bliographers, published
the catalogue of the precious library of the duke de La Valliere, the
abbe Rive boasted that he had discovered a blunder in every one of the
five thousand titles of their catalogue. Barbier and Brunet have both
been criticised for swarms of errors in the earlier editions of their
famous catalogues. The task of the exact cataloguer is full of
difficulty, constantly renewed, and demanding almost encyclopaedic
knowledge, and incessant care of minute particulars.

The liability to error is so great in a kind of work which, more than
almost any other, demands the most scrupulous accuracy, lest a catalogue
should record a book with such mistakes as to completely mislead a
reader, that rules are imperatively necessary. And whatever rules are
adopted, a rigid adherence to them is no less essential, to avoid
misapprehension and confusion. A singular instance of imperfect and
misleading catalogue work was unwittingly furnished by Mr. J. Payne
Collier, a noted English critic, author, and librarian, who criticised
the slow progress of the British Museum catalogue, saying that he could
himself do "twenty-five titles an hour without trouble." His twenty-five
titles when examined, were found to contain almost every possible error
that can be made in cataloguing books. These included using names of
translators or editors as headings, when the author's name was on the
title-page; omitting christian names of authors; omitting to specify the
edition; using English instead of foreign words to give the titles of
foreign books; adopting titled instead of family names for authors (which
would separate Stanhope's "England under Queen Anne" from the same
writer's "History of England," published when he was Lord Mahon); errors
in grammar, etc. These ridiculous blunders of a twenty-five-title-an-hour
man exemplify the maxim "the more haste, the worse speed," in
catalogue-making.

That our British brethren are neither adapted nor inclined to pose as
exemplars in the fine art of cataloguing, we need only cite their own
self-criticisms to prove. Here are two confessions found in two authors
of books on catalogue-making, both Englishmen. Says one: "We are
deficient in good bibliographies. It is a standing disgrace to the
country that we have no complete bibliography of English authors, much
less of English literature generally." Says another: "The English are a
supremely illogical people. The disposition to irregularity has m