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Updated: June 13, 2025
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.
Let us now call up a different and a more commonplace type of the book-hunter it shall be Inchrule Brewer. He is guiltless of all intermeddling with the contents of books, but in their external attributes his learning is marvellous.
But if the book-hunter allow money-making even for those he is to leave behind to be combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish, its exhilarating influence, and becomes the source of wretched cares and paltry anxieties.
The subject of the introduction of letters into Ireland, and the very early literature of that country, is too large to be handled here. It is certain that in Columba's era, the middle of the sixth century, books were written and used in Ireland. The respect paid to a book in that age was something beyond that of the most ardent book-hunter.
But the book-hunter may possibly leave a little fortune behind him. His hobby, in fact, merges into an investment.
Here, too, it is possible that the enlightened onlooker may catch sight of the book-hunter plying his vocation, much after the manner in which, in some ill-regulated town, he may have beheld the chiffonniers, at early dawn, rummaging among the cinder heaps for ejected treasures.
It is generally classed among the failings of the book-hunter that he looks only to the far past, and disregards the contemporary and the recent. Wodrow was a valuable exception to this propensity.
And what a delight in the pursuit of the rarities which the eager book-hunter follows with the scent of a beagle!
In the proper season this consisted of a bountiful serving of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, with a glass of lemonade. As a variant upon the beverage he took milk. He was the only man I have known, whether book-hunter or layman, who could sleep peacefully upon a supper of cucumbers and milk. There is probably no occult relation between first editions and onions.
Your great game-preservers sometimes know the importance of taking the most notorious poacher in the district into pay as a keeper. So it is sometimes of the nature of the book-hunter, if he be of the genial sort, and free of some of the more vicious peculiarities of his kind, to make an invaluable librarian.
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