ll their gilt and fine clothes have already provided
them with livery? Ho! Sirrah Folio, come and turn my page!'

But this Lord Folio haughtily refused to do, and, consequently, being too
stout to turn his own pages, the little 32mo could say no more. His
proposal, though it tickled a few, found no great favour. It was generally
agreed that humour had no place in the discussion of a serious question.
Another speaker advocated the retention of the condemned as ornaments of
the state, but he was very speedily overruled. Was not that the shallow
excuse by which they had hung on for ever so long? No, that was quite
worn out.

The main question was further obstructed by many outbursts of
individualism. Certain self-contained books wished to be left to
themselves, and have no part in the social scheme, unless in the event of
a return to monarchy, when, they intimated, they might be eligible for
election. This, one could see, was the secret hope of all the speakers;
and you would have laughed could you have heard what inflated opinions
some of them had of their own importance--especially two or three of the
minor poets. Then, again, many sentimental demands, quite unforeseen,
added to the general anarchy. Collected editions, which had long groaned
in the bondage of an arbitrary relationship, saw an opportunity in the
general overturn to break away from their sets and join their natural
fellows. Sex was naturally the most unruly element of all. Volumes that
had waited edition after edition for each other, yearning across the
shelves, felt their time had come at last, and leapt into each other's
arms. It was with no avail that a distress minute was passed by The
Hundred Thousand Committee (a somewhat unworkable body) that henceforth
sex was to be a function exercised absolutely for the good of the state:
tattered poets were to be seen wildly proclaiming a different doctrine.

Such eccentric attachments as a volume of _The Essays of Elia_ for
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, were especially troublesome; while the
explosion caused by the accidental contact of that same unruly Elia with a
modern reprint of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, which (he said) he never
could tolerate, proved the last straw to the Committee of the Hundred
Thousand, who immediately resigned their offices in anger and despair.
Thereupon, tenfold chaos once more returning, I thought it time to
interfere. The Doctrine of Equality was evidently a failure--among bo