He seems
to have been the victim of a frenzy for books. He impressed them by
crowds, and marshalled them in regiments and myriads. They all fell in
1789 before the hammer of the auctioneer. Dibdin has described the
catalogue. It was unostentatious and printed on indifferent material. He
hoped, with his curious insistance on the point, that there were 'some
few copies on large paper.' It is a mark of the changes in
book-collecting that Dibdin praised the index as excellent, 'enabling us
to discover any work of which we may be in want'; but it is now regarded
as remarkable for its poverty, and especially for the extraordinary
carelessness that left eight noble specimens from Grolier's library
without the slightest mark of distinction.
Gian-Vincenzio Pinelli was a celebrated man of letters whose library at
Padua formed 'a perpetual Academy' for all the scholars of his day. Born
at Naples in 1538, he spent the greater part of his long life at Padua,
where he was sent to study the law; but the only sign of his professional
labours appears to have been that he rigidly excluded all works on
jurisprudence from his magnificent library. His books, says Hallam, were
collected by the labours of many years: 'the catalogues of the Frankfort
fairs and those of the principal booksellers in Italy were diligently
perused, nor did any work of value appear from the press on either side
of the Alps which he did not instantly add to his shelves.' Remembering
the traditions of the age of Poggio, when the rarest classics might be
found perishing in a garret or a cellar, Pinelli was always in the habit
of visiting the dealers in old parchment and the brokers who carried off
deeds and papers from sales, just as Dr.
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