The range of choice, which embraces the writers of the modern school in prose and verse, is both wide and difficult. During many years past the number of authors within these lines has been continually on the increase, yet, while merit and value may be questions of opinion, there can be no serious or legitimate doubt that the output of literary work of high character is not greater than it was, if indeed as great. In the course of a quarter of a century many popular names have either fallen or faded out of remembrance, alike of authors who belonged to antecedent generations, and of those who have enjoyed a transient and artificial celebrity, and have come and gone, as it were, under the eyes of their immediate contemporaries. With the advantages offered by lending libraries, it appears to be imprudent on the part of any one who cannot conveniently form an extensive collection of modern books to buy on the recommendation of the press or the trade new favourites; for literary acquisitions are unfortunately apt to occupy space, and, save in very exceptional cases, to deteriorate in value. Even the original editions of the later works of Tennyson are not in great demand, and the high figures realised by one or two of his early productions are explainable in the same way as those given for Byrons and Shelleys.
The Modern Side of collecting is classifiable into numerous 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 compliments with you. The old dead writers receive praise and offer no equivalent.
During a series of years there was a notorious run, which, as usual, became indiscriminate, on first editions of the writings of Dickens, Thackeray, and other foremost men of the period, eclipsing, as it seemed, even the demand for the earlier English classics, till the auctioneers and booksellers in their catalogues underlined at a venture every editio princeps, though it might be the last as well as the first, and, whether or no, a book of no mark. But the enthusiasm has at last contracted itself within narrower and more intelligent limits, and is restricted to productions which rank as masterpieces or are special favourites, and then all postulates have to be satisfied, all bibliographical minutiæ have to be studied. It is impossible to foresee how far this latest compromise may last; but whatever it is, there must always be some novelty to keep the market going, and bring grist to the mill. The world of fashion comprehends books as well as bonnets and dresses; but the literary section is a humble one by comparison, and is in few hands. Every fresh mode has somewhere its starter, and it usually prevails long enough to suit the purposes of the trade, when it makes way for its successor.
If one had the ordering of these strategical devices, one would imagine that the true policy was to buy up a given class of books, procure the insertion of a clever article or two in the press, extolling their merits and lamenting the public ignorance and neglect, and then launch a Jesuitically constructed catalogue devoted to such undeservedly disregarded treasures. But we may have been forestalled. Who knows?
The less current and every-day literary ware appeals to a more or less narrow constituency. There is a proverb, "The wool-seller knows the wool-buyer;" and it has to be so in books. There are volumes which, if they do not from their character or price suit one of a circle of half-a-dozen collectors, with whose means and wants the whole trade is generally familiar, are exceedingly likely to suit nobody outside the public libraries at public library prices. So much is this the case, that many booksellers do not think it worth their while to publish catalogues, and content themselves with reporting to the most probable purchaser fresh acquisitions. With certain very special and costly rarities two often make a market.
Time will perform 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.