The two principal aids to the formation of a library, great or small, general or special, are Personal Observation and Works of Reference. The first is obviously an uncertain quantity, and may be restricted to an ordinary mechanical experience, or may comprise the finest commercial and literary instinct. We have had among us ere now amateurs who possessed the highest qualifications for assembling round them gratifying and valuable monuments of their taste and judgment, with the harmless satisfaction of feeling tolerably sure that the investment, if not a source of profit, would not form one of serious loss. This is a fair and legitimate demand and expectation; but such characters are far rarer than the books which they collect; and if it were otherwise, the large industry which lies in the purchase and re-sale of literary property could not exist. The buyer whose knowledge is in advance of that of the salesman is a party whom Mr. —— and Mr. —— and the remainder of the alphabet pharisaically admire, while they privily harbour toward him sadly unchristian feelings and views.

The second and remaining auxiliary, the Book of Reference, has become a wide term, since it has so enormously developed itself, and formed branches, so as to constitute a library within a library, and to call for its own bibliographer. So far as the current value and general character of literary works are concerned, all the older authorities are more or less untrustworthy, and the same is to be predicated of a heavy proportion of auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues, where the first and sole object is to realise the maximum price for an article. The system pursued by the former class of vendors of late years renders it far more hazardous to bid on the faith of the printed descriptions, and there is, in fact, greater danger for the novice in the elaborate rehearsal of the title and the accompanying fillip in the shape of a note (usually erroneous) than the good old-fashioned plan of setting out the particulars briefly—even illiterately; for in the latter case the burden of discovering the exact truth is thrown on the customer or acquirer. We must say that few things are less satisfactory than trade-catalogues with certain honourable exceptions, which it might be invidious to particularise; and the book-buyer has to depend almost exclusively on his own discernment and the bibliographers. Of what he reads in the catalogues he may believe as much or as little as he likes.

Nothing could be more ungracious than to speak disrespectfully of the publications of those laborious and earnest workers who have preceded us, and who for that very sufficient reason did not know quite so much as we do. We admire their industry, on the contrary, their taste and their devotion; we buy their volumes because it is pleasant to have them at our side; and ever and anon we dip into this one or that, and meet with something which had escaped us. Seriously, however, they are, on the whole, not merely of slight use, but of a misleading tendency. For the gods of our forefathers, Ware, Tanner, Ames, Herbert, Oldys, Dibdin, Brydges, Watt, Park, Haslewood, the compilers of the Bibliotheca Grenvillana, Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, and Biographia Dramatica, and scores besides, before and even since, we have substituted others, assuredly more complete, perhaps constructed on truer and more lasting principles. We have on our shelves (i.) for the Bibliography, the Heber, Collier, Corser, and Huth catalogues (1834-80), and the writer's own Collections (1867-1903), Bibliographica and the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society: (ii.) for the Prices, Book Prices Current and Book Sales. Unfortunately the two latter undertakings are little better than mechanical transcripts from the auctioneers' extremely treacherous catalogues by outsiders. The peculiar class of information purporting to be supplied by such catalogues is often in need of some qualifying criticism or admonition, which it is not easy, if possible, for any one not on the spot and behind the scenes to offer. No mere reference to the catalogue after the event is capable of initiating one into these arcana; and the same has to be said of the quotations in the ordinary periodicals. This is a species of employment for which there must be either a long training or a unique instinct.

Book Prices Current and Book Sales cannot be trusted as an authority or a guide by any person who does not approach them with a certain measure of experience. Where an editor cites a common and comparatively worthless volume as selling for a high sum, and omits to mention that on the title there is a valuable autograph, the mischief is obvious; and this and allied forms of error are habitual. Such empirical attempts do more harm than good.

The Account printed by the Trustees of the Early English books in the British Museum is not without its value, although it is almost everything that it ought not to have been; and there are several monographs of importance dealing with special items in public or private collections. It is to be hoped that in course of time we may see a creditable catalogue of the Britwell Library, and that the Spencer books at Manchester will be done over again by a competent hand. If money is expended on these objects, it is distressing to find that the task has been confided to a gentleman whose best credentials are his personal acquaintance with the owner.

