_Hints to Book-buyers._--Inquirers buy books on subjects which they
have, at the time, no particular intention of closely investigating:
when such intention afterwards arises, they begin to collect more
extensively. But it often happens, I suspect, that it does not come into
their heads to examine what they have already got, as to which their
memory is not good, because their acquisitions were not made under any
strong purpose of using them. The warning which suggests itself is as
follows: Always remember to examine the old library as if it were that
of a stranger, when you begin any new subject, and before you buy any
new books.
Here is another warning, not wholly unconnected with the former: Never
judge of a book, that is, of all which comes between the two boards, by
the title-page, which may be only the _first_ title-page, in spite of
the lettering at the back. Persons who bind their books will not always
be bound themselves, either by law of congruity or convenience. I once
hunted shop and stall for a speech delivered in parliament a century
ago, not knowing that I had long possessed it bound up at the end of a
Latin summary of Leibnitzian philosophy. At the risk of posthumously
revealing my real name, I will add that I wrote on the fly-leaf that I
was not the blockhead who bound the book.