the height of the fashion, unless you meet them for fourpence on a stall.
Even then should a gentleman take advantage of a poor bookseller's
ignorance? I don't know. I never fell into the temptation, because I
never was tempted. Bargains, real bargains, are so rare that you may
hunt for a lifetime and never meet one.

The best plan for a man who has to see that his collection is worth what
it cost him, is probably to confine one's self to a single line, say, in
your case, first editions of new English, French, and American books that
are likely to rise in value. I would try, were I you, to collect first
editions of Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Poe, and Hawthorne.

As to Poe, you probably will never have a chance. Outside of the British
Museum, where they have the "Tamerlane" of 1827, I have only seen one
early example of Poe's poems. It is "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor
Poems, by Edgar A. Poe. Baltimore: Hatch and Dunning, 1829, 8vo, pp.
71." The book "came to Mr. Locker (Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson),
through Mr. R. H. Stoddard, the American poet." So says Mr.
Locker-Lampson's Catalogue. He also has the New York edition of 1831.

These books are extraordinarily rare; you are more likely to find them in
some collection of twopenny rubbish than to buy them in the regular
market. Bryant's "Poems" (Cambridge, 1821) must also be very rare, and
Emerson's of 1847, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's of 1836, and
Longfellow's "Voices of the Night," 1839, and Mr. Lowell's "A Year's
Life;" none of these can be common, and all are desirable, as are Mr.
Whittier's "Legends of New England" (1831), and "Poems" (1838).

Perhaps you may never be lucky enough to come across them cheap; no doubt
they are greatly sought for by amateurs. Indeed, all American books of a