rm its habitual office or function for us and our
successors of separating from the multitudinous accumulation of modern
published or printed matter such portion as, on deliberate inquiry and
scrutiny, appears to be of permanent value. There is no doubt that
much will be thrown aside; but the _residuum_ which will bear the test
of dispassionate judgment must prove considerable in itself, and also
when taken into account as an appendix to the record left by preceding
generations of writers. There may be certain authors and authoresses
whom our descendants will like to have by them, even though they may
no longer exert a sensible influence on literature and thought, just
as we prize many of the older schools and types for characteristics
and allusions which strike us as curious or entertaining; and soon, as
decade follows decade, and the twentieth century has well opened, men
and women, who were our grandsires' contemporaries, will seem through
the lengthening vista almost as remote as they were from the Stuart
epoch with its Elizabethan and Shakespearian traditions.

It is useless and invidious to particularise, and, besides, when one
has drawn up a list of names, which are more or less obviously
ephemeral, one cannot be certain as to the rest. Some must live; some
may.

The astonishing demand for the first editions of our modern poets and
novelists has, as was generally anticipated, subsided, and in some
cases almost ceased; and it is extremely doubtful whether the taste
will ever assume again the same unhealthy proportions. For one result
of the matter has been to make it perfectly clear that copies of
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson,
and so forth, exist in much greater plenty than was at first supposed,
though very little reflection should have sufficed to establish the
fact as an eminent probability; and all that was needed to draw them
from their resting-places was the series of paragraphs in the press
conveying to holders how valuable their property had unexpectedly
become. Shall we not have more copies of Shelley's poor little
brochure of 1810 offered for sale ere long, as well as of Thackeray's
_Exquisites_ and _King Glumpus_?

At the same time, while we insist that the survival of means of supply
is too large, and the market too limited, to sustain the extravagant
quotations of recent years, there will ever remain persons prepared to
give generous prices for absolutely fir