interests, which seems to be a bargain. Probably it is not even a
bargain; it can seldom be cheap to you, if you do not need it, and do not
mean to read it.

Not that any collector reads all his books. I may have, and indeed do
possess, an Aldine Homer and Caliergus his Theocritus; but I prefer to
study the authors in a cheap German edition. The old editions we buy
mainly for their beauty, and the sentiment of their antiquity and their
associations.

But I don't take my own advice. The shelves are crowded with books quite
out of my line--a whole small library of tomes on the pastime of curling,
and I don't curl; and "God's Revenge against Murther," though (so far) I
am not an assassin. Probably it was for love of Sir Walter Scott, and
his mention of this truculent treatise, that I purchased it. The full
title of it is "The Triumphs of God's Revenge against the Crying and
Execrable Sinne of (willful and premeditated) Murther." Or rather there
is nearly a column more of title, which I spare you. But the pictures
are so bad as to be nearly worth the price. Do not waste your money,
like your foolish adviser, on books like that, or on "Les Sept Visions de
Don Francisco de Quevedo," published at Cologne, in 1682.

Why in the world did I purchase this, with the title-page showing Quevedo
asleep, and all his seven visions floating round him in little circles
like soap-bubbles? Probably because the book was published by Clement
Malassis, and perhaps he was a forefather of that whimsical Frenchman,
Poulet Malassis, who published for Banville, and Baudelaire, and Charles
Asselineau. It was a bad reason. More likely the mere cheapness
attracted me.