that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to
do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so
charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's many-volumed and
grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee's erudite notes and
the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in
Mrs. Toynbee's edition would have a higher aesthetic and moral value
for me than in the "editionlet" of Messrs. Newnes. The one cheap
series which satisfies my desire for size is Macmillan's "Library of
English Classics," in which I have the "Travels" of that mythical
personage, Sir John Mandeville. But it is only in paying for it that
you know this edition to be cheap, for it measures nine inches by six
inches by two inches.

And in the third place, when one buys series, one only partially
chooses one's books; they are mainly chosen for one by the publisher.
And even if they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are
suggested _to_ one by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman
form his library. The genuine bookman begins by having specific
desires. His study of authorities gives him a demand, and the demand
forces him to find the supply. He does not let the supply create the
demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating, almost
like the _parvenu_ who calls in the wholesale furnisher and decorator
to provide him with a home. A library must be, primarily, the
expression of the owner's personality.

Let me assert again that I am strongly in favour of cheap series of
reprints. Their influence though not the very finest, is undisputably
good. They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable
where money or space is limited, and in travelling. They decidedly
help to educate a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy;
and the most luxurious collectors may not afford to ignore them
entirely. But they have their limitations, their disadvantages. They
cannot form the backbone of a "proper" library. They make, however,
admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if
it was stripped of them.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING

For some considerable time I have been living, as regards books, with
the minimum of comfort and decency--with, in fact, the bare
necessaries of life, such necessaries being, in my case, sundry
dictionaries, Boswell, an atlas, Wordsworth, an encyclopaedia,
Shakespere, Whitaker, some De Maupassant, a poetical anthology,