en a
new book is published, read an old one, was the advice of a sound though
surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters to have glorified the
term 'second-hand,' which other crafts have 'soiled to all ignoble use.'
But why it has been able to do this is obvious. All the best books are
necessarily second-hand. The writers of to-day need not grumble. Let
them 'bide a wee.' If their books are worth anything, they, too, one day
will be second-hand. If their books are not worth anything there are
ancient trades still in full operation amongst us--the pastrycooks and
the trunkmakers--who must have paper.

But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books,
meaning thereby second-hand books? The late Mark Pattison, who had
16,000 volumes, and whose lightest word has therefore weight, once stated
that he had been informed, and verily believed, that there were men of
his own University of Oxford who, being in uncontrolled possession of
annual incomes of not less than 500 pounds, thought they were doing the
thing handsomely if they expended 50 pounds a year upon their libraries.
But we are not bound to believe this unless we like. There was a touch
of morosity about the late Rector of Lincoln which led him to take gloomy
views of men, particularly Oxford men.

No doubt arguments _a priori_ may readily be found to support the
contention that the habit of book-buying is on the decline. I confess to
knowing one or two men, not Oxford men either, but Cambridge men (and the
passion of Cambridge for literature is a by-word), who, on the plea of
being pressed with business, or because they were going to a funeral,
have passed a bookshop in a strange town without so much as stepping
inside 'just to see whether the fellow had anything.' But painful as
facts of this sort necessarily are, any damaging inference we might feel
disposed to draw from them is dispelled by a comparison of price-lists.
Compare a bookseller's catalogue of 1862 with one of the present year,
and your pessimism is washed away by the tears which unrestrainedly flow
as you see what _bonnes fortunes_ you have lost. A young book-buyer
might well turn out upon Primrose Hill and bemoan his youth, after
comparing old catalogues with new.

Nothing but American competition, grumble some old stagers.

Well! why not? This new battle for the books is a free fight, not a
private one, and Columbia has 'joined in.' Lower prices are not to be