III.
DIVERSE TASTES.
t is fortunate for the harmony of book-collectors that they do not all desire the same thing, just as it was fortunate for their young State that all the Romans did not want the same Sabine woman. Otherwise the Helenic battle of the books would be fiercer than it is. Thus there are bibliomaniacs who reprint rare books from their own libraries in limited numbers; authors, like Walpole, who print their own works, and whose fame as printers is better deserved than their reputation as writers; like Thackeray, who design the illustrations for their own romances, or, like Astor, who procure a single copy of their novel to be illustrated at lavish expense by artists; amateurs who bind their own books; lunatics who yearn for books wholly engraved, or printed only on one side of the leaf, or Greek books wholly in capitals, or others in the italic letter; or black-letter fanciers; or tall copy men; or rubricists, missal men, or first edition men, or incunabulists
One seeks only ancient books; another limited editions; another those privately printed; a fourth wants nothing but presentation copies; yet another only those that have belonged to famous men, and still another illustrated or illuminated books. There is a perfectly rabid and incurable class, of whom the most harmless are devoted to pamphlets; another, rather more dangerous, to incorrect or suppressed editions; and a third, stark mad, to play-bills and portraits. One patronizes the drama, one poetry, one the fine arts, another books about books and their collectors; and a very recherche class devote themselves to works on playing-cards, angling, magic, or chess, emblems, dances of death, or the jest books and facetiæ
Finally, there are those unhappy beings who run up and down for duplicates, searching for every edition of their favorite authors. In very recent days there has arisen a large class who demand the first editions of popular novelists like Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne, and will pay large prices for these issues which have no value except that of rarity. I can quite understand the enthusiasm of the collector over the beautiful first editions of the Greek and Latin classics, or for the first “Paradise Lost,” or even for the ugly first folio “Shakespeare,”