vide them into private prowlers and
auction-hunters. There are many other modes of classifying them, but
none so general. They might be classified by the different sizes of
books they affect--as folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos--but this
would be neither an expressive nor a dignified classification. In
enumerating the various orders to which Fitzpatrick Smart did _not_
belong, I have mentioned many of the species, but a great many more
might be added. Some collectors lay themselves out for vellum-printed
volumes almost solely. There are such not only among very old books, but
among very new; for of a certain class of modern books it frequently
happens that a copy or two may be printed on vellum, to catch the class
whose weakness takes that direction.

It may be cited as a signal instance of the freaks of book-collecting,
that of all men in the world Junot, the hard-fighting soldier, had a
vellum library--but so it was. It was sold in London for about L1400.
"The crown octavos," says Dibdin, "especially of ancient classics, and a
few favourite English authors, brought from four to six guineas. The
first virtually solid article of any importance, or rather of the
greatest importance, in the whole collection, was the matchless Didot
Horace, of 1799, folio, containing the original drawings from which the
exquisite copperplate vignettes were executed. This was purchased by the
gallant Mr George Hibbert for L140. Nor was it in any respect an
extravagant or even dear purchase." It now worthily adorns the library
of Norton Hall.

Some collectors may be styled Rubricists, being influenced by a sacred
rage for books having the contents and marginal references printed in
red ink. Some "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad margins. These
have all a certain amount of magnificence in their tastes; but there are
others again whose priceless collections are like the stock-in-trade of
a wholesale ballad-singer, consisting of chap-books, as they are
termed--the articles dealt in by pedlars and semi-mendicants for the
past century or two. Some affect collections relating to the drama, and
lay great store by heaps of play-bills arranged in volumes, and bound,
perhaps, in costly russia. Of a more dignified grade are perhaps those
who have lent themselves to the collection of the theses on which
aspirants after university honours held their disputations or
impugnments. Sometimes out of a great mass of rubbish of this kind the