is necessary to bring others into a course of perfect
sobriety and general obedience to the laws of health. Further,
Papaverius had an extraordinary insight into practical human life; not
merely in the abstract, but in the concrete; not merely as a philosopher
of human nature, but as one who saw into those who passed him in the
walk of life with the kind of intuition attributed to expert
detectives--a faculty that is known to have belonged to more than one
dreamer, and is one of the mysteries in the nature of J.J. Rousseau;
and, by the way, like Rousseau's, his handwriting was clear, angular,
and unimpassioned, and not less uniform and legible than printing--as if
the medium of conveying so noble a thing as thought ought to be
carefully, symmetrically, and decorously constructed, let all other
material things be as neglectfully and scornfully dealt with as may be.

This is a long proemium to the description of his characteristics as a
book-hunter--but these can be briefly told. Not for him were the common
enjoyments and excitements of the pursuit. He cared not to add volume
unto volume, and heap up the relics of the printing-press. All the
external niceties about pet editions, peculiarities of binding or of
printing, rarity itself, were no more to him than to the Arab or the
Hottentot. His pursuit, indeed, was like that of the savage who seeks
but to appease the hunger of the moment. If he catch a prey just
sufficient for his desires, it is well; yet he will not hesitate to
bring down the elk or the buffalo, and, satiating himself with the
choicer delicacies, abandon the bulk of the carcass to the wolves or the
vultures. So of Papaverius. If his intellectual appetite were craving
after some passage in the Oedipus, or in the Medeia, or in Plato's
Republic, he would be quite contented with the most tattered and
valueless fragment of the volume, if it contained what he wanted; but,
on the other hand, he would not hesitate to seize upon your tall copy in
russia gilt and tooled. Nor would the exemption of an _editio princeps_
from everyday sordid work restrain his sacrilegious hands. If it should
contain the thing he desires to see, what is to hinder him from
wrenching out the twentieth volume of your Encyclopedie Methodique, or
Ersch und Gruber, leaving a vacancy like an extracted front tooth, and
carrying it off to his den of Cacus? If you should mention the matter to
any vulgar-mannered acquaintance given to the unhallowed