field. In old days one might have reaped for himself, by bold and
emphatic biddings at a few auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of
which the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin--a name familiarly
abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin. His descriptions of auction
contests are perhaps the best and most readable portions of his
tremendously overdone books.

Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the sale of the Roxburghe
library, perhaps the most eminent contest of that kind on record. There
were of it some ten thousand separate "lots," as auctioneers call them,
and almost every one of them was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of
the collecting community, and had been, with special pains and care and
anxious exertion, drawn into the vortex of that collection. Although it
was created by a Duke, yet it has been rumoured that most of the books
had been bargains, and that the noble collector drew largely on the
spirit of patient perseverance and enlightened sagacity for which
Monkbarns claims credit. The great passion and pursuit of his life
having been of so peculiar a character--he was almost as zealous a
hunter of deer and wild swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not
considered in the least peculiar--it was necessary to find some strange
influencing motive for his conduct; so it has been said that it arose
from his having been crossed in love in his early youth. Such crosses,
in general, arise from the beloved one dying, or proving faithless and
becoming the wife of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the
Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the illustrious marriage of the
sister of his elected. She was the eldest daughter of the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal rank, yet
there would be many countervailing advantages in the position of an
affluent British Duchess which might reconcile a young lady, even of so
illustrious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not happened that Lord
Bute and the Princess of Wales selected her younger sister to be the
wife of George III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as the
good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it seems, the necessity, as a
matter of state and political etiquette, that the elder sister should
abandon the alliance with a British subject.

So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of the Duke's
bibliomania; and it is supposed to have been in the thoughts of Sir
Walter Scott, when he sa