We do not add to existing authorities: (i.) for the printers, Ames, Herbert, and Dibdin, or (ii.) for general information Lowndes's Manual by Bohn and his coadjutors, because we are afraid that there is almost greater danger of being misled by them than being helped or enlightened. Both Ames and Herbert, however, we emphatically pronounce conscientious, and accurate in the highest degree in their respective days; but these days were long ago, and the present state of knowledge has rendered a considerable proportion of their texts obsolete and unreliable. Dibdin has certainly added to Herbert, but he has not, on the contrary, in all cases faithfully reprinted him; if his book had been as great an advance on his predecessor as Herbert's was on Ames, it would have been a treasure indeed. A new Lowndes is said to be in the hands of a syndicate. I know nothing about it; but I shall rejoice if it should prove worthy of the subject, and as unlike Lowndes or Lowndes by Bohn as possible. I labour, however, under the gravest apprehension that it will prove one of those undertakings which will just be advanced enough to block the right book without being relatively anything approaching even to an English Brunet. At least five-and-twenty annotated copies of Lowndes must exist. Will the promoters deem it necessary to acquire or to borrow them? Probably not. There must be thousands of additions and corrections in the writer's alone. It is estimated that the enlarged Lowndes contains about 10 per cent. of the literature which ought to find a place, not reckoning the earlier English books, tracts, or broadsides, and that of that proportion about 7½ per cent. are misdescribed. The anecdote of Pope and the wag who retorted to his habitual exclamation, "God mend me!" "It would take less to make a new one," appears to apply in the present case.

The original Lowndes in 1834 was a poor affair; but Bohn's recension twenty years or so later was by comparison a still poorer one, for there was the opportunity, in the presence of innumerable discoveries and a large body of new bibliographical material in various shapes, of rendering the new edition a really creditable performance. The name of the publisher, however, was a sufficient guarantee for this not being the case, and where the second impression is superior to the first, is where Bohn happened to have an interest in mentioning certain works, or information was communicated to him by others.

The sole comfort for us is, that Brunet has passed through five editions, and yet remains deplorably imperfect and inaccurate.

There are three prominent publications, each in its way of signal value and merit: the British Museum and Bodleian Catalogues of Printed Books, and Mr. Quaritch's New General Catalogue. The two former, of course confine themselves to the contents of the respective libraries; they are consequently far from exhaustive. They have been compiled by human beings; they are consequently far indeed from faultless. They express, as a rule, no opinions, and of commercial estimation very properly take no cognisance. But the Oxford collection has always been differently situated from the National Library in not having any adequate means of purchasing deficiencies, while it is rich in its own very interesting way by reason of bequests of unique value, making it the possessor of numerous priceless volumes not to be found in Great Russell Street or anywhere else. The Quaritch Catalogue (including the Typographical Supplement, 1897), a noble monument to the energy and courage of the grand marchand whose name it bears, is a good deal more than even a bookseller's advertising medium on a large or the largest scale. It is, in fact, a literary performance; and it is an open secret to whom we owe it. The collector, apart from the question of purchase, will find it replete with useful, instructive, and trustworthy information, so far as bibliography is concerned.

The highly honourable and equally laborious publications of Sir Egerton Brydges, Joseph Haslewood, Thomas Park, E. V. Utterson, and others, if they are of minor substantial value to us at present, demonstrate the keen appetite for bibliographical information and anecdote in the first quarter of this century. The Censura Literaria, extending to ten octavo volumes, passed through two editions, and, in common with other similar works, till recently commanded a heavy price. That they have fallen into neglect is due to the necessity, on the part of buyers and sellers of early literature, of studying only the latest authorities.

At the same time, from a literary point of view, the Restituta and Censura Literaria (2nd edit. 1815) of Brydges, and many members of the same group and period, will always be worth consulting, and will be found to yield a vast store of interesting and instructive matter.

Such works may at present be sterile enough, but yet we are bound to recollect on their behalf that on their first appearance they were revelations and pioneers. It is where a book at the outset is behind the knowledge of the day, or indeed rather not in advance of it, that it seems to be disentitled to respect.

Not only have more modern labours superseded the Brydges, Park, Haslewood, and other series, which till of late years held the market firmly enough, but the Rev. Dr. Dibdin, whose sumptuously printed and illustrated productions long remained such prime favourites at heavy prices, both at home and in the United States, has been overtaken by a general neglect, and the Americans, who were once so enthusiastic and generous as bidders for these books, will at present scarcely agree to acquire them at a fifth of their appreciation in the height of the Dibdinomania.

