Excerpt from A Monograph, on Privately-Illustrated Books: A Plea for Bibliomania One prefatory word, therefore, as to per sonal experiences; for, although I am not so daintily endowed as to be deemed axiomatic ally modest, nor so apathetic of praise as to be indifferent to applause, still, I have a con sciousness of the insignificant space occupied by the pronoun I in the English Dictionary, and, on the other hand, of the usual obtrusive and ostentatious pretences of the first person singular, notwithstanding Des Cartes has made it the column around which he has fabricated his great system of philosophy: Cogito, ergo' sum, and nothing else is. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.