these, however, are easily detected by an expert eye, and need deceive no one.

Of some scarce books, it may be said that they are as rare as the individuals who want them: and of a very few, that they are as rare as the extinct dodo. In fact, volumes have been written concerning extinct books, not without interest to the bibliomaniac who is fired with the passion for possessing something which no one else has got. Some books are quite at worthless as they are rare. But books deemed worthless by the common or even by the enlightened mind are cherished as treasures by many collectors. The cook-book, entitled Le Pastissier françois, an Elzevir of 1655, is so rare as to have brought several times its weight in gold. Nearly all the copies of some books have been worn to rags by anglers, devout women, cooks, or children.

When a book is sold at a great price as "very rare," it often happens that several copies come into the market soon after, and, there being no demand, the commercial value is correspondingly depressed. The books most sure of maintaining full prices are first editions of master-pieces in literature. Fitzgerald's version of Omar Khayyam was bought by nobody when Quaritch first published it in 1859. After eight years, he put the remainder of the edition, a paper-covered volumedown to a penny each. When the book had grown into fame, and the many variations in later issues were discovered, this first edition, no longer procurable, rose to £21, the price actually paid by Mr. Quaritch himself at a book auction in 1898!

Auction sales of libraries having many rare books have been frequent in London and Paris. The largest price yet obtained for any library was reached in 1882-3, when that of Mr. Wm. Beckford brought £73,551, being an average of

nearly $40 a volume. But W. C. Hazlitt says of this sale, "the Beckford books realized perfectly insane prices, and were afterwards re-sold for a sixth or even tenth of the amount, to the serious loss of somebody, when the barometer had fallen."

The second-hand bookseller, having the whole range of printed literature for his field, has a great advantage in dealing with book collectors over the average dealer, who has to offer only new books, or such as are "in print."

It may be owned that the love of rare books is chiefly sentimental. He who delights to spend his days or his nights in the contemplation of black-letter volumes, quaint title-pages, fine old bindings, and curious early illustrations, may not add to the knowledge or the happiness of mankind, but he makes sure of his own.

The passion for rare books, merely because of their rarity, is a low order of the taste for books. But the desire to possess and read wise old books which have been touched by the hoar frost of time is of a higher mood. The first impression of Paradise Lost (1667) with its quarto page and antique orthography, is it not more redolent of the author's age than the elegant Pickering edition, or the one illustrated by John Martin or Gustave Doré? When you hold in your hand Shakespeare's "Midsommer Night's Dream" (A. D. 1600) and read with fresh. admiration and delight and delight the exquisite speeches of Oberon and Titania, may not the thought that perhaps that very copy may once have been held in the immortal bard's own hand send a thrill through your own?

When you turn over the classic pages of Homer illustrated by Flaxman, that "dear sculptor of eternity," as William Blake called him, or drink in the beauty of those delicious landscapes of Turner, that astonishing man, who shall wonder at your desire to possess them?

The genuine book lover is he who reads books; who values them for what they contain, not for their rarity, nor for the preposterous prices which have been paid for them. To him, book-hunting is an ever-enduring delight. Of all the pleasures tasted here below, that of the book lover in finding a precious and long sought volume is one of the purest and most innocent. In books, he becomes master of all the kingdoms of the world.

CHAPTER 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

To the book collector and the Librarian, books of bibliography are the tools of the profession. Without them he would be lost in a maze of literature without a clue. With them, his path is plain, and, in exact proportion to his acquaintance with them, will his knowledge and usefulness extend. Bibliography may be defined as the science which treats of books, of their authors, subjects, history, classification, cataloguing, typography, materials (including paper, printing and binding) dates, editions, etc. This compound word, derived from two Greek roots, Biblion, book, and graphein, to write, has many analogous words, some of which, ignorantly used to express a bibliographer, may be set down for distinction: as, for example-Bibliopole-a seller of books, often erroneously applied to a librarian, who buys but never sells: Bibliophile, a lover of books, a title which he should always exemplify: Bibliopegist, a book-binder Biblio

later, a worshipper of books: Bibliophobe, a hater of books: Bibliotaph, a burier of books-one who hides or conceals them: Bibliomaniac, or bibliomane, one who has a mania or passion for collecting books. (Bibliomania, some one has said, is a disease: Bibliophily is a science: The first is a parody of the second.) Bibliophage, or bibliophagist, a book-eater, or devourer of books. Bibliognost, one versed in the science of books. Biblioklept, a book thief. (This, you perceive, is from the same Greek root as kleptomaniac.) Bibliogist, one learned about books, (the same nearly as bibliographer); and finally, Bibliothecary, a librarian.

This brings me to say, in supplementing this elementary list (needless for some readers) that Bibliotheca is Latin for a library; Bibliothèque is French for the same; Bibliothécaire is French for Librarian, while the French word Libraire means book seller or publisher, though often mistaken by otherwise intelligent persons, for librarian, or library.

The word "bibliotechny" is not found in any English dictionary known to me, although long in use in its equivalent forms in France and Germany. It means all that belongs to the knowledge of the book, to its handling, cataloguing, and its arrangement upon the shelves of a library. It is also applied to the science of the formation of libraries, and their complete organization. It is employed in the widest and most extended sense of what may be termed material or physical bibliography. Bibliotechny applies, that is to say, to the technics of the librarian's work-to the outside of the books rather than the inside to the mechanics, not the metaphysics of the profession. The French word "Bibliothéconomie," much in use of late years, signifies much the same thing as Bibliotechnie, and we translate it, not into one word, but

two, calling it "library economy." This word "economy" is not used in the most current sense-as significant of saving-but in the broad, modern sense of systematic order, or arrangement.

There are two other words which have found their way into Murray's Oxford Dictionary, the most copious repository of English words, with illustrations of their origin and history, ever published, namely, Biblioclasta destroyer of books (from the same final root as iconoclast) and Bibliogony, the production of books. I will add that out of the fifteen or more words cited as analogous to Bibliography, only three are found used earlier than the last quarter century, the first use of most having been this side of 1880. This is a striking instance of the phenomenal growth of new words in our already rich and flexible English tongue. Carlyle even has the word "Bibliopoesy," the making of books,-from Biblion, and poiein-to make.

Public libraries are useful to readers in proportion to the extent and ready supply of the helps they furnish to facilitate researches of every kind. Among these helps a wisely selected collection of books of reference stands foremost. Considering the vast extent and opulence of the world of letters, and the want of experience of the majority of readers in exploring this almost boundless field, the importance of every key which can unlock its hidden stores becomes apparent. The printed catalogue of no single library is at all adequate to supply full references, even to its own stores of knowledge; while these catalogues are, of course, comparatively useless as to other stores of information, elsewhere existing. Even the completest and most extensive catalogue in the world, that of the British Museum Library, although now extended to more than 370 folio volumes in print, representing