Votre tres humble Serviteur,

    [Autograph:  AulAug.  Renouard]

[131] [Now completed in 60 volumes 8vo.:  and the most copious and correct
    of ALL the editions of the author.  It is a monument, as splendid as
    honourable, of the Publisher’s spirit of enterprise.  For particulars,
    consult the Library Companion, p. 771, edit. 1824.]

[132] The year following the above description, the Catalogue, alluded to,
    made its appearance under the title of “Catalogue de la Bibliotheque
    d’un Amateur,” in four not very capacious octavo volumes:  printed
    by CRAPELET, who finds it impossible to print—­ill.  I am very glad
    such a catalogue has been published; and I hope it will be at once a
    stimulus and a model for other booksellers, with large and curious
    stocks in hand, to do the same thing.  But I think M. Renouard might
    have conveniently got the essentials of his bibliographical gossipping
    into two volumes; particularly as, in reading such a work, one must
    necessarily turn rapidly over many leaves which contain articles of
    comparatively common occurrence, and of scarcely common interest.  It
    is more especially in regard to modern French books, of which he
    seems to rejoice and revel in the description—­(see, among other
    references, vol. iii. p. 286-310) that we may be allowed to regret
    such dilated statements; the more so, as, to the fastidious taste of
    the English, the engravings, in the different articles described, have
    not the beauty and merit which are attached to them by the French.  Yet
    does M. Renouard narrate pleasantly, and write elegantly.

In regard to the “brush at the Decameron,” above alluded to, I read it with surprise and pleasure—­on the score of the moderate tone of criticism which it displayed—­and shall wear it in my hat with as much triumph as a sportsman does a “brush” of a different description!  Was it originally more piquan? I have reason not only to suspect, but to know, that it WAS.  Be this as it may, I should never, in the first place, have been backward in returning all home thrusts upon the aggressor—­and, in the second place, I am perfectly disposed that my work may stand by the test of such criticism.  It is, upon the whole, fair and just; and justice always implies the mention of defects as well as of excellencies.  It may, however, be material to remark, that the third volume of the Decameron is hardly amenable to the tribunal of French criticism; inasmuch as the information which it contains is almost entirely national—­and therefore partial in its application.

[133] [Not so.  Messrs. Payne and Foss once shewed me a yet larger
    copy of it upon vellum, than even M. Renouard’s:  but so many of the
    leaves had imbibed an indelible stain, which no skill could eradicate,
    that it was scarcely a saleable article.  It was afterwards bought by
    Mr. Bohn at a public auction.]