of sanctity to the spot sufficient,
one might have thought, to arrest the hand of the marauder.

This was the height of the Bibliomania. Dibdin had in 1811 brought out
his work so called. Perhaps it was hardly wise so to accentuate the
passion on paper. He lived to publish the _Bibliophobia_.

The _Bibliotheca Heberiana_, in thirteen parts, 1834-36, which in its
realisation showed a strong revulsion, or at least a marked decline,
from the cometary period, 1812-25, is the most stupendous assemblage
of literary treasures and curiosities ever brought together by an
individual in this country. Heber was a scholar and a reader of his
books; he has made memoranda on a large number of the fly-leaves; and
these have been occasionally transferred to the catalogue, of which
the Early English poetical portion, a singularly rich one, was edited
and annotated by John Payne Collier. In using the Heber Catalogue, its
mere extent and diversity ought to suffice as a warning that the
prices are not in the least degree trustworthy; the classics and some
of the early typography went pretty high; and the Early English books
were only saved from being given away by the active competition of Mr
W. H. Miller, who secured nearly everything of account at very
moderate figures, and by the commissions held by Collier for the Duke
of Devonshire, who bought the rarest of the old plays. The British
Museum was scarcely in evidence there. It was enjoying one of its
periodical slumbers.

The poetical section of the library embraced not only the lion's share
of all the rarest books of the class offered for public sale in
Heber's time, but an immense assortment of articles which he acquired
privately from Thorpe, Rodd, and others, of whom he was the infallible
resource whenever they fell in with books or tracts or broadsides
which he did not possess, or of which he perhaps possessed _only one
copy_.

It was not merely that Heber distanced all that went before him or
have succeeded him, so far as the extent and variety of his
collections go, but that with his insatiable acquisitiveness he
combined so much of the bibliographer and _litterateur_. It was fairly
easy for certain men with more limited means and views, such as
Malone, Steevens, Douce, Brand, Chalmers, Bright, Bliss, Laing,
Bandinel, Turner, Locker, Corser, and a legion more, to pose as judges
of the merits of their possessions; but how comparatively little was
theirs to grasp! In the case o