The particular copy of Winstanley which lies before me is a valuable one; I owe it to the generosity of a friend in Chicago, who hoards rare books, and yet has the greatness of soul sometimes to part with them.  It is interleaved, and the blank pages are rather densely inscribed with notes in the handwriting of Dr. Thomas Percy, the poetical Bishop of Dromore.  From his hands it passed into those of John Bowyer Nichols, the antiquary.  Percy’s notes are little more than references to other authorities, memoranda for one of his own useful compilations, yet it is pleasant to have even a slight personal relic of so admirable a man.  Mr. Riviere has bound the volume for me, and I suppose that poor rejected Winstanley exists nowhere else in so elegant a shape.

THE ROMANCE OF A DICTIONARY

HISTOIRE DE L’ACADEMIE FRANCOISE:  avec un Abrege des Vies du Cardinal de Richelieu, Vaugelas, Corneille, Ablancourt, Mezerai, Voiture, Patru, la Fontaine, Boileau, Racine Et autres Illustres Academiciens qui la Composent.

A La Haye, MDCLXXXVIII.

It is not often, in these days, when the pastime of bibliography is reduced to a science, that one is rewarded, as one so often was a quarter of a century ago, by picking up an unregarded treasure on the bookstalls.  But the other day I really had a pleasant little “find,” and it was the reward of virtue.  It came of having a tender heart.  My eye caught what Mr. Austin Dobson would call “a dear and dumpy twelve,” lying open upon other books, face downward, in the most ignominious posture.  I saw at a glance, from the tooling on its faded and half-broken back, that it was French and of the seventeenth century, and that somebody had prized it once.  I could read the lettering Academ.  Franc., and I gave the pence which were wanted for it.  It proved a most rewarding little volume.  It was published at The Hague in 1688, and it was a new edition of the Histoire de l’Academie Francaise.  A preface says that “for the honour of our nation” (the French, presumably, not the Dutch), the publisher has thought it proper to issue an edition “more correct and more elegant” than has hitherto been seen, brought down to date with many new and curious pieces.  Among other things, the said publisher thinks that “the English will not be displeased to see the Panegyric” of King Louis XIV. “admirably rendered in their language by a Person of their Nation.”  But what immediately caught my attention, and filled me with delight, was an absolutely contemporary account, written specially for this 1688 edition, of the great quarrel between the French Academy and the Abbe Furetiere.  Of this I propose to speak to-day.