Many of the gems which have passed through the hands of successive owners are known to have once formed part of the Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, a famous—almost historical catalogue of old literature on sale in 1815 by Longmans, when that firm dealt in such commodities, and imported largely from the Continent in response to the keen and hungry demand on the part of the school created by the Roxburghe sale and the Roxburghe Club, Heber its greatest disciple and ornament, Heber a colossus in himself. Many are the traditional anecdotes of the wonderful bargains which Longmans' agent secured for his principals in all sorts of places, whither he resorted in quest of prey—of the romances in folio in the virgin stamped Spanish bindings, which they might have worn since they lay on the shelves of Don Quixote or the Licentiate, brought for sale, as it were haphazard, to some market-place in Seville or Valladolid in wine-skins. But the contents of the above-mentioned Bibliotheca were purely English. It was a small but choice assemblage of old poetry formed by Mr. Thomas Hill, otherwise Tommy Hill, otherwise Paul Pry, which he offered to Longmans on the plea of failing health, and for which the purchasers elected, looking prophetically at his moribund aspect, to grant him an annuity in preference to a round sum. Mr. Hill's apprehensions, however, were premature, as the transaction had the effect of restoring his spirits; and the booksellers scored rather indifferently. How pleased they must have been to see him coming for his pension year after year!

Even the outrageous prices asked for the articles, of which the condition was ordinarily poor, could not have brought Longmans anywhere near home; and the catalogue was expensively printed. Yet one would like, very much indeed like, to put down thirty golden sovereigns for Shakespeare's Sonnets never before imprinted, 1609, and fifty for Anthony Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits, 1588. The Rev. J. M. Rice obtained the latter in 1815; it was sold at his auction in 1834 for eighteen guineas, and when it next occurred among George Daniel's books in 1864, was bought by Mr. Huth against Sir William Tite for £225. The Sonnets of 1609 would at present be worth £250. As regards the bulk of the lots, however, one might almost read shillings for pounds. Sir Francis Freeling had an interleaved copy, in which he entered acquisitions. Through his official connection with the Post-Office he procured many prizes from the country districts. Dick of Bury St. Edmunds stood him in good stead. What Dibdin euphemistically christened the Lincoln Nosegay was a second pair of bellows applied about the same date to the reddening flame of bibliographical ardour. It was a descriptive list of certain books which the Doctor had prevailed on the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral to sell to him for five hundred guineas, and which he divided between Mr. Heber and Lord Spencer. The collection was part of the benefaction of Dean Honeywood, and it was a shameful betrayal of trust. Our cathedral libraries still retain a host of treasures, notwithstanding all this sort of pillage; and the dim religious light which is shed around lends an air of sanctity to the spot sufficient, one might have thought, to arrest the hand of the marauder.

This was the height of the Bibliomania. Dibdin had in 1811 brought out his work so called. Perhaps it was hardly wise so to accentuate the passion on paper. He lived to publish the Bibliophobia.

The Bibliotheca Heberiana, in thirteen parts, 1834-36, which in its realisation showed a strong revulsion, or at least a marked decline, from the cometary period, 1812-25, is the most stupendous assemblage of literary treasures and curiosities ever brought together by an individual in this country. Heber was a scholar and a reader of his books; he has made memoranda on a large number of the fly-leaves; and these have been occasionally transferred to the catalogue, of which the Early English poetical portion, a singularly rich one, was edited and annotated by John Payne Collier. In using the Heber Catalogue, its mere extent and diversity ought to suffice as a warning that the prices are not in the least degree trustworthy; the classics and some of the early typography went pretty high; and the Early English books were only saved from being given away by the active competition of Mr W. H. Miller, who secured nearly everything of account at very moderate figures, and by the commissions held by Collier for the Duke of Devonshire, who bought the rarest of the old plays. The British Museum was scarcely in evidence there. It was enjoying one of its periodical slumbers.

The poetical section of the library embraced not only the lion's share of all the rarest books of the class offered for public sale in Heber's time, but an immense assortment of articles which he acquired privately from Thorpe, Rodd, and others, of whom he was the infallible resource whenever they fell in with books or tracts or broadsides which he did not possess, or of which he perhaps possessed only one copy.

