ous Authors and Books.]

9. Celebrated Authors and Books. How interesting it would be to know
which individual work, after the Bible, has passed through the greatest
number of editions. 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The
Decameron,' 'The Compleat Angler,' 'Paradise Lost,' all these must have
been reprinted an immense number of times; while others such as 'Gil
Blas' and 'Don Quixote' would not be so very far behind. Then there are
the ancients, such as Homer, Horace, Virgil, with the great host of
classics of the old world. Perhaps, however, the palm would be awarded to
the 'Imitatio Christi' of the saintly Thomas a Kempis. The editions of
it, from the presses of almost every country in the old and the new
worlds, run well into four figures. An English collector, Edmund
Waterton, succeeded in amassing no less than thirteen hundred, and at his
death the British Museum acquired all those of his treasures which were
not already upon its shelves.

There is another name to couple with this, though (I hasten to add) from
a purely bibliographical standpoint--that of the great Dominican Giacomo
di Voraggio, or Jacobus de Voragine. Except to the student of Early
Fathers, the hagiologist, and the bibliophile, his very name has almost
sunk into oblivion; but to these savants he stands forth as the compiler
of that marvellous collection of the Lives of the Saints, known as The
Golden Legend. The first Latin edition of his great work was printed in
folio at Cologne in 1470, and six years later it appeared in French at
Lyons and in Italian at Venice. Caxton translated and published an
English version, and from that time to the middle of the sixteenth
century it is said to have undergone more impressions than any other
contemporary work.[80]

It is not only editions of individual works, however, that this heading
comprises. Upon reading a book which pleases us greatly it is but natural
to seek other works by the same author; and with the book-collector this
tendency often becomes the basis of a definite plan of campaign. Who has
yet formed a complete collection of the works and editions of Defoe, of
Alexandre Dumas, or even of that indefatigable Jesuit antiquary Claude
Francois Menestrier? There are bibliographies of all three, but I do not
know of any library that possesses a complete collection of either. Every
year sees the addition of bibliographies upon this subject, and we have
now excellent accounts of the publi