experiences and predilections of the immediate author; and so
it happens in the present case. A succession of Essays on the same
subject is bound to traverse the same ground, yet no two of them,
perhaps, work from the same seeing point, and there may be beyond the
topic substantially little in common between them and the rest of the
literature, which has steadily accumulated round this attractive and
fruitful subject for bookman and artist.

During a very long course of years I have had occasion to study books
in all their branches, in almost all tongues, of almost all periods,
personally and closely. No early English volumes, while I have been on
the track, have, if I could help it, escaped my scrutiny; and I have
not let them pass from my hands without noting every particular which
seemed to me important and interesting in a historical, literary,
biographical, and bibliographical respect. The result of these
protracted and laborious investigations is partly manifest in my
_Bibliographical Collections_, 1867-1903, extending to eight octavo
volumes; but a good deal of matter remained, which could not be
utilised in that series or in my other miscellaneous contributions to
_belles lettres_.

So it happened that I found myself the possessor of a considerable
body of information, covering the entire field of Book-Collecting in
Great Britain and Ireland and on the European continent, and
incidentally illustrating such cognate features as Printing Materials,
Binding, and Inscriptions or Autographs, some enhancing the interest
of an already interesting item, others conferring on an otherwise
valueless one a peculiar claim to notice.

My collections insensibly assumed the proportions of the volume now
submitted to the public; and in the process of seeing the sheets
through the press certain supplementary Notes suggested themselves,
and form an Appendix. It has been my endeavour to render the Index as
complete a clue as possible to the whole of the matter within the
covers.

As my thoughts carry me back to the time--it is fifty years--when I
commenced my inquiries into literary antiquities, I see that I have
lived to witness a new Hegira: New Ideas, New Tastes, New Authors. The
American Market and the Shakespear movement[1] have turned everything
and everybody upside down. But Time will prove the friend of some of
us.

In the following pages I have avoided the repetition of particulars to
be found in my _Four Generations