t anything like completeness in this section of the book
would be highly undesirable, having regard to a proportionate
representation of the subject as a whole. Completeness, moreover, would
be an impossibility, even in a volume devoted entirely to modern men._

_The greatest possible care has been taken to prevent inaccuracy of any
kind, but whilst freedom from error is a consummation which every author
desires, it is also one of which few can boast. The reader will be doing
the author a favour by informing him of any mistake which may be
detected in the following pages. An omission in the account of Stewart,
the founder of Puttick's, may be here made good: he had the privilege of
selling David Garrick's choice library in 1823. The author regrets to
learn that Purcell (p. 165), a very intelligent bookseller, died some
months ago._

_'The Book-hunter in London' is the outcome not only of material which
has been accumulating for many years past, from published and
unpublished sources, but also of a long and pleasant intercourse with
the leading book-collectors and booksellers in London, not to mention a
vigorous and constant prosecution of one of the most pleasant and
instructive of hobbies. The author has freely availed himself of the
information in the works of Dibdin, Nichols, and other writers on the
subject, but their statements have been verified whenever possible, and
acknowledgements have been made in the proper places to the authorities
laid under contribution._

_W. R._

86, GROSVENOR ROAD, S.W.

INTRODUCTION.

IT would be quite as great a fallacy to assume that a rich man is also a
wise one, as to take for granted that he who has accumulated a large
library is necessarily a learned man. It is a very curious fact, but
none the less a fact, that just as the greatest men have the shortest
biographies, so have they been content with the smallest libraries.
Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, Comte, Goethe had no collection of
books to which the term library could fairly be applied. But though each
preferred to find in Nature and in Nature's handiworks the mental
exercise which less gifted men obtain from books, that did not prevent
them from being ardent book-lovers. Shakespeare--to mention one
only--must have possessed a Plutarch, a Stowe, a Montaigne, and a Bible,
and probably half a dozen other books of less moment. And yet, with this
poor show, h