Sabin promises to give "more than a few" bibliographies relative to France and Germany, but does not make clear how he chooses them. He passes over Johannes Tritheim and Conrad Gesner without mention and seems to know little about other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bibliographies. His wide acquaintance with Americana leads him to mention Antonio León Pinelo's Epitome of 1620, perhaps the first important bibliography of Americana. On the whole, his choice of eighteenth century bibliographies is judicious. He cites the encyclopedic Georgi and such standard catalogues of rare books as Clement and Freytag, although he does not know the last and largest edition of Johannes Vogt, Catalogus librorum rariorum. He makes a good selection of eighteenth-century subject bibliographies, which were for the most part still valuable reference works in the 1870's. History is sufficiently represented by Lenglet du Fresnoy and Meusel's edition of Struve. Cave, Du Pin, and Walch are the right books to recommend to a theologian. As far as he goes, Sabin is generally successful in naming histories, which are virtually bibliographies, of national literatures, but J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca mediae et infimae latinitatis and J. C. Wolf, Bibliotheca hebraea are lacking. He mentions only a few regional biobibliographies and seems to have had no plan in selecting them. I have examined only his references to Italian examples of this genre, but these are well-known and easily found. In other fields than history and literature he has usually chosen wisely. He knows Pritzel's botanical bibliography and Van der Linden's medical bibliography. He has a blind eye for bibliographies of the religious orders. As we might expect, De Backer's Jesuit bibliography is present, but it is surprising to see no mention of Wadding's account of the Franciscans, who had a large share in the cultural development of the Spanish colonies in America, or Quétif and Echard's biobibliographical dictionary of the Dominicans. In brief, Sabin's book is probably as good a book as can be written in one hundred and fifty pages. A classified and an alphabetical index of subjects would have vastly increased its usefulness. Had he made them, he would have perceived and filled the gaps.
Sabin's purpose in writing A Bibliography of Bibliographies remains somewhat mysterious. I cannot understand how he failed to see the necessity of making indexes. How, for example, is the user to discover the bibliographies of precocious children, mnemonics, and chess in F. Cancellieri, Dissertazione intorno agli uomini dotati ad [read ed] a quelli divenuti smemorati, colle biblioteche degli scrittori sopra gli eruditi precoci, la memoria artificiale ed il giuoco degli scacchi (pp. xxviii-xxix) without a subject index? We can commend Sabin for enlarging Power's dilettante list into a reference work. We can commend his care in citing books and his industry and judgment in choosing them, but accuracy, industry, and learning are not the only virtues required of a bibliographer. A bibliographer must be a practical man who sees how his book will be used.
Sabin's book has remained almost unknown, but the next book to be discussed has an unenviable reputation. No one has a kind word for Léon Vallée, Bibliographie des bibliographies (1883-1887), but in damning it few have effectively supported their opinions. It is not a good book, but it has perhaps been judged too severely. As an example of a sweeping and unsupported condemnation I cite what A. G. S. Josephson wrote in 1901:
This work is of comparatively slight value in spite of the vast material that it contains. It is very uncritical and gives in most cases no hint as to the whereabouts of bibliographical materials in the books referred to. The alphabetical arrangement by authors, even with the subject index, makes the work difficult to consult. [It may] be a useful basis for a more scholarly work.[164]
This is not only Josephson's judgment but also the judgment that bibliographers have generally passed on Vallée. Reviewers contemporary with Vallée are perhaps somewhat more favorable in their estimates, but make their dissatisfaction altogether plain. In an article suggested by Josephson's bibliography in which this criticism appears, Vilhelm Grundtvig expressed an equally condemnatory opinion about Vallée's book.[165] He declares that only Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica and Henri Stein's Manuel (which is yet to be mentioned) deserve mention among bibliographies of bibliographies. This means passing over Labbé, Teissier, and Peignot, who were very respectable workers indeed. He goes on to say that Vallée's book does not even deserve review and is altogether unworthy of a member of the staff of the greatest library in the world. Theodore Besterman's judgment (I, p. x) is equally severe:
It is difficult to say much in praise of this compilation, which has, indeed, been universally condemned. Its general plan is basically wrong, and it contains far too many irrelevancies, mistakes, omissions, and second-hand descriptions. To indicate the general standard of accuracy maintained by Vallée, it is perhaps enough to say that, although a large part of his volume was taken bodily from Petzholdt, that scholar's name is spelt incorrectly throughout the entries under his name.
