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Bohn in his new edition of the Bibliographer has merely repeated the original in this respect. But if Lowndes had seen only the edition of 1652, he might have found in it evidence of the date of the publication of the book. But to return to the margins of our Guazzo, from five pages of which we here give fac-similes.
She was all by herself in that lonely little place, suffering perhaps, and too proud or too shy to complain. Mr. Eames' description of her had made him uneasy. Why should she look as if she had seen a ghost? What could that signify? The bibliographer was a level-headed person, by no means given to flights of imagination.
Van Koppen thought that he might have got into trouble with some girl. But that strikes me as very unlikely. He may be a little homesick and lonely, so far from his mother." The bibliographer said: "I understand Mr. van Koppen is quite an authority on girls. As to Denis, I saw him last when was it? Oh, not so very long ago. The day all those funny things happened; those portents.
Reading was his sole solace during his imprisonment, and it is noticeable that, whenever he asks for a book he speaks of it not with the dry, meticulous precision of a bibliographer but with all the caressing detail of a genuine book-lover. He indicates the sizes of the various works which he needs, describes their bindings, and mentions in what part of his monastery-cell they will be found.
Dibdin, with more specific precision, after rambling over the house where the great auction sale occurred, as inquisitive people are apt to do, tells us of the solitary room occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which he slept and died: "all his migrations," says the bibliographer, "were confined to these two rooms.
Of the subsequent history of the Saint Elias Fountain, which alone still continued to flow, the bibliographer also learned much how its fame had grown in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries till it attracted invalids from the most distant provinces, necessitating the erection of a palatial pump-room for the better accommodations of visitors; how latterly again the waters had unaccountably fallen into disfavour with the public.
You remember how I warned you about that little affair of yours? You remember what an ass you made of yourself?" "What little affair?" enquired Eames, with a tinge of resignation in his voice. The other did not reply. Mr. Keith could be tactful, on occasions. He pretended to be absorbed in cutting a cigar. "What little affair?" insisted the bibliographer, fearful of what was coming next. It came.
Library catalogues are full of these heterogeneous descriptions, and the size-notation is the bête noir of the veteran bibliographer, and the despair of the infant librarian. Yet it is probable that the question has excited a discussion out of all proportion to its importance. Of what consequence is the size of a book to any one, except to the searcher who has to find it on the shelves?
David Clement, the illustrious French bibliographer, who seems to have anticipated the positive philosophy by an attempt to make bibliography, as the Germans have named it, one of the exact sciences, lays it down with authority, that "a book which it is difficult to find in the country where it is sought ought to be called simply rare; a book which it is difficult to find in any country may be called very rare; a book of which there are only fifty or sixty copies existing, or which appears so seldom as if there never had been more at any time than that number of copies, ranks as extremely rare; and when the whole number of copies does not exceed ten, this constitutes excessive rarity, or rarity in the highest degree."
The other differences are very slight, mostly being in punctuation, but there are also a few changes of word. I leave these, however, to the Bibliographer. The eighth edition was furnished with the following preface; which, though it is signed "The Author," is not, I think, from either Mary or Charles Lamb's pen. I rather suspect Mrs. Godwin.
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