wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror,
when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves
than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to
have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found
out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to
suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections--namely,
reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized £5,011, and as the Duke
of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been
after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit.

But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator:
he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson,
Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the
Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr.
Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract
from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest:

'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him
to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the _Sublime and
Beautiful_, which the experience, reading, and observation of
thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But
he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the
whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was
much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that
book than now.'

Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference
indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and
'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the
tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day