tly so on this one; and the mastery of the
inner sense of a great and famous writer constitutes an ample reward
for any expenditure of labour and time in acquiring the language in
which he wrote, in making yourself as nearly his countryman as you
can. I remember a saying, which may have been a wicked epigram, that
the only book in Bohn's Classical Library worthy of purchase or
perusal was a version of one of Aristotle's works which a gentleman
had executed _con amore_ and presented to the publisher.

A voluminous and not very well known body of literary material
consists of foreign translations of contemporary English pamphlets of
a historical or religious character, from the time of Henry VIII. to
the Revolution of 1688, covering the entire Stuart period. They cannot
be said to be of primary consequence beyond the proof which they
furnish of the interest felt abroad in passing transactions in this
country, even in such incidents of minor moment as the trial of
Elizabeth Cellier in 1680 for an obscure political libel, and the
occasional value which they have acquired through the apparent loss of
the English originals. We have, for example, a French account of a
London ferryman, who, under pretence of conveying passengers across
the river, strangled them (1586); a second, of the misdoings of a
minister at Malden in Essex (1588); and a third, of the execution of
two priests and two laymen at Oxford in 1590, the last existing also
in Italian, but none of them known in English.

CHAPTER VII

Transmission of ancient remains--The unique fragment and unique
book--Importance of the former--The St. Alban's Grammar-School
find--A more recent one or two--Mr. Neal's volume--A tantalising
entry in a country catalogue--_The Hundred Merry Tales_--Large
volumes only known from small fragments--Blind Harry's
_Wallace_--Aberdeen and other Breviaries--The Oxenden Collection
of Old English Plays--The idyll of _Adam Bell_, 1536--John
Bagford: his unsuspected services to us--Ought we to destroy the
old theology?--Other causes of the disappearance of books--Unique
books which still preserve their reputation--Rare books which are
not rare--Books which are rare and not valuable--Ratcliff, the
waste-paper dealer, who had a collection of Caxtons--The
bystander's manifold experiences--Narrowness of the circle of
first-class buyers--The old collector and the new
on