mances in Don Quixote. Perhaps the naughty story-teller intended 

 the donation as a covert satire. The walls of the room which formerly 

 contained Montaigne's books, and is at this day exhibited to pilgrims, 

 are covered with inscriptions burnt in with branding-irons on the 

 beams and rafters, by the eccentric and delightful essayist. The 

 author of Ivanhoe adorned his magnificent library with suits of superb 

 armour, and luxuriated in demonology and witchcraft. The caustic 

 Swift was in the habit of annotating his books, and writing on the 

 fly-leaves a summary opinion of the author's merits ; whatever else he 

 had, he owned no Shakespeare, nor can any reference to him be found 



have had a passion for books. To say nothing of the literary and 

 rhetorical tastes of Cresar, "the foremost man of all time," Frederick 

 the Great had libraries at Sans Souci, Potsdam, and Berlin, in which 

 he arranged the volumes by classes without regard to size. Thick 

 volumes he rebound in sections for more convenient use, and his 

 favorite French authors he sometimes caused to be reprinted in com- 

 pact editions- to his taste. The great Conde inherited a valuable 

 library from his father and enlarged and loved it. The hard-fighting 

 Junot had a vellum library which sold in London for £1,400, while 

 his great master was not too busy in conquering Europe not only to 

 solace himself in his permanent libraries, and in books which he carried 

 with him in his expeditions, but to project and actually commence the 

 printing of a camp library of duodecimo volumes, without margins, 

 and in thin covers, to embrace some three thousand volumes, and 

 which he had designed to complete in six years by employing one 

 hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, at an outlay 

 of about £163,000. St. Helena destroyed this scheme. It is curious 

 to note that Napoleon despised Voltaire as heartily as Frederick 

 admired him, and gave Fielding and La Sage places among his travel- 



hif librarian : » I will have fine editions and handsome bindings. I 

 am rich enough for that." The only thing that shakes one's con- 

 fidence in the correctness of his literary taste is that he was fond of 



Southey brought together fourteen thousand volumes, the most valu- 

 able collection which had up to that time been acquired by a man whose 

 means and estate lav, as he once said of himself, in his inkstand. 

 Time fails us to speak of Erasmus, De Thou, Grotius, Goethe, Bodley, 

 Hans Sloane, whose private library of fifty thousand volumes was the 

 beginning of that of the British Museum ; the Cardinal Borrommeo, 

 who founded the Ambrosian Library at Milan with his own forty 



