to its contents. This is materially
different from the other forms of the pursuit, in as far as the quarry
hunted down is the raw material, the finished article being a result of
domestic manufacture. The Illustrator is the very Ishmaelite of
collectors--his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is
against him. He destroys unknown quantities of books to supply portraits
or other illustrations to a single volume of his own; and as it is not
always known concerning any book that he has been at work on it, many a
common book-buyer has cursed him on inspecting his own last bargain, and
finding that it is deficient in an interesting portrait or two. Tales
there are, fitted to make the blood run cold in the veins of the most
sanguine book-hunter, about the devastations committed by those who are
given over to this special pursuit. It is generally understood that they
received the impulse which has rendered them an important sect, from the
publication of Granger's Biographical History--hence their name of
Grangerites. So it has happened that this industrious and respectable
compiler is contemplated with mysterious awe as a sort of literary
Attila or Gengis Khan, who has spread terror and ruin around him. In
truth the illustrator, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that
doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to become excited with his work,
and to go on ever widening the circle of his purveyances, and opening
new avenues toward the raw material on which he works. To show how
widely such a person may levy contributions, I propose to take, not a
whole volume, not even a whole page, but still a specific and
distinguished piece of English literature, and describe the way in which
a devotee of this peculiar practice would naturally proceed in
illustrating it. The piece of literature to be illustrated is as
follows:--

"How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!"

The first thing to be done is to collect every engraved portrait of the
author, Isaac Watts. The next, to get hold of any engravings of the
house in which he was born, or houses in which he lived. Then will come
all kinds of views of Southampton--of its Gothic gate, and its older
than Gothic wall. Any scrap connected with the inauguration of the Watts
statue must of course be scrupulously gathered. To go but a step beyond
such commonplaces--there is a traditional st