136 IDLEHURST : 



begin ? and where have you got to now ? " says the 

 Censor ; and I tell her that I began at Eutropius as 

 quite a small boy and am now got somewhere about 

 the Elizabethans. 



" Fancy that now ! " is Mrs. Kitty's comment. 



Even amongst my ancients there are odd gaps ; I 

 entertain only personal friends, whether amid the 

 Heliconian top shelf of Venetian and Dutch editions, 

 or the dictionaries that repose on the floor. I like 

 even a lexicon to have a character of its own ; my 

 commentaries are chosen more for the humours of 

 the commentator than their bearing on the text. I 

 mostly dispense, spite of the several deductions 

 possible from the fact, with those works without 

 which no gentleman's library is complete. Order 

 and rank on the shelves go mainly by inward 

 character ; some volumes seem to have an almost 

 spontaneous way of sorting themselves. Bernardino 

 Danielle's Dante constantly finds its way from its 

 fellows, the Convito and Petrarch, to stand beside 

 Conington's ^neid ; and more than once I have 

 found a stout Rasselas with plates pinning a shabby 

 paper Candide against the partition. The Iliad and 

 the Republic are generally separated by a Chase's 

 Ethics ; and I always humour and encourage this 

 rational collocation of authors. 