Vallée's book is unsatisfactory, but I cannot listen to this chorus without examining the criticisms briefly. Josephson's damning notice signifies very little. As far as such rough tests as I have used can show, Vallée does not include an unreasonable proportion of unsuitable titles. I have examined the first entry on page 25, and each succeeding twenty-fifth page without finding an instance of a non-bibliographical title. If Josephson means that Vallée gives many unnecessary references, I should agree with him. Vallée should not choose to cite Thomas Stapleton's biography of Sir Thomas More (p. 519, No. 6048) because it contains bibliographical information or to give hundreds of similar references. I cannot however agree with Josephson's remark that Vallée fails to indicate where this bibliographical information appears in the books cited. It seems altogether unnecessary to cite a bibliography found in a biography, an edition of a classical Latin or Greek author, or a general treatise on some subject, but when Vallée cites it, as he does in imitation of Petzholdt with distressing frequency, he ordinarily gives reference to pages. I cannot see that an alphabetical arrangement according to authors with a subject index is very much more difficult to use than an alphabetical or classified arrangement according to subjects with an author index, but in this opinion I stand alone against general bibliographical practice and shall say no more here. In any event, Vallée's choice of arrangement seems a comparatively minor fault, when compared with Petzholdt's and Stein's choice of a classified arrangement with altogether unsatisfactory subject indexes and hastily-made author indexes. I speak in Vallée's behalf partly because of Josephson's arrangement of a bibliography to be mentioned at the end of this essay. Josephson chose to arrange the titles in chronological order without providing either an author or a subject index. No one has ever recommended such an arrangement.
I shall let Vallée's book speak for itself. Like the bibliographers who immediately preceded and followed him, Vallée struck out for himself and gave little heed to earlier work. This appears even in his references to bibliographers of bibliographies. In an "Avertissement" he recognizes only three predecessors: Tonnelli in 1782, Petzholdt in 1866, and Sabin in 1872 [the date is wrong]. This is a bad start. Francesco Tonnelli's book[166] is a worthless mixture of a biobibliographical dictionary and a bibliographical handbook. The biobibliographical information is a disorderly collection of notes, referring chiefly, but by no means exclusively, to men whose names begin with the first letters of the alphabet. The bibliographical information is a miscellany of facts about libraries. Tonnelli, who has occasionally buried bibliographies in this rubbish heap, had no intention of writing a bibliography of bibliographies. I cannot guess what use Vallée made of Tonnelli's queer book. If he actually consulted it, he should have objected to its disorderliness and its lack of materials for his needs. Petzholdt's book is, as Vallée says, a classified bibliography of bibliographies made by a competent scholar. It is regrettable that he did not fully accept it as his model. He gives the wrong date for Sabin's book, which began to appear serially in 1875 and was published in 1877. He does not make it clear that he has seen and used it.
If we turn to Vallée's references to the works mentioned in this essay, we find nothing to encourage us. He puts Peignot's Répertoire, Teissier's edition of Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, and Labbé's first edition in the Novae bibliothecae specimen[167] of 1653 in a section entitled "Bibliographies générales." In other words, he does not consider them to be bibliographies of bibliographies. I cannot see that he cites Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum at all. Namur's Bibliographie is in a section entitled "Bibliologie" (p. 621) with a mistake in its title. All this indicates, I am afraid, that Vallée did not recognize a bibliography of bibliographies when he saw it. This grievous fault is all the more grievous because he emphasizes in his preface the importance of careful classification.
Vallée is guilty of many more faults. He includes titles that do not belong in a bibliography of bibliographies.[168] As I have already said, their number does not seem to me to be very large and many of them lie on the fringes of bibliography. His descriptions and entries are incomplete and inaccurate.[169] He cites bibliographies that can be easily found and scarcely need mention.[170] He fails to analyze the long subject entries in his index.[171] He makes serious errors in names, dates, titles, and places of publications and is careless about editions and the continuations of works that spread over several years. In his supplement of 1887, he fails to repair the faults that reviewers had pointed out. More serious than anything in this long list of faults is, in my opinion, his rash attempt to survey all bibliographies anew with little or no regard for his predecessors.