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`But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee To keep me in temptation's way, I humbly ask that I may be Most notably beset to-day; Let my temptation be a book, Which I shall purchase, hold and keep, Whereon, when other men shall look, They'll wail to know I got it cheap.''

And again, in ``The Bibliomaniac's Bride,'' nothing breathes better the spirit of the incurable patient than this: ``Prose for me when I wished for prose, Verse when to verse inclined,-- Forever bringing sweet repose To body, heart and mind. Oh, I should bind this priceless prize In bindings full and fine, And keep her where no human eyes Should see her charms, but mine!''

In ``Dear Old London'' the poet wailed that ``a splendid Horace cheap for cash'' laughed at his poverty, and in ``Dibdin's Ghost'' he revelled in the delights that await the bibliomaniac in the future state, where there is no admission to the women folk who, ``wanting victuals, make a fuss if we buy books instead''; while in ``Flail, Trask and Bisland'' is the very essence of bibliomania, the unquenchable thirst for possession. And yet, despite these self-accusations, bibliophily rather than bibliomania would be the word to characterize his conscientious purpose. If he purchased quaint and rare books it was to own them to the full extent, inwardly as well as outwardly. The mania for books kept him continually buying; the love of books supervened to make them a part of himself and his life.

Toward the close of August of the present year my brother wrote the first chapter of ``The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac.'' At that time he was in an exhausted physical condition and apparently unfit for any protracted literary labor. But the prospect of gratifying a long-cherished ambition, the delight of beginning the story he had planned so hopefully, seemed to give him new strength, and he threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm that was, alas, misleading to those who had noted fearfully his declining vigor of body. For years no literary occupation had seemed to give h

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