It is the same with some parts of some writers' labours, to be had separately, as Hamlet, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, and the Merchant of Venice; and with a few detached or select compositions to which one has to thread one's way in a larger volume: a few songs scattered through the early dramatists and lyrists; Gray's Elegy; Tennyson's May Queen (without the sequel), and Locksley Hall and In Memoriam (missing the tags).

In the present aspect of our inquiry, Famous Books and the Best are by no means convertible terms. There are such, it is true, as fall under both categories: the Hebrew Scriptures, Homer, Herodotus, Arabian Nights, Canterbury Tales, Montaigne's Essays, Shakespeare, Gibbon. Famous literary compositions at different levels or in their various classes are Boccaccio's Decameron, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Aretino, Spenser's Faëry Queen, Rabelais, Pilgrim's Progress, La Fontaine's Tales, Rousseau's Confessions, Tristram Shandy, Candide, Don Juan; and even among these how fair a proportion depends for its value and fruitfulness on the student? And, again, on his training. For we are aware of readers who prefer Bunyan to Spenser, others who place Sterne, Voltaire, and Byron before both, and not a few who have emerged with profit and without pollution from the perusal of the labours of Rabelais and Aretino. There is a literal deluge of moral and colourless works, on the contrary, from which even the average modern reader comes away only with an uncomfortable sense of waste of time and eyesight.

Of printed matter in book-shape there is no end. The mass grows day by day, almost hour by hour. Yet the successful candidates for admission to our inner circle of publications of all ages and countries, which so far meet on common ground in being provided with a passport to succeeding times requiring and recognising no critical visè, increase in numbers slowly, O so slowly! It would be presumptuous and unsafe to attempt to discount the ultimate verdict on many now popular names; but it is to be apprehended that, looking at the much more numerous body of writers, the calls to immortality will hereafter be in a relatively diminishing ratio. The influences and agencies by which certain schools of thought and work are artificially forced to the front are too often temporary, and their life is apt to be, Hamadryad-like, conterminous with that of their foster-parents. It has been my lot to witness the rise, decline, and evanescence of groups of authors and artists, whom it was almost sacrilegious to mention even with qualification. Adverse criticism was out of the question for any one valuing his own repute.

How various all the afore-mentioned standard or permanent books are, and still in one respect how similar! Similar, inasmuch as they or their subject-matter are surrounded by an atmosphere which preserves them as in embalmed cerements. In strict truth, there may be some among the number which are far indeed from being individually important or costly, while others in a critical sense have long been entirely obsolete, or perhaps never possessed any critical rank. It does not signify. Their testimonials are independent of such considerations. Many, most of them, are on ever-living topics; many, again, in their essence and material properties are sanctified and odorous.

I find myself possessed by a theory, possibly a weak and erroneous one, in favour of such a book, for instance, as Johnson's Lives of the Poets, as Johnson published it, with all its imperfections, with the full consciousness that improved editions exist. For the original output represents a genuine aspect of the author's mind, prejudices inclusive; and I am not sure that, had he lived to bring out a revised and enlarged impression, I should have looked upon it as so characteristic and spontaneous; and the same criticism applies to a number of other productions, dependent for their appreciation by us not upon their substantial, so much as on their sentimental, value.

What is not unapt to strike an average mind is that, with such a caseful of volumes as my cursory and incomplete inventory represents and enumerates, how much, or perhaps rather how little, remains behind of solid, intrinsic worth, and what a preponderance of the unnamed printed matter resolves itself into bric-à-brac, unless it amounts to such publications, past and present, as one is content to procure on loan from the circulating library or inspect in the show-cases of our museums.

Happy the men who lived before literary societies, book-clubs, and cheap editions, which have between them so multiplied the aggregate stock or material from which the collector has to make his choice! There are occasional instances where co-operation is useful, and even necessary; but the movement has perhaps been carried too far, as such movements usually are. Our forefathers could not have divined what an unknown future was to yield to us in the form of printed matter of all sorts and degrees. But they already had their great authors, their favourite books, their rarities, in sufficient abundance. It was a narrower field, but a less perplexing one; and from the seeing-point of the amateur, pure and simple, our gain is not unequivocal.

