Page:The Library (Lang).djvu/29



serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one point,—the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can sympathise with Charles Lamb's attachment to "that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which he dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden." But it is another thing when Lamb says, "I do not care for a first folio of Shakespeare." A bibliophile who could say this could say anything.

No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from their literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness. These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity. It is about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them,