rly Botfield, and secured the services of men like Madden, Wright,
and Taylor, outgrew the pedantries in which it had been reared, and
performed much valuable literary work, yet its chief merit is in the
hints its practice afforded to others. The leading principle, indeed,
which the other clubs so largely adopted after the example of the
Roxburghe, was not an entire novelty. The idea of keeping up the value
of a book by limiting the impression, so as to restrain it within the
number who might desire to possess it, was known before the birth of
this the oldest book club. The practice was sedulously followed by
Hearne the antiquary, and others, who provided old chronicles and books
of the class chiefly esteemed by the book-hunter. The very fame of the
restricted number, operating on the selfish jealousy of man's nature,
brought out competitors for the possession of the book, who never would
have thought of it but for the pleasant idea of keeping it out of the
hands of some one else.

There are several instances on record of an unknown book lying in the
printer's warerooms, dead from birth and forgotten, having life and
importance given to it by the report that all the copies, save a few,
have been destroyed by a fire in the premises. This is an illustration
in the sibylline direction of value being conferred by the decrease of
the commodity; but by judiciously adjusting the number of copies
printed, the remarkable phenomenon has been exhibited of the rarity of a
book being increased by an increase in the number of copies. To
understand how this may come to pass, it is necessary to recall the
precept elsewhere set forth, and look on rarity as not an absolute
quality, but as relative to the number who desire to possess the
article. Ten copies which two hundred people want constitute a rarer
book than two copies which twenty people want. Even to a sole remaining
copy of some forgotten book, lying dead, as it were, and buried in some
obscure library, may collective vital rarity be imparted. Let its owner
print, say, twenty copies for distribution--the book-hunting community
have got the "hark-away," and are off after it. In this way, before the
days of the clubs, many knowing people multiplied rarities; and at the
present day there are reprints by the clubs themselves of much greater
pecuniary value than the rare books from which they have been
multiplied.

Some Book-Club Men.

No one probably did more to raise the