to, are the most valuable lists I know of for student purposes, but I
believe very few people have ever seen them.

The catalogue of Lord Crawford's Proclamations, at Haigh Hall, is a
marvel of industry and accuracy. Mr. Locker Lampson's Rowfant Library
was catalogued, and the catalogue printed and sold, because it had
special value as a collection of Elizabethan poetry. Mr. Edmund Gosse's
Library catalogue was printed because it contained special collections
of seventeenth-century literature. Whether the library be a student's
library or a general library, a catalogue is essential. Gibbon had a
catalogue of his books. I have seen so many amateur attempts at
cataloguing private libraries that I am bound to say I do not think the
plan of cataloguing one's own books in any way answers. Any catalogue
may be better than no catalogue, but, if a catalogue is to be done, it
is better by far to call in the assistance of some one whose work it is.
It frequently happens that a family inherits a large library, and the
inheritors, not having formed the collection, naturally can know but
little, if anything, of its contents. Now, in such a case, and in many
other cases, the best plan is to have your books overhauled, sifted,
certain volumes weeded out, if necessary, others rebound, and the whole
remainder carefully catalogued and described, the cases being numbered
and the shelves lettered.

Very often the owner of a library sets out to catalogue his or her own
books, and makes the initial mistake of entering them one by one in a
MS. volume already bound up. Such a plan must end in failure and
disorder, because it is impossible by this means to get the titles
strictly alphabetical. Others I have seen commence writing the titles
from the backs of the books. Other difficulties which are encountered
are with anonymous books, and with such authors as used pseudonyms, and,
in some cases, many pseudonyms. Such was Henri Beyle, whose books bear
various disguises, such as De Stendhal, Cotonet, Salviati, Viscontini,
Birkbeck, Strombeck, Cesar Alexandre Bombet. The British Museum Library
has ninety-one rules of cataloguing, forming, perhaps, the best
cataloguing code in the world; but for private libraries such
elaboration and detail is not necessary. The following are the main
rules to be adopted in private libraries:--[38]

1. The catalogue should be arranged in one general alphabet, this being
the most useful and the readiest form fo