he amusement of old age."
_Orat. pro Archia_. The younger Pliny was a downright
Bibliomaniac. "I am quite transported and comforted," says
he, "in the midst of my books: they give a zest to the
happiest, and assuage the anguish of the bitterest, moments
of existence! Therefore, whether distracted by the cares or
the losses of my family, or my friends, I fly to my library
as the only refuge in distress: here I learn to bear
adversity with fortitude." _Epist._ lib. viii. cap. 19. But
consult Cicero _De Senectute_. All these treatises afford
abundant proof of the hopelessness of cure in cases of the
Bibliomania.]

We will now, my dear Sir, begin "making out the catalogue" of victims
to the BIBLIOMANIA! The first eminent character who appears to have
been infected with this disease was RICHARD DE BURY, one of the tutors
of Edward III., and afterwards Bishop of Durham; a man who has been
uniformly praised for the variety of his erudition, and the
intenseness of his ardour in book-collecting.[18] I discover no other
notorious example of the fatality of the BIBLIOMANIA until the time of
Henry VII.; when the monarch himself may be considered as having added
to the number. Although our venerable typographer, Caxton, lauds and
magnifies, with equal sincerity, the whole line of British Kings, from
Edward IV. to Henry VII. [under whose patronage he would seem, in some
measure, to have carried on his printing business], yet, of all these
monarchs, the latter alone was so unfortunate as to fall a victim to
this disease. His library must have been a magnificent one, if we may
judge from the splendid specimens of it which now remain.[19] It would
appear, too, that, about this time, the BIBLIOMANIA was increased by
the introduction of foreign printed books; and it is not very
improbable that a portion of Henry's immense wealth was devoted
towards the purchase of VELLUM copies, which were now beginning to be
published by the great typographical triumvirate, Verard, Eustace, and
Pigouchet.

[Footnote 18: It may be expected that I should notice a few
book-lovers, and probably BIBLIOMANIACS, previously to the
time of Richard De Bury; but so little is known with
accuracy of Johannes Scotus Erigena, and his patron Charles
the Bald, King of France, or of the book tete-a-tetes they
used to have together--so little, also, of Nennius, Bede,
and Alfred [a