s
own special kind, would impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy
horror which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes into its cell.
Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his
existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on
his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring
out all his sarcasm, which was not feeble or slight, on the odious
object, and wondering why an author could have entertained against him
so steady and enduring a malice as to take the trouble of writing and
printing all that rubbish with no better object than disturbing the
peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such _dona
ferentes_ cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep--for what
could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he
was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid
exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had
established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities
were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in
existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods.

These gods were a pantheon of a lively and grotesque aspect, for he was
a hunter after other things besides books. His acquisitions included
pictures, and the various commodities which, for want of a distinctive
name, auctioneers call "miscellaneous articles of vertu." He started on
his accumulating career with some old family relics, and these, perhaps,
gave the direction to his subsequent acquisitions, for they were all,
like his books, brought together after some self-willed and peculiar law
of association that pleased himself. A bad, even an inferior, picture he
would not have--for his taste was exquisite--unless, indeed, it had some
strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward fancies, and then
he would adopt the badness as a peculiar recommendation, and point it
out with some pungent and appropriate remark to his friends. But though,
with these peculiar exceptions, his works of art were faultless, no
dealer could ever calculate on his buying a picture, however high in
artistic merit or tempting as a bargain. With his ever-accumulating
collection, in which tiny sculpture and brilliant colour predominated,
he kept a sort of fairy world around him. But each one of the mob of
curious things he preserved had some story linking it with others