bibliognost

Mr. Dibdin, since the above was written, has witnessed the confusion of the mind, and the gigantic industry, of our bibliognoste which consisted of many trunks full of memoranda.[…]A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiæ of a book.[…]I shall catch our bibliognoste in the hour of book-rapture! It will produce a collection of bibliographical writers, and show to the second-sighted Edinburgher what human contrivances have been raised by the art of more painful writers than himself—either to postpone the day of universal annihilation, or to preserve for our posterity three centuries hence, the knowledge which now so busily occupies us, and to transmit to them something more than what Bacon calls “Inventories” of our literary treasures.