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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: When here and there throughout those volumes you meet with titles
of books now either unknown entirely, or of the greatest rarity;
when you find the Colophon from the end, or the "insigne typographi"
from the first leaf of a rare "fifteener," pasted down with dozens of others,
varying in value, you cannot bless the memory of the antiquarian shoemaker,
John Bagford. His portrait, a half-length, painted by Howard, was engraved
by Vertue, and re-engraved for the Bibliographical Decameron.
A bad example often finds imitators, and every season there crop up
for public sale one or two such collections, formed by bibliomaniacs,
who, although calling themselves bibliophiles, ought really to be ranked
among the worst enemies of books.
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