It was not merely that Heber distanced all that went before him or have succeeded him, so far as the extent and variety of his collections go, but that with his insatiable acquisitiveness he combined so much of the bibliographer and litterateur. It was fairly easy for certain men with more limited means and views, such as Malone, Steevens, Douce, Brand, Chalmers, Bright, Bliss, Laing, Bandinel, Turner, Locker, Corser, and a legion more, to pose as judges of the merits of their possessions; but how comparatively little was theirs to grasp! In the case of Heber the range of knowledge was immense; and he was equally at home with all departments and all periods. He had his modern side and his interest in current affairs, and a scholarly insight into the vast literary and bibliographical accumulations which it was his bent and pride to form, beyond any one whom we can call to mind. We do not include in this sort of category the Harley, Roxburghe, Grenville, Spencer, Blandford, Ashburnham, and Huth libraries, whose owners were collectors pure and simple.

Of the Grenville Catalogue, as an independent work, it is less usual to think and speak, because the library which it describes has long formed part of the British Museum, and very few are now living who can remember it under the roof of its excellent founder in Hamilton Place. The books have now during some years constituted an integral part of the New General Museum Catalogue; there is scarcely any department of literature in which they did not contribute importantly to enrich and complete the national stores. But Mr. Grenville was particularly strong in early typography and Irish and English history.

The catalogue of Mr. George Daniel's singular and precious collection, disposed of in 1864, was an ordinary auctioneer's compilation; except that many of the owner's MSS. notes written on the fly-leaves were introduced by way of whetting the appetites of competitors; and to say that a vein of hyperbole pervaded these remarks is a mild expression; they emanated, we have to remember, from an accountant. The books, however, spoke for themselves. The printed account of them, viewed as a work of reference, must be read cum grano salis—cum multis granis. The sale was the starting-point of a new epoch and school in prices. Nothing of the kind on so extended a scale in that particular way had so far been seen before.

Collier's Bibliographical Catalogue, 1865, is an enlargement of his Bridgewater House Catalogue, 1837, without the illustrations. The two volumes are full of curious and readable matter, and as they usually deal with the libri rarissimi, we have to accept the accounts and extracts in the absence of the originals. To many this may be indifferent; to a few it may be a serious drawback, since, rightly or wrongly, the fidelity and accuracy of the editor have been more than once called in question. Mr Collier's book, however, is merely serviceable as a guide to the character of the works described; he does not offer an opinion on the selling values, nor does he always render the titles correctly. One signal fault distinguishes the undertaking from what may be regarded as a commercial point of view; and it is the refusal or failure to recognise the momentous changes in the bibliographical rank of a number of books through the discovery between 1837 and 1865 of additional copies. Like most of us when we are advanced in life, he thought more of what was true when he was young, than of what was so at the time of writing.

The Collectanea Anglo-Poetica of the Rev. Thomas Corser, in eleven parts, of which some were posthumous, constitutes a very proud monument to the memory of an accomplished clergyman of limited resources, who during the best part of his life devoted his thought and surplus money to the acquisition of one of the richest assemblages of Early English Poetry ever formed by any one, as he succeeded in obtaining many works in this extensive series not comprised even in the Heber Catalogue. Mr. Corser bought much privately; but he was largely indebted for his bibliographical good fortune to such sales as those of Jolley, Chalmers, Bright, and Wolfreston (1844-56). Of his catalogue as an authority and guide the value is unequal; the portions edited by himself are excellent and exhaustive, but it is not so with those which Mr. James Crossley superintended. A complete copy of the sale catalogue is a desideratum for the follower in this gentleman's footsteps; but he would have to spend more money than Mr. Corser did by some thousands. Of the Huth Catalogue, 1880, we can only say that it is a splendid gathering in a comparatively short period of various classes of books obtained from the sales in London and elsewhere, and from private sources, and selected on account of condition and interest rather than with a view to completeness. In its character it is emphatically miscellaneous; but is very strong in Early English literature, owing to the opportunities which the founder enjoyed through the dispersion in his time of so many fine libraries of that class, especially those of Daniel and Corser, and perhaps we may add of George Smith the distiller. But there was scarcely any sale here or on the Continent from which Mr. Huth was not enabled to add to his stores. He was a very rich man; but he was not a book-hunter, and he was both inconsistent and capricious. He had, in fact, no definite plan, and took each purchase on its own merits. His Catalogue, which he did not live to see completed, is unusually free from errors, but not quite so much so as he anticipated and desired. Nevertheless, it will always be an useful guide and an honourable memorial.