I shall now proceed to draw up an experimental catalogue of works which appear to possess a solid and permanent claim to respect and attention for their own sakes, apart from any critical, textual, or other secondary elements. Others without number might be added as examples of learning, utility, and curiosity; but they do not fall within this exceedingly select category:—

Æsop's Fables.Bayle's Dictionary, in English.
  ∴ In a form as near as may be
 to the original work.		Bidpai or Pilpay [so called], Fables of.
Antoninus, Itinerary.  ∴ A genuine English text.
Arabian Nights.Boccaccio's Decameron.
Arthur of Little Britain.Boswell's Life of Johnson and Tour in the Hebrides.
Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum.
Athenæus.Bradbury's Nature-printed Ferns and Seaweeds.
Aulus Gellius.
Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum.Brand's Popular Antiquities.
Bacon's Essays.  ∴ Latest recension, not Ellis's.
[[105]]Browne's Religio Medici.Cunningham's London, by H. B. Wheatley.
Browne's Urn-Burial.
  ∴ The latter reminds us of Lamb's style,
 allowing for difference of time.		Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Delany, Diary and Correspondence.
Browne's Vulgar Errors.Diogenes Laertius.
Browning's Early Poems.Dodsley's Old Plays.
  ∴ A moderate volume would
 hold all worth perpetuation.		Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, 2 vols.
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.Dunlop's History of Fiction.
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, three series.
  ∴ A book of academical cast, abounding
 in quaint conceits and curious extracts;
 full of false philosophy and morality.		George Ellis's Specimens of Early English Romances.
Butler's Hudibras.Elton's Specimens of the Classic Poets, 3 vols. 1814.
Byron's Scotish Bards.  ∴ Elton's versions of portions
 of Homer appear to be superior to
 Chapman, and to make it regrettable
 that he did not complete the work.
Byron's Childe Harold.
Byron's Don Juan.
Cæsaris Commentarii.
Carew, Thomas, Poems.
Cervantes' Don Quixote, by Jervis, 2 vols. 4to.Epinal Glossary, by Sweet.
  ∴ For the earliest English extant.
Chappell's Popular Music.Evelyn's Diary.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.Evelyn's Sylva.
Chronicles (English) Series of.Fairholt's Costume, 1860.
  ∴ Including Froissart and
 Monstrelet, with the original illuminated
 illustrations to former.		Fielding's Tom Jones.
Fox's Book of Martyrs.
Cicero, De Senectute et De Amicitiâ.Fournier's Vieux-Neuf, 1877.
  ∴ In the original Latin.Gayton's Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.
Cobbett's Rural Rides.Gesta Romanorum, in English.
Coleridge's Table-Talk.Gilchrist's Blake.
Cotgrave's French Dictionary.Gilpin's Forest Scenery.
Couch's British Fishes.Golden Legend, in English.
Coventry, Chester, Towneley, and York Mysteries.Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.
Goldsmith's Citizen of the World.
Grimm's Popular Stories.Keightley's Histories of Greece,
 Rome, and England
 (last editions).
Hakluyt's Voyages.
Harleian Miscellany.
Hearne's Diary, 2nd edition.Knox's Ornithological Rambles in Sussex.
Rawlinson's Herodotus.Lamb's Elia.
Herrick's Hesperides.Lamb's Letters.
Holland's Heröologia, 1620.Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses.
Homer, by Chapman.Lamb's Rosamund Gray.
  ∴ But better in the original.Langland's Piers Ploughman.
Hone's Popular Works.Latimer's Sermons.
  ∴ An original copy.Lazarillo de Tormes, in English.
Horace, Satires and Epistles, by Keightley.Le Houx, Vaux de Vire, in French.
Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis.Leland's Itinerary and Collectanea, 1770.
  ∴ A printed edition for the engravings.Le Sage's Gil Blas, in French.
James Howell's Letters.Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays.
Howells' Italian Journeys.  ∴ See that passage where the
 opinion of James, Earl of Balcarres,
 is quoted in regard to the
