specimens of the class.

A Vision of Mighty Book-Hunters.

As the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend
Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now--tall,
straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms
into benignity as he inspects a pretty little clean Elzevir, or a tall
portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a
peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important
announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive
types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel
to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbours
is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members
of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency--or,
it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief--to
have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as
the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through
their favourite taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget
that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of
the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in
his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon containing 372
copies of rare editions of the Bible? All were fish that came to his
net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a
stall--and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, and
secures with frantic impetuosity, "at any price," a great fish he has
been patiently watching year after year. His hunting-grounds were wide
and distant, and there were mysterious rumours about the numbers of
copies, all identically the same in edition and minor individualities,
which he possessed of certain books. I have known him, indeed, when
beaten at an auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so be
it--but I daresay I have ten or twelve copies at home, if I could lay
hands on them."

It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a
well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector
buys his first _duplicate_. It is like the first secret dram swallowed
in the forenoon--the first pawning of the silver spoons--or any other
terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no
hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of d