You ARE right in supposing that I should feel a warm interest in your enterprise, wrote Charles Coffin Jewett, Librarian of the Boston Public Library, to George Allen, professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania, July 8, 1859. Jewett continued: Its consummation will make an era worthy of notice, in the typographical annals of America. These choice copies-so fascinating to bibliographers, numbered and garnered among congenial rarities-will be described with fond enthusiasm by some future Van Praet or Dibdin, who will I hope be a lover of chess too, & appreciate the book highly for its intrinsic merits, as a contribution to the literature of the most delightful of games.' Jewett was referring to Professor Allen's intention to print copies of his book, The Life of Philidor, on vellum. And, in a way, he was referring to me; for it is a personal identification with the interests of Professor Allen-books, chess, military science, and music-and with the interests and infirmity of Philidor-chess, opera, authorship, and the gout-that makes this, inevitably, a personal essay as well as a bibliographical excursion. I was led to Professor Allen's Life of Philidor through a long interest in the American Civil War-led to it by references in letters of James Bartram Nicholson2 to his son John Page Nicholson, one of the great collectors of Civil War books, while the younger Nicholson was serving as a first lieutenant in the Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. I cannot claim to be a Dibdin, but perhaps I can make identification with van Praet, for my own bibliographical work will probably be as little remembered a few years hence as his exhaustive records (compiled in the 1 820's) of books printed on vellum are remembered now.3 But the record of Professor Allen's enterprise should not be forgot, though tastes have changed and the book collectors of the i 960's look for a different kind of volume from that sought by the bibliomaniacs (their own word) of the