ing seen him riding forth on a sunny day, the shadow
of his horse visible, with those of his spurs and his whip, but his
body offering no impediment to the rays of the sun. He enriched the
library with books on necromancy, demonology, and alchemy.

The largest book-sale probably that ever was in the world, was that of
Heber's collection in 1834. There are often rash estimates made of the
size of libraries, but those who have stated the number of his books in
six figures seem justified when one looks at the catalogue of the sale,
bound up in five thick octavo volumes. For results so magnificent,
Richard Heber's library had but a small beginning, according to the
memoir of him in the Gentleman's Magazine, where it is said, that
"having one day accidentally met with a little volume called The Vallie
of Varietie, by Henry Peacham, he took it to the late Mr Bindley of the
Stamp-office, the celebrated collector, and asked him if this was not a
curious book. Mr Bindley, after looking at it, answered, 'Yes--not
very--but rather a curious book.'" This faint morsel of encouragement
was, it seems, sufficient to start him in his terrible career, and the
trifle becomes important as a solemn illustration of the _obsta
principiis_. His labours, and even his perils, were on a par with those
of any veteran commander who has led armies and fought battles during
the great part of a long life. He would set off on a journey of several
hundred miles any day in search of a book not in his collection.
Sucking in from all around him whatever books were afloat, he of course
soon exhausted the ordinary market; and to find a book obtainable which
he did not already possess, was an event to be looked to with the
keenest anxiety, and a chance to be seized with promptitude, courage,
and decision. At last, however, he could not supply the cravings of his
appetite without recourse to duplicates, and far more than duplicates.
His friend Dibdin said of him, "He has now and then an ungovernable
passion to possess more copies of a book than there were ever parties to
a deed or stamina to a plant; and therefore I cannot call him a
duplicate or a triplicate collector." He satisfied his own conscience by
adopting a creed, which he enounced thus: "Why, you see, sir, no man can
comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for a
show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country-house; another he
will require for his own use and reference;