The collector who, as yet, is not sufficiently advanced to fully realise the difficulties he will have to surmount before he can bring together a judicious assortment of books, will at any rate begin to see that the knowledge requisite to enable him to do so is of no mean order. The preliminaries will take him a long time to master, and he will find that the expense is a factor by no means to be despised. Even the books mentioned are not all that he may have to procure, for if, after consideration, he should decide to devote his attention exclusively to one branch of Bibliography, there are other books of reference to be purchased, and a special course of study must be entered upon and carefully followed, if he would hope to be successful. Thus, should he decide to make Dickens or Thackeray his one author, as so many people are doing now, he will need a guide to direct his course. Memory is so treacherous that he can take nothing on trust, and time so short that he cannot afford to journey two sides of the triangle when he might have taken the third. These special works for special departments are set out and enlarged upon in the following chapter, but before referring to them it may not be superfluous to remind the reader that a book of reference only possesses a relative value. It is quite possible to have a whole library within reach and yet to be ignorant of the proper method of using it. Some of our best writers had no library worthy the name, but the few books they had they knew--knew, that is to say, how to extract the information they required, which book to consult, how it was arranged, and what might be expected of it. Though a book collector is not necessarily a book reader, he will have to be absolute master of his works of reference, or he will find every volume on his shelf a useless incumbrance. Where to possess all the absolute facts is of importance, the newest works are, generally speaking, most likely to be the best; but this is very far from being applicable to a library in all its departments. Yet even in the case of works of a general nature a careful and economic selection may be made, so as to cover, in a small compass, much valuable ground. FOOTNOTES: [1] _The Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, Caxton's first book which bears a date, was finished in November, 1477; and it is upon the strength of this that the Caxton Quarcentenary Festival was held in 1877. There can be little doubt, however, that he printed many books of which no copies remain, some of which were probably earlier than _The Dictes_. [2] In the annual volume for 1891 a new scheme has been started, the authors and titles entries appearing in _one_ alphabet in "dictionary form". CHAPTER II. THE FIRST ENGLISH AUCTION SALE--FASHION IN BOOK COLLECTING--SPECIAL BOOKS OF REFERENCE RELATING TO PARTICULAR BRANCHES OF BIBLIOGRAPHY.