has this advantage, that the possessor can make himself master of them
all, can recollect their peculiarities, and often remind himself of
their contents. The man that has two or three thousand books can be
familiar with them all; he that has thirty thousand can hardly have a
speaking acquaintance with more than a few. The more conscientious
he is, the more he becomes like Lucian's amateur, who was so much
occupied in rubbing the bindings of his books with sandal-wood and
saffron, that he had no time left to study the contents. After all,
with every due respect paid to "states" and editions and bindings and
tall copies, the inside of the volume is really the essential part of
it.

The excuses for collecting, however, are more than satire is ready to
admit. The first edition represents the author's first thought; in it
we read his words as he sent them out to the world in his first heat,
with the type he chose, and with such peculiarities of form as he
selected to do most justice to his creation. We often discover little
individual points in a first edition, which never occur again. And if
it be conceded that there is an advantage in reading a book in the
form which the author originally designed for it, then all the other
refinements of the collector become so many acts of respect paid
to this first virgin apparition, touching and suitable homage of
cleanness and fit adornment. It is only when this homage becomes mere
eye-service, when a book radically unworthy of such dignity is too
delicately cultivated, too richly bound, that a poor dilettantism
comes in between the reader and what he reads. Indeed, the best of
volumes may, in my estimation, be destroyed as a possession by a
binding so sumptuous that no fingers dare to open it for perusal. To
the feudal splendours of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, a tenpenny book in a
ten-pound binding, I say fie. Perhaps the ideal library, after all, is