French. Like most other products
of human ingenuity, they are varied in their objects and their merits.
At the one end of the scale is the Leipsic Bibliotheca Horatiana,
ambitious only of commemorating the several editions of Horace, or
Kuster's Bibliotheca Historica Brandenburgica, sacred to the histories
of that duchy; while the other extremity aims at universality, an object
which has not yet been accomplished, and seems every day fleeing farther
off from those who are daring enough to pursue it. In 1545, when the
world of literature was rather smaller than it now is, Conrade Gesner,
in his Bibliotheca, made the first attempt at a universal bibliography.
The incompleteness of the result is confessed in the Epitome of the
Bibliotheca, printed five years afterwards, which professes only to
record _nearly_ all the books written since the world began, and yet
boasts of adding more than two thousand names of authors to the number
mentioned in the original Bibliotheca.[63]

[Footnote 63: Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be
found, as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the
heart of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it: "Thomas
Leirmant, vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica quaedam, et
ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est. Vixit anno 1286."]

Of what any list of all the books that have appeared in the world might
be, one may form some conception by the effort of Dr Watt, accomplished
nearly fifty years ago. The work is said to have killed him; and no one
who turns over the densely printed leaves of his four quartos, can feel
surprised at such a result. It is by no means perfect or complete, even
as a guide to books in the compiler's native tongue, yet stands in
honourable contrast with the failure of several efforts to continue this
portion of it down to later days. The voluminous France Litteraire of
Querard confesses its imperfections even to accomplish its limited
object, by professing to devote its special attention to books of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As to bibliographies of the present century aiming at universality, the
Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon of Joecher--when accompanied by Adelung's
supplement, which is its better-half--for scholarship and completeness
casts into shade anything produced either in France or here. It is a
guide which few people consult without passing a compliment either
internally or aloud on the satisfac