Retrospect of Domestic Literature—Miscellanies. 
tion the ‘ Letters from England,’ by 
Don Manvet Atvarez Esprirecia, 
who appears in the character of an en- 
lightened foreigner, alike qualified and 
disposed to correct our errors and ap- 
preciate our merits. The truth is, that, 
like writers who have before amused 
us in the garb of Orientals, the present 
author has assumed the cloak of the 
Spaniard, and with an air of pleasantry 
and neatness, has cut his jokes on the 
eivil and ecclesiastical establishments of 
his country: sometimes indulging his 
readers with caricature exhibitions, and 
sometimes with reflections of no ordinary 
shrewdness. As a specimen we shall 
transcribe his ridicule of the virtuoso 
. taste. 
“‘ The passion for old china is confined 
to old women, and indeed is almost 
extinct. Medals are in less request 
since science has become fashionable; 
or perhaps the pursuit is too expensive ; 
or it requires more knowledge than can 
be acquired easily enough by those who 
wish for the reputation of knowledge 
without the trouble of acquiring it. Mi- 
nerals are now the most common objects 
of pursuit; engraved portraits form ano- 
ther, since a clergyman some forty years 
ago published a biographical account of 
all persons whose likenesses had been 
engraved in England. This is a mis- 
chievous taste, for you rarely or never 
meet an old book here with the author’s 
head in it; all are mutilated by the 
collectors; and I have heard that still 
more mischievous collections of engraved 
titles have been begun. The book-col- 
lectors are of a higher order, not that 
the pursuit necessarily implies know- 
ledge ; it 1s the love of possessing rarities, 
or the pleasure of pursuit, which in most 
eases actuates them; one person who 
had spent many years in collecting large- 
paper copies, having obtained nearly all 
which had ever been thus printed, sold 
the whole collection for the sake of be- 
ginning to collect them again. I shall 
bring home an English bookseller’s cata- 
logue as a curiosity: every thing is spe- 
ecified that can tempt these curious 
purchasers: the name of the printer if 
he be at all famous; even the binder, 
for in thisart they certainly are unrivalled, 
The size of the margin is of great im- 
portance. I could not conceive what 
was meant by a tall copy, till this was 
explained tome. If the leaves of an old 
book have never been cut smooth, its 
value is greatly enhanced; butif it should 
633 
happen that they have never been: cut 
open, the copy becomes inestimable.” 
“The good which these collectors 
do is, that they preserve volumes which 
would otherwise perish; and this out~ 
balances the evil which they have done 
m increasing the price of old books ten 
and twenty fold. One person will collect 
English poetry, another Italian, a third 
classics, a fourth romances; for the 
wiser sort go upon the maxim of having 
something of every thing, and every thing 
of something. They are in general sufli- 
ciently liberal in permitting men of letters 
to make use of their collections; which 
are not only more complete in their 
kind than could be found in the libraries 
of England, but are more particularly 
useful in a country where the public 
libraries are rendered almost useless by 
absurd restrictions and bad management, 
aud where there are no convents. The 
want of conventsis, if only in this respect, 
a national misfortune. 
“‘ The species of minor collectors are 
very numerous. Some ten years ago 
many tradesmen issued copper money 
of. their own, which they called tokens, 
and which bore the arms of their re- 
spective towns, or their own heads, or 
any device which pleased them. How 
worthless these pieces must in general 
have been, you may judge, when I tell 
you that their current value was less 
than two quartos. They became very 
numerous, and as soon as it was difficult 
to form a coniplete collection, (for while 
it was easy, nobody thought it worth 
while,) the collectors begaw the pursuit. 
The very worst soon became the most 
valuable, precisely because no person 
had ever preserved them for their beauty. 
Will you believe me when [I tell you, 
that a series of engravings of these worth- 
less coins was actually begun, and that 
a cabinet of them sold for not less than 
fifty pieces of eight? When the last 
new copper currency was issued, a shop- 
keeper in the country sent for a hundred 
pounds worth from the mint, on purpose 
that he might choose out a good specimen 
for himself. Some few. geniuses have 
struck out paths for themselves; one 
admits no work into his library if it 
extends beyond a single volume; one 
is employed in collecting play-bills, ano- 
ther in collecting tea-pots, another in 
hunting for visiting-cards, another in 
forming a list of remarkable surnames; 
another more amusingly in getting spe- 
cimens of every kind of wig that has 
been 
