from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into its present decent binding, it had such charms for the servants, that it was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since, and I dare say many that could not now be procured for any price." It is odd to contrast the book-loving tastes of celebrated authors. Southey cared for his books, but Coleridge would cut the leaves of a book with a butter knife, and De Quincey's extraordinary treatment of books is well described by Mr. Burton in the Book Hunter. Charles Lamb's loving appreciation of his books is known to all readers of the delightful Elia. Southey collected more than 14,000 volumes, which sold in 1844 for nearly £3000. He began collecting as a boy, for his father had but few books. Mr. Edwards enumerates these as follows: The Spectator, three or four volumes of the Oxford Magazine, one volume of the Freeholder's Magazine, and one of the Town and Country Magazine, Pomfret's Poems, the Death of Abel, nine plays (including Julius Cæsar, The Indian Queen, and a translation of Merope), and a pamphlet.1 Southey was probably one of the most representative of literary men. His feelings in his library are those of all book-lovers, although he could express these feelings in language which few of them have at command: My days among the dead are passed; Where'er these casual eyes are cast, My never-failing friends are they, With them I take delight in weal, My cheeks have often been bedewed 1 Libraries and Founders of Libraries, p. 95. My thoughts are with the dead; with them Their virtues love, their faults condemn, And from their lessons seek and find My hopes are with the dead; anon Yet leaving here a name, I trust, Mr. Henry Stevens read a paper or rather delivered an address at the meeting of the Library Association held at Liverpool in 1883, containing his recollections of Mr. James Lenox, the great American book collector. I had the pleasure of listening to that address, but I have read it in its finished form with even greater delight. It is not often that he who pleases you as a speaker also pleases you as writer, but Mr. Stevens succeeds in both. If more bibliographers could write their reminiscences with the same spirit that he does, we should hear less of the dullness of bibliography. I strongly recommend my readers to take an early opportunity of perusing this paper in the Liverpool volume of the Transactions of the Library Association. Mr. Stevens, among his anecdotes of Mr. Lenox, records that he "often bought duplicates for immediate use, or to lend, rather than grope for the copies he knew to be in the stocks in some of his store rooms or chambers, notably Stirling's Artists of Spain, a high-priced book." This is a common trouble to large book collectors, who cannot find the books they know they possess. The late Mr. Crossley had his books stacked away in heaps, and he was often unable to lay his hands upon books of which he had several copies. CHAPTER II. HOW TO BUY. DISCUSSION has arisen lately in bibliographical journals as to how best to supply libraries with their books, the main principle agreed upon being that it is the duty of the librarian to buy his books as cheaply as possible. Some of these views are stated by Mr. H. R. Tedder in a letter printed in the Library Chronicle for July, 1884 (vol. i. p. 120). It appears that Professor Dziatzko contends that the books should always be bought as cheaply as possible, but that Dr. Julius Petzholdt holds the opinion that the chief object of the librarian should be to get his books as early as possible and not to wait until they can be had at secondhand. Mr. Tedder thinks that the two |