 duty of men to leave behind them
 some trace or record of their
 mind. Edit. 1849.
Howells' Venetian Life.
Hundred Merry Tales, 1526.
Hunter's New Illustrations of Shakespeare.
Hunter's Historical Tracts.Lockhart's Life of Scott.
Hunter's Account of New Plymouth, 2nd edition.Lodge's Portraits.
Irving's Scotish Poetry.  ∴ An early edition.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets.Lovelace's Poems.
Johnson's Rasselas.Lucas, Studies in Nidderdale.
  ∴ For the sake of its story, not of the book.Lysons, Magna Britannia, 6 vols.
Junius, Letters of.Lysons, Environs of London, 2nd edition.
Keightley's Mythology of Greece and Italy.Malory's Morte Arthur.
  ∴ Some of the matter anticipated
 by Sir T. Browne in his
 Vulgar Errors.		Montaigne's Essays, in French.
Morris's Works on Birds, Birds' Eggs, &c.
Nürnberg Chronicle, 1493.Poets. Corpus Poetarum Latinorum et Græcorum.
  ∴ The Latin text. As a very early picture-book.  ∴ The same remark applies.
Olaus Magnus.Rabelais.
  ∴ Original Latin,
 with the woodcuts.		Randolph's Plays and Poems.
Retrospective Review.
Ovid.Reynard the Fox, in English.
  ∴ Partly as in all appearance
 a favourite in some shape with our
 Shakespeare.		Richardson's Clarissa.
Robin Hood Ballads.
Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft.
Paston Letters.Selden's Table-Talk.
Pennant's Tours in Wales and Scotland,
 and Journey to London.		Shakespeare's Works.
Shakespeare's Library, 6 vols.
  ∴ On account of their personality.
 You know that much is
 obsolete, and other men have improved
 on them; but there is somehow
 the same charm.		Songs of the Dramatists.
Southey's Commonplace Book.
Southey's Select Letters.
  ∴ More especially for his delightful letters to children.
Pepys's Diary, by Wheatley.Spence's Anecdotes.
Percy's Reliques.Spenser's Works.
Phillips's English Dictionary.Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
Photii Bibliotheca.St. John's (J. A.) Manners and Customs
 of Ancient Greece, 1842.
Plato's Dialogues.
  ∴ Perhaps the French version by Cousin is preferable.  ∴ A lifelong labour, and most delightful and instructive work.
Plinii Epistolæ.St. John's (Bayle) Montaigne the Essayist.
Plutarch's Lives.St. John's English version of Saint Simon.
Popular (Early) Poetry of England, 4 vols.Stow's Annals.
Popular (Early) Poetry of Scotland and the Border, 2 vols.Stow's Survey of London, 1720.
Poets. Select British Poets, 1824.Strutt's Costume, by Planché.
  ∴ Includes ample selections
 from writers hardly worth possessing
 in a separate shape, including
 many even great and distinguished
 names.		Suckling's Works.
Swift's Gulliver.
Sydney's Arcadia.
Tennyson's Lyrical Poems.
  ∴ A judicious one-volume selection preferable.
Thoreau's Walden, 1854.Warton's English Poetry, 1871.
Thorne's Environs of London.Walpole's Letters.
Tottell's Miscellany.Wise's New Forest.
Virgil, Bucolics and Georgics, by Keightley.  ∴ Best edition for engravings.
Voltaire's Candide, in French.White's Selborne, 1st edition.
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary.Wodroephe's Spare Hours of a Soldier, 1623.
Walton's Angler.Yarrell's British Birds.

How passing rich one would be with all these, and no more—rich beyond the greatest bibliomaniacs, and beyond the possessors of the rarest and costliest treasures in book-form! Turn over the pages of the most splendid catalogues, and how few one would find to add! Nor would all the before-recited productions appeal to all book-lovers. There are many who would excuse themselves from admitting Rabelais. Some might not particularly care for the works of foreign origin. Some might be courageous enough to avow an indifference to Milton and Spenser, and even a dislike to Bunyan. Still the rule holds good, we think, that all our chosen authors or books have more or less powerful credentials. There remain to be added Books of Reference, as we have pointed out, curiosities, and this or that person's specialisms.