of Assurbanipal I pass over, for its volumes were made, as Pliny
says, of coctiles laterculi, of baked tiles, which have been
deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith. Philosophers as well as
immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on our side. It was
objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap scribblers of
to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred minae (360 pounds)
for three treatises of Philolaus, while Aristotle paid nearly thrice
the sum for a few books that had been in the library of Speusippus.
Did not a Latin philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety
to purchase an Odyssey "as old as Homer," and what would not Cicero,
that great collector, have given for the Ascraean editio princeps of
Hesiod, scratched on mouldy old plates of lead? Perhaps Dr.
Schliemann may find an original edition of the "Iliad" at
Orchomenos; but of all early copies none seems so attractive as that
engraved on the leaden plates which Pausanias saw at Ascra. Then,
in modern times, what "great allies" has the collector, what
brethren in book-hunting? The names are like the catalogue with
which Villon fills his "Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps Jadis." A
collector was "le preux Charlemaigne" and our English Alfred. The
Kings of Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus; the Kings of France, and
their queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all
amateurs. So was our Henry VIII., and James I., who "wished he
could be chained to a shelf in the Bodleian." The middle age gives
us Richard de Bury, among ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts
Sir Thomas More, with that "pretty fardle of books, in the small
type of Aldus," which he carried for a freight to the people of
Utopia. Men of the world, like Bussy Rabutin, queens like our
Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers like Colbert (who made
the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for bindings); men of letters
like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; warriors