Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/14

 of the nation. In the year 1850, appeared the act of accusation against M. Libri,(1) an emi-[6] nent mathematicanmathematician [sic] and bibliographer, and a member of the Institute, charged with robbing the public libraries to the value of many thousand pounds; on which, by default of appearance, he was condemned. The amount of incapacity which either belong to the framers of this indictment, or was presumed by them to belong to the courts and the literary public before which it was to come, far exceeds all that was exhibited by the ignorers of bibliography in England. None of these last ever thought, or wished to make others think, that the stamp (2) of a convent library, imprinted on the front of an old book, is evidence of an intention, on the part of the Stamper, to pass the book off as printed in the town where the convent is.

Except, however, to express our belief that these recent events in France and England will be of some effect in widening the circle within which bibliography is studied, we have nothing to do with them here, though we may cite them as among our encouragements for presenting an article on the subject. Our intention is to show, by instances, to how great an extent inaccurate bibliography prevails, both in the descriptions which are given of books, and in those which they give of themselves. We began, in pursuance of this intention, and that we might produce a new case (3) or two, by taking the first four old books that we happened to lay our hands on, the selection being dictated by the mere accidental proximity of the volumes on our shelves. If no one of these four volumes had given us either error produced, or difficulty likely to produce it in time to come, our associations would have been rudely invaded; for we have been accustomed to consider it almost impossible to take two old books at hazard without encountering one