m rare books of all sizes'; and Dr. Dibdin in
_Bibliomania_ states that he 'was the most hungry and rapacious of all
book and print collectors.' The testimony of Hearne (who knew Bagford
well, and who was also amply qualified to judge both of his merits and
demerits), however, is very different. He writes: 'It was very laudable
in my Friend, Mr. John Bagford (who I think was born in Fetter Lane,
London), to employ so much of his time, as he did, in collecting Remains
of Antiquity. Indeed he was a man of very surprising genius, and had his
education (for he was first a shoemaker, and afterwards for some time a
bookseller) been equal to his natural genius, he would have proved a
much greater man than he was. And yet, without this education, he was,
certainly, the greatest man in the world in his way.... 'Tis very
remarkable, that, in collecting, his care did not extend itself to Books
and to the fragments of Books, only, but even to the very Covers, and to
the Bosses and Clasps; and all this, that he might, with the greater
ease, compile the History of Printing, which he had undertaken, but did
not finish. In this noble Work he intended a Discourse about Binding,...
and another about the Art of making paper, in both of which his
observations were very accurate.'

A great number of the title-pages and fragments collected by Bagford are
evidently taken from books which could be purchased in his day for a few
shillings, many of them probably for a few pence; while it is possible
that some may have been salvage from the Great Fire of 1666, when we
know immense quantities of books were burnt or damaged. The collections,
it is true, contain fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, various Caxtons,
and other rare books, but there is no reason to think that these were
abstracted from complete copies; it is much more likely that they were
odd leaves which Bagford had picked up, while the leather stains on some
of the most valuable show that they once formed part of the padding of
old bindings. Many of the books were probably acquired by Bagford when
he took part in the book-hunting expeditions of the Duke of Devonshire,
the Earls of Oxford, Sunderland, and other collectors, who amused
themselves every Saturday during the winter in rambling through various
quarters of the town in search of additions to their libraries. After
Bagford's death Hearne was very anxious to obtain his collections, as he
wished to publish 'a book from them, for th