Tear me at once; but don't transplant me.

CHELTENHAM, Sept. 31, 1792.


The conceited ghoul writes his notes across our fair white margins,
in pencil, or in more baneful ink. Or he spills his ink bottle at
large over the pages, as Andre Chenier's friend served his copy of
Malherbe. It is scarcely necessary to warn the amateur against the
society of book-ghouls, who are generally snuffy and foul in
appearance, and by no means so insinuating as that fair lady-ghoul,
Amina, of the Arabian Nights.

Another enemy of books must be mentioned with the delicacy that
befits the topic. Almost all women are the inveterate foes, not of
novels, of course, nor peerages and popular volumes of history, but
of books worthy of the name. It is true that Isabelle d'Este, and
Madame de Pompadour, and Madame de Maintenon, were collectors; and,
doubtless, there are other brilliant exceptions to a general rule.
But, broadly speaking, women detest the books which the collector
desires and admires. First, they don't understand them; second,
they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
money; and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money
expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored
with crabbed characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against
booksellers' catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had
to practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase
across their own frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to
collecting Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you
cannot smuggle a folio volume easily. This inveterate dislike of