been a collector of books on a humble scale. . . .
Still, by being continually on the look-out for 'bargains,' I have
managed to gather between three and four thousand volumes together,
chiefly of a poetical nature." Now, to my apprehension, the present
aspect of the matter touches a higher or deeper chord than that
reached by the owner of the most splendid library in the universe; for
all this Heliconian harvest signified personal search and personal
sacrifice.

We do not always bear in mind that the rare books of to-day were the
current literature not merely of, but long posterior to, the period of
their appearance. They suffered two kinds and stages of deterioration
and waste. While they remained in vogue among readers and students,
they necessarily submitted to a succession of more or less indifferent
owners, who regarded without much concern objects which it was in
their power to replace without much difficulty. The worst day dawned,
however, for our ancient literature, especially that of a fugitive or
sentimental class, when it had ceased to be in demand for practical
purposes, and was not yet ripe for the men, in whose eyes it could
only possess archaeological attractions. Independently of destruction
by accidental fires, a century or two of neglect proved fatal to
millions of volumes or other literary records in pamphlet or
broadsheet form; and as tastes changed, the mill and the fire
successively consumed the discarded favourites of bygone generations,
just as at the present moment we pulp or burn from day to day
cartloads of old science, and theology, and law, and fiction, and ever
so much more, preparing to grow unique.

The Mill has been as busy as the Press all these centuries on which we
look back. It has neither eyes nor ears, nor has it compassion; it
unrelentingly grinds and consumes all that comes in its way; age after
age it has reduced to dust what the men of the time refuse in the
presence of something newer, and, as they hold, better. The printers
of each generation, from those of Mainz downward, lent themselves, not
unnaturally, not unwisely, to subjects in the first place (by way of
experiment) which were not costly, and secondly to such as appealed to
contemporary taste and patronage. We find under the former head
Indulgences, Proclamations, Broadsides, Ballads; under the second,
Church Service Books of all kinds, succeeded after a while by certain
of the Classics. The impressions long remaine