Then, again, there is one speculation that no true book-lover can stifle; it haunts him as he passes the barrows with their loads of sermons and scholastic primers, and it is this: 'Time works wonders.' Some day may not this heterogeneous mass of rubbish produce as fine a pearl as ever a diseased oyster was robbed of? May not fashion go off at a tangent, and dote on lexicons or what not? There have been men--Rossi, for example, who was so saturated with the suspicion that fashion might change any moment that the stalls by which he passed were 'like towns through which Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their train'--who would buy any book whatever, whether they wanted it or not, on the bare chance of someone else wanting it, either at the time or in the days to come.
Such may be the outcome of a too eager perusal of catalogues, focussed till it produces an absorbing passion, which only departs with life itself. After a time discrimination, naturally enough, becomes impossible, and whole masses of books are bought up for what they may become, not for what they are. This may appear to be an ignoble sort of pastime, but in reality it is far otherwise, since wholesale purchasers of this stamp are invariably well read, and know more about their author than his mere name. I personally was acquainted with a bookworm who absorbed whole collections at a time. His house was full of books; they were under the beds, in cupboards, piled up along the walls, under the tables and chairs, and even on the rafters under the roof. If you walked without due care, you would, more likely than not, tumble over a folio in the dark, or bring down a wall of literature, good, bad, or indifferent, on your head. This library was chaotic to the general, though the worm himself knew very well where to burrow for anything he required, and, what is more to the point, would feed for hours on volumes that few people had ever so much as heard of. The monetary value of his treasures did not trouble him, though one of his favourite anecdotes related to the hunting down of a fourth folio Shakespeare, which, after much haggling, he purchased for a song from a poor woman who lived in an almshouse. When the delight of the chase was over, he recompensed her to the full market value, thereby proving that, in his case at least, a greed for books does not necessarily carry with it a stifled conscience. Sad to relate, this bibliophile died like other men, and the collection of a lifetime came to the inevitable hammer. Most of his books then proved to be portions of sets. If a work were complete in, say, ten volumes, he would perhaps possess no more than five or six of the full number in various bindings and editions, while others, though complete, were imperfect, and many were in rags. Yet among the whole there were some pearls of great price. Even in his day the fashion had changed in his favour.