say that few things are less
satisfactory than trade-catalogues with certain honourable exceptions,
which it might be invidious to particularise; and the book-buyer has
to depend almost exclusively on his own discernment and the
bibliographers. Of what he reads in the catalogues he may believe as
much or as little as he likes.

Nothing could be more ungracious than to speak disrespectfully of the
publications of those laborious and earnest workers who have preceded
us, and who for that very sufficient reason did not know quite so much
as we do. We admire their industry, on the contrary, their taste and
their devotion; we buy their volumes because it is pleasant to have
them at our side; and ever and anon we dip into this one or that, and
meet with something which had escaped us. Seriously, however, they
are, on the whole, not merely of slight use, but of a misleading
tendency. For the gods of our forefathers, Ware, Tanner, Ames,
Herbert, Oldys, Dibdin, Brydges, Watt, Park, Haslewood, the compilers
of the _Bibliotheca Grenvillana_, _Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica_, and
_Biographia Dramatica_, and scores besides, before and even since, we
have substituted others, assuredly more complete, perhaps constructed
on truer and more lasting principles. We have on our shelves (i.) for
the _Bibliography_, the Heber, Collier, Corser, and Huth catalogues
(1834-80), and the writer's own _Collections_ (1867-1903),
_Bibliographica_ and the _Transactions of the Bibliographical
Society_: (ii.) for the _Prices_, _Book Prices Current_ and _Book
Sales_. Unfortunately the two latter undertakings are little better
than mechanical transcripts from the auctioneers' extremely
treacherous catalogues by outsiders. The peculiar class of information
purporting to be supplied by such catalogues is often in need of some
qualifying criticism or admonition, which it is not easy, if possible,
for any one not on the spot and behind the scenes to offer. No mere
reference to the catalogue after the event is capable of initiating
one into these _arcana_; and the same has to be said of the quotations
in the ordinary periodicals. This is a species of employment for which
there must be either a long training or a unique instinct.

_Book Prices Current_ and _Book Sales_ cannot be trusted as an
authority or a guide by any person who does not approach them with a
certain measure of experience. Where an editor cites a common and
comparatively worthless volume as sellin