ishing houses; nor is it unusual to send MSS. abroad
for the sake of the advantage accruing from cheaper labour. We not
long since secured this boon in Scotland; but Scotland has grown as
dear as London.

The SCOTISH SERIES is a difficult and costly one to handle. The early
vernacular literature of that country has suffered from two classes of
destructive agency, neglect and fanaticism, to a greater extent than
England, and the disappearance of the more popular books and tracts
has been wholesale. The attempt on the part of a collector, however
rich and persevering he might be, to form a complete series of
original editions of the poetical and romantic writers of North
Britain, could only be made in ignorance of the utter impossibility of
success. The late David Laing abundantly illustrated this fact in his
numerous publications, and further evidence of it may be found
throughout the bibliographical works of the present writer.

The old Scotish presses were Edinburgh, Leith, St. Andrew's, Glasgow,
Stirling, and Aberdeen; but a large proportion of the literary
productions of Scotish authors, including much of the historical group
relative to Mary Queen of Scots, proceeded from foreign places of
origin, where the writers had settled or were temporarily resident.

The principal channels through which we have in modern times augmented
our information of their products are the catalogues of Fraser of
Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, the Duke of Roxburghe, Pitcairn,
Constable, Chalmers, Maidment, Gibson-Craig, David Laing, and the Rev.
William Makellar, the last a cousin of Sir William Stirling Maxwell of
Keir, and a collector from 1838 to 1898.

A purely IRISH LIBRARY would inherently differ both from one limited
to English or to Scotish books. There is no early typography or
poetry, no works printed on vellum, no masterpieces of binding. The
collectors in that part of the empire have always been few in number,
and in fact Irish books have been chiefly collected by persons who
were not Irishmen, nor even residents in that country. It used to be
the case that, where a book was remarkably successful in England, the
Dublin booksellers reprinted it, and, as these reproductions are
generally scarcer than the originals, doubtless in limited numbers.

The series consists of a handful of books and tracts of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1570-1625); of publications relative
to the Civil War (1644-48); of others relative to