Such depredations are not frequent, and only occur with books easily
replaced, and do not therefore call for more than a passing mention;
but it is a serious matter when Nature produces such a wicked old
biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the founders of the Society
of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last century, went about
the country, from library to library, tearing away title pages from rare
books of all sizes. These he sorted out into nationalities and towns,
and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript notes, and miscellaneous
collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred folio volumes,
now preserved in the British Museum. That they are of service as
materials in compiling a general history of printing cannot be denied,
but the destruction of many rare books was the result, and more than
counter-balanced any benefit bibliographers will ever receive from them.
When here and there throughout those volumes you meet with titles
of books now either unknown entirely, or of the greatest rarity;
when you find the Colophon from the end, or the "insigne typographi"
from the first leaf of a rare "fifteener," pasted down with dozens of
others, varying in value, you cannot bless the memory of the antiquarian
shoemaker, John Bagford. His portrait, a half-length, painted by Howard,
was engraved by Vertue, and re-engraved for the Bibliographical Decameron.

A bad example often finds imitators, and every season there crop up
for public sale one or two such collections, formed by bibliomaniacs,
who, although calling themselves bibliophiles, ought really to be ranked
among the worst enemies of books.

The following is copied from a trade catalogue, dated April, 1880, and
affords a fair idea of the extent to which these heartless destroyers will
go:--