Of that highly patrician class of bibliographies which offer their services exclusively to the collectors of rare, curious, and costly books, there are so many notices dotted over this volume, that I shall only stop here to mark the recentness of their appearance in literature. To judge from the title-page, one might trace them as far back as 1676, in John Hallervord's Bibliotheca Curiosa, in which the editor professes to indicate many authors which are very rare and known to few; but this book would give no satisfaction to pure rarity seekers. Hallervord takes curious in its old sense, which corresponds in some measure with the present use of the word interesting; and the specialty of the books being known to few, seems to refer to their profundity and the rarity of learning sufficient to sound their depths. Nor does the list published a few years later by the London bookseller Hartley, though it professes to signalise very rare books, show that nice sense which discriminates game of a high order from the vulgar and useful.[65] I suspect that before we reach the dawn of this class of literature proper, we must descend at once to the year 1750, distinguished by the simultaneous appearance of Clement's Bibliothèque Curieuse, and Freytag's Analecta de Libris Rarioribus.[66]
[Footnote 65: Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque insignium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley, Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn dicto. MDCXCIX.]
[Footnote 66: Of course the Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each other, and bibliographical notices of Bibliographies abound. Le Brun sets aside a department for them, but the most handy reference to them that has come my way is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique, ou Nouveau Manuel du Libraire, by M. P*****--identified by his brother detectives as M. Psaume.]
An author of the last generation, professing to deal with any branch of human affairs, if he were ambitious of being considered philosophical, required to go at once to the beginning of all things, where, finding man alone in the world, he would describe how the biped set about his own special business, for the supply of his own wants and desires; and then finding that the human being was, by his instincts, not a solitary but a social animal, the ambitious author would proceed in well-balanced sentences to describe how men aggregated themselves into hamlets, villages, towns, cities, counties, parishes, corporations, select vestries, and so on. I find that, without the merit of entertaining any philosophical views, I have followed, unconsciously, the same routine. Having discussed the book-hunter as he individually pursues his object, I now propose to look in upon him at his club, and say something about its peculiarities, as the shape in which he takes up the pursuit collectively with others who happen to be like-minded to himself.