labour of love, a General Index to my Bibliographical Works, is answerable for the deviation which the present Supplements to my Third and Final Series of Collections and Notes mark from the settled purpose which I had formed of printing no more titles on a sectional plan. The dispersion of several important libraries during the last two or three seasons had involved, almost as a necessity, an accumulation at Barnes, where I live, of much new matter of interest, as I make it my unchangeable practice to let no book, if I can help it, pass through the auction-room unexamined and uncatalogued; and in addition, the rarities in the Lists published by the Trade, both in London and the provinces, may be said almost as a constant rule to fall under my notice. In this manner it is easy to perceive how, in the course of about two years of unusual activity among the auctioneers, some 2000 fresh items might accrue; and seeing the excessively arduous process of bringing them together, and the risk of destruction by fire, I deemed it, on the whole, advisable to go to press once more, especially as by such a course the matter constituting this Appendix would be incorporated with Mr. Gray's Index. The principal collections which have come into the market since I issued my last volume are those of Mr. R. S. Turner, Mr. Gibson-Craig, Baron Seilliéres, the Earl of Aylesford, and the Earl of Hardwicke. The opportunity afforded to me by these and other sales has fructified in a large accession of entries in the Early English, the Anglo-Gallic, and the Scotish Series, as well as to the stores of works on Great Britain and Ireland of an historical, devotional, or literary character printed abroad. The authorities at the British Museum have continued to shew me every possible courtesy in examining books in that institution; but the curators of our university and college libraries are, I am bound to say, less attentive to the wants of workers like myself, and their organisation is, as a rule, of the most rudimentary character. Even at the Bodleian, since the regretted death of Dr. Coxe,* I find a singular and lamentable backwardness on the part of the keeper to assist a gratuitous and national undertaking like the present, although my labours ought to be viewed with exceptional indulgence, as conducive to the facilitation of research; and I cannot avoid feeling that I should have experienced greater consideration from Sir Thomas Bodley than it pleased Mr. Nicholson on a particular occasion to pay me, where the application for help was of a perfectly legitimate and very modest nature. The Rev. F. Madan is personally most obliging, where I have occasionally applied for some piece of information. Non cuivis homini contingit adire Oxoniam. I can scarcely be expected to travel to Oxford for the verification of a few words in a title, or for the collation of a tract. After all, I hope * My respected acquaintance, the late Dr. Coxe, spared no pains to satisfy my occasional inquiries; but I believe that he once good-humouredly wondered if Mr. Hazlitt thought that he was there specially to act as his assistant. |