Dr. Mead was a collector of the same kind. All that was beautiful came naturally to this great man, of whom it was said that he lived 'in the full sunshine of human existence.' He was the owner of a very fine library, which he had 'picked up at Rome.' He had a great number of early-printed classics, which fetched high prices at his sale in 1754; his French books, according to Dibdin, and all his works upon the fine arts 'were of the first rarity and value,' and were sumptuously bound. His chief literary distinction rests on his edition of De Thou's 'History' in seven folio volumes. He had received a large legacy from a brother, and spent it in the publication of a work 'from which nothing of exterior pomp and beauty should be wanting'; the ink and paper were procured from Holland; and Carte the historian was sent to France 'to rummage for MSS. of Thuanus.' Oldys has a few notes upon curious collections which he thought might be diverting to a 'satirical genius.' A certain Templar, he says, had a good library of astrology, witchcraft, and magic. Mr Britton, the small-coal man, had an excellent set of chemical books,'and a great parcel of music books, many of them pricked with his own hand.' The famous Dryden, and Mr. Congreve after him, had collected old ballads and penny story-books. The melancholy Burton, and Dr. Richard Rawlinson, and the learned Thomas Hearne, had all been as bad in their way. Mr. Secretary Pepys gave a great library to Magdalen College at Cambridge: but among the folios peeped out little black-letter ballads and 'penny merriments, penny witticisms, penny compliments, and penny godlinesses.' 'Mr. Robert Samber,' says Oldys, 'must need turn virtuoso too, and have his collection: which was of all the printed tobacco-papers he could anywhere light on.' For 'curiosity or dotage' none could beat Mr. Thomas Rawlinson, whose vast collections were dispersed in seventeen or eighteen auctions before the final sale in 1733. Mr. Heber in the present century is a modern example of the same kind. 'A book is a book,' he said: and he bought all that came in his way, by cart-loads and ship-loads, and in whole libraries, on which in some cases he never cast his eyes. The most zealous lovers of books have smiled at his duplicates, quadruplicates, and multiplied specimens of a single edition. Thomas Rawlinson, for all his continual sales, blocked himself out of house and home by his purchases: his set of chambers at Gray's Inn was so completely filled with books that his bed had to be moved into the passage. Some thought that he was the 'Tom Folio' of Addison's caricature, in which it was assumed that the study of bibliography was only fit for a 'learned idiot.' Hearne defended his friend from the charge of pedantry, and declared that the mistake could only be made by a 'shallow buffoon.'