and make one's mouth water for the books themselves. A third
volume includes only such titles as have the printer's device.
If you shut your eyes to the injury done by such collectors, you may,
to a certain extent, enjoy the collection, for there is great beauty
in some titles; but such a pursuit is neither useful nor meritorious.
By and by the end comes, and then dispersion follows collection,
and the volumes, which probably Cost L200 each in their formation,
will be knocked down to a dealer for L10, finally gravitating
into the South Kensington Library, or some public museum,
as a bibliographical curiosity. The following has just been sold
(July, 1880) by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge,
in the Dunn-Gardinier collection, lot 1592:--

"TITLEPAGES AND FRONTISPIECES.


_A Collection of upwards of_ 800 ENGRAVED TITLES AND FRONTISPIECES,
ENGLISH AND FOREIGN (_some very fine and curious) taken from
old books and neatly mounted on cartridge paper in 3 vol,
half morocco gilt. imp. folio_."


The only collection of title-pages which has afforded me unalloyed pleasure
is a handsome folio, published by the directors of the Plantin Museum,
Antwerp, in 1877, just after the purchase of that wonderful typographical
storehouse.
It is called "Titels en Portretten gesneden naar P. P. Rubens voor de
Plantijnsche Drukkerij," and it contains thirty-five grand title pages,
reprinted from the original seventeenth century plates, designed by Rubens
himself between the years 1612 and 1640, for various publications which