in his
line--then; had they been in those early days of book-hunting, his
library would have been slow indeed of growth. So he passed on and left
it.

All that evening the memory of the little square volume would keep
recurring most absurdly. He didn't want it, it was not in his line, he
would never read it, and so on and so on. But over his pipe that evening
the colophon '. . . . _studio & impensis Philippi de Giunta florentini
. . ., 1505_,' came back to his memory; he must have been mad not to have
bought it at that price, and such a fine copy too. And so to bed, sorely
harassed in his bibliophilic mind.

Next morning he awoke sane and conscious of his folly. An early visit to
the bookstall followed, but the little volume had gone; and it was not
comforting to learn that it had been sold shortly after our bookman saw
it, to a man who 'knew a lot about that kind of books.' Let us hope that
the purchaser treasures the little square volume, printed in italics, as
much as our friend would.

What poignant memories they are, these memories of rare books which we
have found and failed to secure! Two prominent instances of our bookman's
folly stand out with bitter clearness, ever fresh in his memory as a
reminder of the criminal stupidity of procrastination. One was an
exceedingly scarce work by Lawrence Humphrey, entitled 'Optimates sive De
Nobilitate eiusque Antiqua Origine,' printed in small octavo at Basle in
1560, which he once saw in a catalogue for five shillings. He sent for it
three days after the receipt of the catalogue, and of course it had gone.
The other was an unknown, or at least undescribed, edition of Osorio's
'De Gloria et Nobilitate,' printed at Barcelona in the early part of the
sixteenth century. He lost this in the same manner, at two shillings!
Perhaps, however, you too have been guilty of these lapses, reader?
_Semel insanivimus omnes._ Experience is better than advice, and for his
part our book-hunter will not be caught napping again. The following
incident will show you, moreover, that it is not always safe to order
books from a catalogue even by return of post.

For many years he had searched in vain for that rarest of all English
heraldry books (though not properly English, for it is in the Latin
tongue), the 'De Studio Militari, Libri Quatuor' of Master Nicholas
Upton. It was edited by Sir Edward Bysshe, and printed in folio at London
in 1654. The numerous booksellers in London and the coun