everything
that came out. 'There is no nation,' says Johnson, 'in which it is so
necessary as in our own to assemble the small tracts and fugitive
pieces.' 'The writers of these' frequently have opportunities 'of
inquiring from living witnesses, and of copying their representations
from the life, and preserve a multitude of particular incidents which
are forgotten in a short time, or omitted in formal relations, and yet
afford light in some of the darkest scenes of state.' 'From pamphlets,'
says the same writer, 'are to be learned the progress of every debate,
and of every opinion.' And he compares the impression produced on the
mind of him who shall consult these tracts, and of another that refers
merely to formal historians, to the _difference of him who hears of a
victory, and him who sees the battle_. Archbishop Laud collected from
far and wide. John Selden, like Laud, had a distinct weakness for
learned books, and consequently could have found little to satisfy his
cravings in London. Selden, when disturbed, put his spectacles into the
book he was busy with by way of marking the place; and after his death
numbers of volumes were found with these curious book-markers. John
Felton, who murdered Buckingham, was also a book-collector in a small
way. In Lilly's catalogue for 1863 there was a copy of Peacham's
'Compleat Gentleman,' 1622, with the following on the fly-leaf: 'John
Felton, vicessimo secundo die Junii, 1622.'

A few glances, at this point, at the more material phases of
book-collecting may not be without interest. The following is one of the
earliest bookseller's statements of accounts with which we are
acquainted. It was rendered to 'the Right Honourable the Lord Conway,'
on May 31, 1638, by Henry Seile, whose shop was at the sign of the
Tiger's Head, Fleet Street:

1 Nash's Ha' wee you to Saffron Walden 00 02 06
1 Greene's Arcadia } {
1 Farewell to Folly } {
1 Tullies' Love } These nine Bookes {
1 Lady Fitzwater's Nightingale } were delivered to { 00 10 0
1 Mamilia } your Lordship at {
1 Never too Late } Xs. {
1 Groatesworth of Wit } {
1 Mourning Garment } {
1 Peers pennylesse supplication } {

In a letter addressed to Evelyn by Dr. Cosin (afterwards