catalogue. It is written in English, so you are dispensed from looking
for it in any French or other foreign bibliography. Its date is 1827,
London. Therefore among the three leading English reference books in
bibliography, which are Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, Lowndes'
Bibliographer's Manual, and the English Catalogue, you at once eliminate
the former as not containing the book. Why do you do this? Because Watt's
great work, in four huge quartos, though invaluable for the early English
literature, stops with books published before the date of its issue,
1824. Your book is published in 1827, and of course could not appear in a
catalogue of 1824. Shall you refer then to the English Catalogue for its
title? No, because the five volumes of that useful work (though some
imperfect book lists were published earlier), begin with the year 1835,
and the book you seek bears date of 1827. You are then reduced, by this
simple process of analyzing in your mind the various sources of
information, and rejecting all except one, namely Lowndes'
Bibliographer's Manual, to a search in a single catalogue for your title.
This simplifies matters greatly, and saves all the time which might
otherwise have been lost in hunting fruitlessly through several works of
reference. Lowndes' invaluable Manual was published in 1834, and though a
second edition, edited by Bohn, appeared thirty years later, it does not
contain books published after that date, unless they are later editions
of works issued earlier. You find in it your Scott's Napoleon, date 1827,
with its published price, L4. 14. 6, and an account of other later
editions of the book. Of course you will observe that it is necessary to
know what period of years is covered by the various bibliographies, and
to carry those dates perpetually in your memory, in order thus to
simplify searches, and save time. Once learned, you will have the comfort
of knowing where to turn for light upon any book, and the faculty of
accurate memory will reward the pains taken to acquire it.

I must not omit to include, in noting the more useful and important
English bibliographies, the very copious list of works appended to each
biography of British writers, in the new "Dictionary of National
Biography," Lond., 1885-1900. This extensive work is nearly finished in
about 65 volumes, and constitutes a rich thesaurus of information about
all British authors, except living ones.

Living characters, considered notabl