Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/12

2 down for the adventurous spirit who would aspire to guide other people on the highway of books. John Hill Burton, the learned and witty author of The Book-hunter, sums up the case for the specialist and browser with all the force and superior style which distinguishes your true Aberdonian from the common herd. Writing of Bibliographies, he observes: 'I come to another class of bibliographies, of which it is difficult to speak with patience—those which either profess to tell you how to find the best books to consult on every department of learning, or undertake to point out to you the books which you should select for your library, or for your miscellaneous reading. As to those who profess to be universal mentors, at hand to help you with the best tools for your work, in whichever department of intellectual labour it may happen to be, they break down at once. Whoever has set himself to any special line of investigation, cannot open one of those books without discovering its utter worthlessness and incapacity to aid him in his own speciality. As to the other class of bibliographers, who profess to act the guide, philosopher and friend to the collector and the reader, I cannot imagine anything more offensively audacious than the function they assume. It is an attempt of the pedagogue to assert a jurisdiction over grown intellects, and hence such books naturally develop in flagrant exaggeration the pragmatical priggism which is the pedagogue's characteristic defect. I would except from this condemnation a few bibliographers, who, instead of