isposed, to
know that a wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to
hide their deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work having been
undertaken, as police reports say, by "a thoroughly efficient officer of
indomitable activity."]

Passing from this class of interesting though rather unamiable
elucidations, I come to another class of bibliographies, of which it is
difficult to speak with patience--those which either profess to tell
you how to find the best books to consult on every department of
learning, or undertake to point out to you the books which you should
select for your library, or for your miscellaneous reading. As to those
which profess to be universal mentors, at hand to help you with the best
tools for your work, in whichever department of intellectual labour it
may happen to be, _they_ break down at once. Whoever has set himself to
any special line of investigation, cannot open one of those books
without discovering its utter worthlessness and incapacity to aid him in
his own specialty. As to the other class of bibliographers, who profess
to act the guide, philosopher, and friend to the collector and the
reader, I cannot imagine anything more offensively audacious than the
function they assume. It is an attempt of the pedagogue to assert a
jurisdiction over grown intellects, and hence such books naturally
develop in flagrant exaggeration the pragmatical priggism which is the
pedagogue's characteristic defect. I would except from this condemnation
a few bibliographers, who, instead of sitting in the schoolmaster's
chair and dictating to you what it is proper that you should read,
rather give you a sly hint that they are going a-vagabondising through
the byways of literature, and will take you with them if you like. Among
these I would chiefly be inclined to affect the company of Peignot,
whose wild and wayward course of reading provides for you something like
to a ramble over the mountains with an Alpine hunter, the only kind of
guide to whom the thorough pedestrian wanderer should give up his
freedom. One of Peignot's books, called Predicatoriana, ou Revelations
Singulieres et Amusantes sur les Predicateurs, brings one into scenes
apt to shock a mind not tolerably hardened by eclectic reading. It is an
anonymous publication, but has been traced home by the literary
detectives. It may be characterised as a collection of the Buffooneries
of Sermons. A little book enlivened by something li