The main question was further obstructed by many outbursts of individualism.  Certain self-contained books wished to be left to themselves, and have no part in the social scheme, unless in the event of a return to monarchy, when, they intimated, they might be eligible for election.  This, one could see, was the secret hope of all the speakers; and you would have laughed could you have heard what inflated opinions some of them had of their own importance—­especially two or three of the minor poets.  Then, again, many sentimental demands, quite unforeseen, added to the general anarchy.  Collected editions, which had long groaned in the bondage of an arbitrary relationship, saw an opportunity in the general overturn to break away from their sets and join their natural fellows.  Sex was naturally the most unruly element of all.  Volumes that had waited edition after edition for each other, yearning across the shelves, felt their time had come at last, and leapt into each other’s arms.  It was with no avail that a distress minute was passed by The Hundred Thousand Committee (a somewhat unworkable body) that henceforth sex was to be a function exercised absolutely for the good of the state:  tattered poets were to be seen wildly proclaiming a different doctrine.

Such eccentric attachments as a volume of The Essays of Elia for Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, were especially troublesome; while the explosion caused by the accidental contact of that same unruly Elia with a modern reprint of The Anatomy of Melancholy, which (he said) he never could tolerate, proved the last straw to the Committee of the Hundred Thousand, who immediately resigned their offices in anger and despair.  Thereupon, tenfold chaos once more returning, I thought it time to interfere.  The Doctrine of Equality was evidently a failure—­among books, at any rate.  So I savagely fell to, and threw the books back again into their immemorial places, and the cause of freedom in ‘The City of Books’ sleeps for another hundred editions.

Only I placed Elia next to the Duchess, because he was a human fellow, and had no theories.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ‘LIMITED EDITIONS’

Why do the heathen so furiously rage against limited issues, large-papers, first editions, and the rest?  For there is certainly more to be said for than against them.  Broadly speaking, all such ‘fads’ are worthy of being encouraged, because they maintain, in some measure, the expiring dignity of letters, the mystery of books.  Day by day the wonderfulness of life is becoming lost to us.  The sanctities of religion are defiled, the ’fairy tales’ of science have become commonplaces.  Christian mysteries are debased in the streets to the sound of drum and trumpet, and the sensitive ear of the telephone is but a servile drudge ’twixt speculative bacon merchants.  And Books!—­those miraculous memories of high thoughts and golden moods;