ns had
hitherto thirsted in vain. No wonder, then, that there was a dead set
at them, the living owner _maulgre_.

The booksellers are apt to complain nowadays of their inability to
move or place items with which they cannot give a certificate of
character. It will not always suffice to allege that they have
realised a great deal of money heretofore, as vouched by Lowndes; they
must carry with them some definite recommendation; they must exhibit
remarkable allusions; they may be written by an ancestor or namesake
of the buyer in view; at all events, if they are not by a good author,
they must be on a good subject. Their interest must be (1) personal;
(2) local; or (3) topical. There is a drift on the part of collectors
of the purer type toward accredited and certified securities--toward
recognised writers. Established character goes for more than mere
rarity. The trade can always place fine copies of authors who have
made their personality standard: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare,
Sydney, Jonson, Milton, Butler, Swift, Thomson, Goldsmith, Miss
Burney, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles
Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Thackeray, George Eliot. If to the more
fastidious or self-diffident amateur an excessively rare item is
introduced without credentials, it is in danger of being rejected; the
same principle applies to certain foreign writers, such as Cervantes,
Montaigne, Moliere, Corneille, La Fontaine. But in almost all these
cases the demand is not for collected or library editions, or even for
first copies of everything coming from the pens of those writers.
Chaucer has to be served up in the types of Caxton or De Worde or
Pynson; Spenser is only sought in quarto and octavo; Shakespeare
means the four folios and certain quartos, and the Poems in octavo;
the leading aim in Sydney is the _Arcadia_ of 1590; Jonson is just
admissible in folio (the right one), but is preferred in quarto; by
Milton we mean the _Comus_, _Lycidas_, _Poems_, _Paradise Lost_ and
_Paradise Regained_ in the original issues. Butler is only represented
by his _Hudibras_; Swift by his _Gulliver_; Defoe by his _Crusoe_
(some must have all three volumes, although the first is worth nearly
all the money); Thomson by the _Seasons_; Goldsmith by the _Vicar of
Wakefield_; Miss Burney by one or two of her Novels in boards; Dr.
Johnson by his _Rasselas_; Scott by the _Waverley_ series with uncut
edges, and so forth.

The actual current app