In this catalogue of books which are no books—­biblia a-biblia—­I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which “no gentleman’s library should be without:”  the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley’s Moral Philosophy.  With these exceptions, I can read almost any thing.  I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books’ clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants.  To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what “seem its leaves,” to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay.  To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find—­Adam Smith.  To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world.  I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume.  Magnificence comes after.  This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately.  I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit.  The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume.  A Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel.  The possession of them confers no distinction.  The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner.  Thomson’s Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog’s-eared.  How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old “Circulating Library” Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield!  How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight!—­of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day’s needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents!  Who would have them a whit less soiled?  What better condition could we desire to see them in?

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.  Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes—­Great Nature’s Stereotypes—­we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be “eterne.”  But where a book is at once both good and rare—­where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,