Gallery. The very title-page, and pagination, not of this second
edition, but of the first of "Les Fascheux," had their own fortunes,
for the dedication to Fouquet was perforce withdrawn. That
favourite entertained La Valliere and the King with the comedy at
his house of Vaux, and then instantly fell from power and favour,
and, losing his place and his freedom, naturally lost the flattery
of a dedication. But retombons a nos coches, as Montaigne says.
This pleasant little copy of the play, which is a kind of relic of
Moliere and his old world, has been ruthlessly bound up with a
treatise, "Des Pierres Precieuses," published by Didot in 1776. Now
the play is naturally a larger book than the treatise on precious
stones, so the binder has cut down the margins to the size of those
of the work on amethysts and rubies. As the Italian tyrant chained
the dead and the living together, as Procrustes maimed his victims
on his cruel bed, so a hard-hearted French binder has tied up, and
mutilated, and spoiled the old play, which otherwise would have had
considerable value as well as interest.

We have tried to teach the beginner how to keep his books neat and
clean; what men and monsters he should avoid; how he should guard
himself against borrowers, book-worms, damp, and dirt. But we are
sometimes compelled to buy books already dirty and dingy, foxed, or
spotted with red, worn by greasy hands, stained with ink spots, or
covered with MS. notes. The art of man has found a remedy for these
defects. I have never myself tried to wash a book, and this care is
best left to professional hands. But the French and English writers
give various recipes for cleaning old books, which the amateur may
try on any old rubbish out of the fourpenny box of a bookstall, till
he finds that he can trust his own manipulations. There are "fat
stains" on books, as thumb marks, traces of oil (the midnight oil),