His covetousness increased as the mass of
his library was multiplied: and as he lived, said Oldys, so he died,
among dust and cobwebs, 'in his bundles, piles, and bulwarks of paper.