_ and _would_ usurp the place of their relatives, _shall_ and
_should_, with a uniformity that proves the absence of negligence.

Samuel Johnson. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men of Letters, edited
by John Morley.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The constant increase of books is not, we are inclined to think, so
great a curse or so wholly to be ascribed to malevolent intentions as
many despondent people suppose. A very considerable, if not the greater,
number of new works have for their aim not to add to, but to diminish,
the literature of the world, and so to lighten the burden imposed on
each successive generation of readers. The great bulk of the writers of
our day are employed not in producing anything new, but in summarizing,
epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their
predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for
the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be
extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously
presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is
unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those who are
skilful in it. It used, however, to be thought that there were
limitations to the practice of it--that while it was lawful and right to
treat as a _caput mortuum_ any work containing merely a certain amount
of useful information or of original thought, a sacredness attached to
the masterpieces of literature and to books which, having survived the
accidents of time and changes of fashion, were ranked as classics and
[Greek: ktemata es aei]. These were held entitled to a place in every
library, and, far from being subjected to condensation or abridgment,
were too often supplemented by commentaries and illustrative matter
exceeding in bulk the original text. It is less than half a century
since the publication of Croker's edition of Boswell's _Johnson_, "with
numerous additions and notes," excited a prolonged tumult, and the
editor was arrayed at the bar of criticism and solemnly condemned, not
for having contributed elucidations to the text, but for having
mutilated it by insertions which should have been relegated to an
appendix. But now, while one literary craftsman announces an edition
from which all that is "obsolete" or "unimportant" is to be expurgated,
another offers us in lieu of the five venerated tomes a rifacimiento in
a single volume of less than two hundred pages. It is, of