, racy enjoyments
of life--those enjoyments in which there is also exertion and
achievement, and which depend on these for their proper relish--are not
to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him the true elements of
enjoyment, the book-hunter's treasures must not be his mere property,
they must be his achievements--each one of them recalling the excitement
of the chase and the happiness of success. Like Monkbarns with his
Elzevirs and his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in common
with all hunters, a touch of the competitive in his nature, and be able
to take the measure of a rival,--as Monkbarns magnanimously takes that
of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate
addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for
searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had
the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would
detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper,
and find an _editio princeps_ under the mask of a school Corderius.'"

In pursuing the chase in this spirit, the sportsman is by no means
precluded from indulgence in the adventitious specialties that delight
the commonest bibliomaniac. There is a good deal more in many of them
than the first thought discloses. An _editio princeps_ is not a mere
toy--it has something in it that may purchase the attention even of a
thinking man. In the first place, it is a very old commodity--about four
hundred years of age. If you look around you in the world you will see
very few movables coeval with it. No doubt there are wonderfully ancient
things shown to travellers,--as in Glammis Castle you may see the
identical four-posted bedstead--a very creditable piece of
cabinet-makery--in which King Malcolm was murdered a thousand years ago.
But genuine articles of furniture so old as the _editio princeps_ are
very rare. If we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a drinking-can,
of that age, is there not something worthy of observance, as indicating
the social condition of the age, in those venerable pages, made to look
as like the handwriting of their day as possible, with their decorated
capitals, all squeezed between two solid planks of oak, covered with
richly embossed hog-skin, which can be clasped together by means of
massive decorated clasps? And shall we not admit it to a higher place in
our reverence than some mere item of household furnishing, when we
reflect th