and
enthusiastic collector, but after a totally different fashion. He was
far from omnivorous. He had a principle of selection peculiar and
separate from all other's, as was his own individuality from other
men's. You could not classify his library according to any of the
accepted nomenclatures peculiar to the initiated. He was not a
black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge
man, or an early-English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider,
or a pasquinader, or an old-brown-calf man, or a Grangerite, or a
tawny-moroccoite, or a gilt-topper, a marbled-insider, or an _editio
princeps_ man; neither did he come under any of the more vulgar
classifications of collectors whose thoughts run more upon the
usefulness for study than upon the external conditions of their library,
such as those who affect science, or the classics, or English poetic and
historical literature. There was no way of defining his peculiar walk
save by his own name--it was the Fitzpatrick-Smart walk. In fact, it
wound itself in infinite windings through isolated spots of literary
scenery, if we may so speak, in which he took a personal interest. There
were historical events, bits of family history, chiefly of a tragic or a
scandalous kind,--efforts of art or of literary genius on which, through
some hidden intellectual law, his mind and memory loved to dwell; and it
was in reference to these that he collected. If the book were the one
desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable price, was to be grudged
for its acquisition. If the book were an inch out of his own line, it
might be trampled in the mire for aught he cared, be it as rare or
costly as it could be.

It was difficult, almost impossible, for others to predicate what would
please this wayward sort of taste, and he was the torment of the
book-caterers, who were sure of a princely price for the right article,
but might have the wrong one thrown in their teeth with contumely. It
was a perilous, but, if successful, a gratifying thing to present him
with a book. If it happened to hit his fancy, he felt the full force of
the compliment, and overwhelmed the giver with his courtly thanks. But
great observation and tact were required for such an adventure. The
chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift-maker were thousands to
one; and those who were acquainted with his strange nervous temperament,
knew that the existence within his dwelling-place of any book not of hi