Several monographs, dealing in a brief or cursory way with an entire library, or more fully with a section of it, may be noticed. The Ashburnham hand-list, 1864, now (1897-98) supplemented by the sale catalogue; the Chatsworth Catalogue, which does not include the books at Devonshire House, and Lord Crawford's catalogue of his Ballads and Broadsides. There are special accounts of several of the College Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Hartshorne's Book Rarities, 1829, a disappointing yet suggestive volume. We ought to remind the reader that the catalogue of Trinity, Cambridge, embraces Capell's Shakesperiana, and that there are separate hand-lists of Malone's and Douce's books at the Bodleian, of the Dyce and Forster bequests at South Kensington, of the Society of Antiquaries' Broadsides, and of the Shakespearian treasures formerly at Hollingbury Copse. We have two editions of Blades's book on Caxton's press, Maitland's two Lambeth Catalogues, Botfield's Cathedral Libraries, and Edmond's Lists of the Aberdeen printers, 1886.

It is eminently likely that of the Rylands-Spencer library we shall have in the fulness of time a new catalogue, superseding Dibdin's publications, and of course embracing all the personal acquisitions of Mrs. Rylands, apart from the grand Althorp lot. In the capable hands of Mr. Duff it ought to turn out well.

In the Book Lover's Library, Mr. H. B. Wheatley has dedicated two or three volumes to the topic of forming and cataloguing a library. The object of these technical undertakings is clearer, perhaps, than their general utility; for, as a rule, a man likes to follow his own plan, and scarcely two normal collections of the average kind resemble one another, or are susceptible of similar treatment. The idea broached by Mr. Wheatley was, of course, not a new one. Gabriel Naude, librarian to Cardinal Mazarin, and subsequently keeper of the Royal Collection, printed a sketch of what in his opinion was necessary to constitute a library, and this our Evelyn put into an English dress in 1661, and dedicated to Lord Clarendon. The plan of Naude was naturally that of a Frenchman accustomed to extensive assemblages of literary monuments, and was not suited to the English taste, unless it might be in the case of a rich nobleman, to whom space and cost were alike indifferent. It was not likely to meet with adoption even by Evelyn himself, of whose acquisitions we know enough to judge that he followed his own personal sentiments rather than professional or technical advice. It rarely occurs that in the less ambitious types of library there are any bibliographical details likely to prove serviceable to the public; and the extent of knowledge gained by the owner in the course of his own experience should suffice to qualify him to become, where time is presumably not an object, his own cataloguer. For all that can be required is a hand-list on the scale of the Douce or Malone separate catalogues, where a title seldom occupies more than a single line. Plentiful illustrations of our meaning will be found by any one who opens the Grenville or Huth Catalogue, and perceives the wide discrepancy between the essential information and the descriptive and critical accounts. The primary motive in drawing up a view of the contents of ninety-nine libraries out of a hundred is the facilitation of reference, combined with an excusable personal pride; but a great deal of repetition and redundancy and useless expense are incurred by the literal transcript of the titles of books more or less familiar to all who are interested in them.

A very heavy proportion of the Early English entries in the Huth Catalogue are duplicates of those in the writer's Collections, and the same would be the case if the long-expected book on the Britwell heirlooms were to make its appearance. It would be, to a large extent, bis cocta.

In a private catalogue detailed explanation is required in the interest of bibliography, only where (i.) the owner happens to possess an unrecorded book; or (ii.) an unknown impression; or (iii.) a variant copy. Defects in important items should be particularised; in others the word imperfect is sufficient; and it is best to indicate from what source they have come to the immediate repository. Take a few instances:—

Reynard the Fox, 1st edit. The Inglis copy. Folio, W. Caxton, Westminster, 1481.

Hannay (Patrick), Poems. The Huth copy. 8vo, London, 1622.

Holinshed (Raphael), Chronicles, 2 vols. The Sunderland copy. Wants the plan of Edinburgh Castle. Folio, London, 1577.

Shakespeare (W.), Plays, 1st edit. The Napier copy, wanting the verses. Folio, London, 1623.