The drawing up of a _catalogue raisonne_ would be a
delicious occupation for winter. There were probably treasures to be
found, too: even manuscripts, if Cooper might be trusted.
As he pursued his round the sense came upon him (as it does upon most of
us in similar places) of the extreme unreadableness of a great portion of
the collection. 'Editions of Classics and Fathers, and Picart's
_Religious Ceremonies_, and the _Harleian Miscellany_, I suppose are all
very well, but who is ever going to read Tostatus Abulensis, or Pineda on
Job, or a book like this?' He picked out a small quarto, loose in the
binding, and from which the lettered label had fallen off; and observing
that coffee was waiting for him, retired to a chair. Eventually he opened
the book. It will be observed that his condemnation of it rested wholly
on external grounds. For all he knew it might have been a collection of
unique plays, but undeniably the outside was blank and forbidding. As a
matter of fact, it was a collection of sermons or meditations, and
mutilated at that, for the first sheet was gone. It seemed to belong to
the latter end of the seventeenth century.
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