My intention in publishing this Budget in the _Athenaeum_ is _to enable those who have been puzzled by one or two discoverers to see how they look in a lump_. The only question is, has the selection been fairly made? To this my answer is, that no selection at all has been made. The books are, without exception, those which I have in my own library; and I have taken _all_--I mean all of the kind: Heaven forbid that I should be supposed to have no other books! But I may have been a collector, influenced in choice by bias? I answer that I never have collected books of this sort--that is, I have never searched for them, never made up my mind to look out for this book or that. I have bought what happened to come in my way at show or auction; I have retained what came in as part of the _undescribed_ portion of miscellaneous auction lots; I have received a few from friends who found them among what they called their rubbish; and I have preserved books sent to me for review. In not a few instances the books have been bound up with others, unmentioned at the back; and for years I knew no more I had them than I knew I had Lord Macclesfield's speech on moving the change of Style, which, after I had searched shops, etc. for it in vain, I found had been reposing on my own shelves for many years, at the end of a summary of Leibnitz's philosophy. Consequently, I may positively affirm that the following list is formed by accident and circumstance alone, and that it truly represents the casualties of about a third of a century. For instance, the large proportion of works {8} on the quadrature of the circle is not my doing: it is the natural share of this subject in the actual run of events. [I keep to my plan of inserting only such books as I possessed in 1863, except by casual notice in aid of my remarks. I have found several books on my shelves which ought to have been inserted. These have their titles set out at the commencement of their articles, in leading paragraphs; the casuals are without this formality.[6]]