of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which
would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made
for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a
book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the
plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however
various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on
one point,--the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can
sympathise with Charles Lamb's attachment to "that folio Beaumont
and Fletcher which he dragged home late at night from Barker's in
Covent Garden." But it is another thing when Lamb says, "I do not
care for a first folio of Shakespeare." A bibliophile who could say
this could say anything.

No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from
their literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for
themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar
preciousness. These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of
type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they
may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity. It is
about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the
places in which to hunt for them, that the following pages are to
treat. It is a subject more closely connected with the taste for
curiosities than with art, strictly so called. We are to be
occupied, not so much with literature as with books, not so much
with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint duenna of
literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its humours.
And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions and
anecdotes derived from French writers. These are as unavoidable,
almost, as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in
fencing. In bibliography, in the care for books AS books, the