The Atlantic Monthly, page 79 by Various Authors
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! Mad, mad.
Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we first?
A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis Schwarzii, Norimbergæ, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth. The model of them all is Oudendorp's Cæsar. But there is nothing very great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend, not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and Fall"?
The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard n is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf, with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S. C. | to her valued friend | Doctor