hat time the
classics of every description and of every degree of unimportance held
their own. Reluctant, therefore, to abandon the chief stimulant of their
earlier book-hunting careers, many collectors still took a keen interest
in their _primi pensieri_. But their real passion found a vent in other
and less beaten directions. In addition to this, during the eighteenth
century a large number of small working libraries were formed by men who
_used_ books. Henry Fielding, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, David Hume,
Smollett, Gibbon, Pope, and many others, are essentially figures in the
history of book-hunting in London, but they had neither the means nor,
so far as we are aware, the inclination to indulge in book-collecting as
a mere fashionable hobby. Mr. Austin Dobson has lately published an
interesting account of Fielding's library, in which he proves not only
that Fielding had been a fervent student of the classics in his youth
and that he remained a voracious reader through life, but that he made
good use of a large collection of Greek and Latin authors, which was
sold at his death.

[Illustration: _Mr. Austin Dobson._

From a photograph by E. C. Porter, Ealing.]

The eighteenth century may be regarded as the Augustan age so far as
book-hunting in London is concerned. A large percentage of the most
famous collections were either formed, or the collectors themselves were
either born or died, in that period. The Beckford and Hamilton, the
Heber, the Sunderland, the Althorp, and the King's Library, all had
their origins prior to 1800.

Richard Heber (1773-1833), with all his vast knowledge, learning, and
accomplishments, was a bibliomaniac in the more unpleasant sense of the
word. No confirmed drunkard, no incurable opium-eater, ever had less
self-control than Heber had. To him, to see a book was to possess it.
Cicero has said that the heart into which the love of gold has entered
is shut to every other feeling. Heber was very wealthy, so that with him
the love of books blinded him to almost everything else. He began to
collect when at Oxford, chiefly classics for the purpose of study. He is
said to have caught the disease from Bindley, the veteran collector, who
began book-hunting early in the last century. Having one day
accidentally met with a copy of Henry Peacham's 'Valley of Varietie,'
1638, which professed to give 'rare passages out of antiquity,' etc., he
showed it to Bindley, who described it as 'rather a curious