s collection, all, save one MS.
of 13th century German ballads, resold to France), the Italian
government (the rest of the Libri collection) Mr Yates Thompson (the
MSS. known as the Appendix) and Mr J. Pierpont Morgan (the Lindau
Gospels). The collections formed by Mr W.H. Miller (d. 1848, mainly
English poetry), the duke of Devonshire (d. 1858) and Mr Henry Huth (d.
1878), are still intact.

Among the book-buyers of the reign of George III., John Ratcliffe, an
ex-coal-merchant, and James West had devoted themselves specially to
Caxtons (of which the former possessed 48 and the latter 34) and the
products of other early English presses. The collections of Capell and
Garrick were also small and homogeneous. Each section, moreover, of some
of the great libraries that have just been enumerated might fairly be
considered a collection in itself, the union of several collections in
the same library being made possible by the wealth of their purchaser
and the small prices fetched by most classes of books in comparison with
those which are now paid. But perhaps the modern cabinet theory of
book-collecting was first carried out with conspicuous skill by Henry
Perkins (d. 1855), whose 865 fine manuscripts and specimens of early
printing, when sold in 1870, realized nearly L26,000. If surrounded by a
sufficient quantity of general literature the collection might not have
seemed noticeably different from some of those already mentioned, but
the growing cost of books, together with difficulties as to house-room,
combined to discourage miscellaneous buying on a large scale, and what
has been called the "cabinet" theory of collecting, so well carried out
by Henry Perkins, became increasingly popular among book buyers, alike
in France, England and the United States of America. Henri Beraldi, in
his catalogue of his own collection (printed 1892), has described how in
France a little band of book-loving amateurs grew up who laughed at the
_bibliophile de la vieille roche_ as they disrespectfully called their
predecessors, and prided themselves on the unity and compactness of
their own treasures. In place of the miscellaneous library in which
every class of book claimed to be represented, and which needed a
special room or gallery to house it, they aimed at small collections
which should epitomize the owner's tastes and require nothing bulkier
than a neat bookcase or cabinet to hold them. The French bibliophiles
whom M. Beraldi celebrated