terest cannot be reproduced in its entirety by
any mere reprint, and it is this salvage which forms the literary
museum. Book-collectors are privileged to leap at once to this stage in
their relations with books, using the dealers' shops and catalogues as
depositories from which to pick the books which will best fit with the
aim or central idea of their collection. For in the modern private
collection, as in the modern museum, the need for a central idea must be
fully recognized. Neither the collector nor the curator can be content
to keep a mere curiosity-shop. It is the collector's business to
illustrate his central idea by his choice of examples, by the care with
which he describes them and the skill with which they are arranged. In
all these matters many amateurs rival, if they do not outstrip, the
professional curators and librarians, and not seldom their collections
are made with a view to their ultimate transference to public ownership.
In any case it is by the zeal of collectors that books which otherwise
would have perished from neglect are discovered, cared for and
preserved, and those who achieve these results certainly deserve well of
the community.

History.

Whenever a high degree of civilization has been attained book-lovers
have multiplied, and to the student with his modest desire to read his
favourite author in a well-written or well-printed copy there has been
added a class of owners suspected of caring more for the externals of
books than for the enjoyment to be obtained by reading them. But
although adumbrations of it existed under the Roman empire and towards
the end of the middle ages, book-collecting, as it is now understood, is
essentially of modern growth. A glance through what must be regarded as
the medieval text-book on the love of books, the _Philobiblon_,
attributed to Richard de Bury (written in 1345), shows that it deals
almost exclusively with the delights of literature, and Sebastian
Brant's attack on the book-fool, written a century and a half later,
demonstrates nothing more than that the possession of books is a poor
substitute for learning. This is so obviously true that before
book-collecting in the modern sense can begin it is essential that there
should be no lack of books to read, just as until cups and saucers
became plentiful there was no room for the collector of old china. Even
when the invention of printing had reduced the cost of books by some
80%, book-collectors d