Dr. O'Rell has an interesting theory which you will find recorded in the published proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol. xxxiv., p. 216). Or, if you cannot procure copies of that work, it may serve your purpose to know that the doctor's theory is to this effect—viz., that bibliomania does not deserve the name of bibliomania until it is exhibited in the second stage. For secondary bibliomania there is no known cure; the few cases reported as having been cured were doubtless not bibliomania at all, or, at least, were what we of the faculty call false or chicken bibliomania.
"In false bibliomania, which," says Dr. O'Rell, "is the primary stage of the grand passion—the vestibule to the main edifice—the usual symptoms are flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, a bounding pulse, and quick respiration. This period of exaltation is not unfrequently followed by a condition of collapse in which we find the victim pale, pulseless, and dejected. He is pursued and tormented of imaginary horrors, he reproaches himself for imaginary crimes, and he implores piteously for relief from fancied dangers. The sufferer now stands in a slippery place; unless his case is treated intelligently he will issue from that period of gloom cured of the sweetest of madnesses, and doomed to a life of singular uselessness.
"But properly treated," continues Dr. O'Rell, "and particularly if his spiritual needs be ministered to, he can be brought safely through this period of collapse into a condition of reenforced exaltation, which is the true, or secondary stage of, bibliomania, and for which there is no cure known to humanity."
I should trust Dr. O'Rell's judgment in this matter, even if I did not know from experience that it was true. For Dr. O'Rell is the most famous authority we have in bibliomania and kindred maladies. It is he (I make the information known at the risk of offending the ethics of the profession)—it is he who discovered the bacillus librorum, and, what is still more important and still more to his glory, it is he who invented that subtle lymph which is now everywhere employed by the profession as a diagnostic where the presence of the germs of bibliomania (in other words, bacilli librorum) is suspected.
I once got this learned scientist to inject a milligram of the lymph into the femoral artery of Miss Susan's cat. Within an hour the precocious beast surreptitiously entered my library for the first time in her life, and ate the covers of my pet edition of Rabelais. This demonstrated to Dr. O'Rell's satisfaction the efficacy of his diagnostic, and it proved to Judge Methuen's satisfaction what the Judge has always maintained—viz., that Rabelais was an old rat.
XII
THE PLEASURES OF EXTRA-ILLUSTRATION
Very many years ago we became convinced—Judge Methuen and I did—that there was nothing new in the world. I think it was while we were in London and while we were deep in the many fads of bibliomania that we arrived at this important conclusion.
We had been pursuing with enthusiasm the exciting delights of extra-illustration, a practice sometimes known as Grangerism; the friends of the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the latter. We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller at Gray's Inn Gate.