merous branches,
according to the point of departure, as some differ in their view of
what is modern from others. If we have to lay down a dividing line,
however, we should make it comprehend the last decade of the
eighteenth century, when many of the writers who were the
contemporaries of our immediate foregoers began their literary
careers.

Then, again, there are two branches of the later literature: the more
recent writers themselves, and the reproductions, as I have noted, of the
writers of former periods; and the extent to which the edited collections
have been carried places it within the power of many who so desire to
specialise on a certain line, and to deal representatively with the rest.

The specialist who proposes to himself as a field for his activity the
Coleridge and Byron period, or who, again, confines his efforts to the
writings of one or two of that set, has his work before him. Generally
speaking, the first editions, which are those usually desired, are not
uncommon; but there is almost always a _crux_, an _introuvable_, for
which the not altogether blameable dealer puts on the screw, and
charges more than for all the remaining items. Bohn's _Lowndes_ yields
a fair account of this family of literature; and Alexander Ireland,
Richard Herne Shepherd, and others have bestowed vast pains on drawing
up monographs on Coleridge, Hazlitt, Hunt, Shelley, Lamb, Keats,
Browning, Tennyson, and the rest. It is difficult to foresee what the
final upshot may be; probably, when fabulous prices have drawn forth
from their hiding-places additional copies of many of these latter-day
objects of keen pursuit, the market will fall and the craze will
subside. It is a purely artificial and spurious one.

A second group, to whose books a collector may reasonably and
conveniently confine his attention, consists of the poets and
prose-writers who are still, or who were till lately, among us; and a
fairly numerous body of matter falls within this class, as we may
judge from a glance at the names which present themselves in the
publishers' and booksellers' lists. In selecting the contemporary
school, there is the undoubted advantage that you can institute a
comparison between the book and its author, and that you may fall in
with him at dinner, in a drawing-room or in a shop, and congratulate
him or solicit an explanation of some fine but obscure passage; and
should you also be literary, he has the opportunity of exchanging