"Book-buying" from The Leisure Hour - 1892

While listing one of today's acquisitions, a bound copy of The Leisure Hour - 1892, I came across the following, which I hope you'll enjoy reading:

Book-buying may be a mere hobby, and the book-hunter is often totally indifferent to the pleasure or the wisdom which the prizes that he wins can yield. Men have been known to spend their lives and to wander over Europe in search of rare copies. To have what no one else possesses is the aim that gives zest to their labour.

The game to be run down would be totally without value were it not for the difficulty of the sport. Some of these bibliomaniacs hunt for black-letter books, some for playbills, some for what are known as tall copies, some for books whose worth depends upon the binding, some for the beauty of the print, and some, strange to say, for errors in the printing.

"In Elzevirs," Mr Andrew Lang says, "a line's breadth of margin is often worth a hundred pounds, and a misprint is quoted at no less a sum;" and he tells the young collector that he will pay dearly for the "Caesar" of 1635, "the one without errors" in pagination."

We are warned not to laugh at the bookhunter, and no doubt, compared with some follies, his is innocent enough; but no one who loves books solely because they contain what Milton calls "the precious life-blood of master spirits" will have much sympathy with the bibliophile who buys books that are unreadable, or too valuable to admit of being read.