be grouped in three classes, viz.: Those who collect from
vanity; those who collect for the benefits of learning; those who
collect through a veneration and love for books. It is not
unfrequent that men who begin to collect books merely to gratify
their personal vanity find themselves presently so much in love
with the pursuit that they become collectors in the better sense.

Just as a man who takes pleasure in the conquest of feminine
hearts invariably finds himself at last ensnared by the very
passion which he has been using simply for the gratification of
his vanity, I am inclined to think that the element of vanity
enters, to a degree, into every phase of book collecting; vanity
is, I take it, one of the essentials to a well-balanced
character--not a prodigious vanity, but a prudent, well-governed
one. But for vanity there would be no competition in the world;
without competition there would be no progress.

In these later days I often hear this man or that sneered at
because, forsooth, he collects books without knowing what the
books are about. But for my part, I say that that man bids fair
to be all right; he has made a proper start in the right
direction, and the likelihood is that, other things being equal,
he will eventually become a lover, as well as a buyer, of books.
Indeed, I care not what the beginning is, so long as it be a
beginning. There are different ways of reaching the goal. Some
folk go horseback via the royal road, but very many others are
compelled to adopt the more tedious processes, involving rocky
pathways and torn shoon and sore feet.

So subtile and so infectious is this grand passion that one is