Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/39

 rians of the Museum, or of his own clerks. This gentleman was in no way to blame, but those who imagined that a sale catalogue would serve the purposes of literature: if the Museum library were to be sold off, his evidence would be valuable; but the librarians of the Museum must not be employed, as he proposed. For these gentlemen have no idea, with a volume of six tracts before them, of entering the title of the first, followed by "and five others:" moreover, they waste time in writing down names of authors in their nominative case, when the books before them give genitives; and in other ways.

[12] (14) The Anti-bibliographers contend that any one could make a catalogue who could write a titlepage: for they did not appear to be aware of the necessity of examining the book. In one book we have before us three treatises of Ozanam, on conic sections, loci, and equations, all Paris, 1687, 4to., all from one publisher, whose residence is described in one way in the first and second, and in another way in the third. Unless they are three separate works, or all one work, either of which is very possible, the presumption furnished by the title-pages is that 1 and 2 were published together, and 3 separately. But an examination of the prefaces shows that 1 was published separately, and afterwards 2 and 3 together.

(15) The recto and verso of a leaf are the two pages in the order in which they come. We must use the technical term here, because, if we had only said that on turning over the title the table of contents was seen, it might have been on the recto of the next leaf, and no reprint of the title could have been inferred.

[14] (16) This work must be considered as the accredited contemporary corporate early history of the Academy of Sciences; and Brunet (in his earliest edition at least) makes it head an article on this Academy.