account for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting
there are certain definite laws. "Why do you pay a large price for
a dingy, old book," outsiders ask, "when a clean modern reprint can
be procured for two or three shillings?" To this question the
collector has several replies, which he, at least, finds
satisfactory. In the first place, early editions, published during
a great author's lifetime, and under his supervision, have authentic
texts. The changes in them are the changes that Prior or La Bruyere
themselves made and approved. You can study, in these old editions,
the alterations in their taste, the history of their minds. The
case is the same even with contemporary authors. One likes to have
Mr. Tennyson's "Poems, chiefly Lyrical" (London: Effingham Wilson,
Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830). It is fifty years old, this little
book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a
stately tree. In half a century the poet has altered much, and
withdrawn much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive
note, and his "Mariana" is a masterpiece. "Mariana" is in all the
collections, but pieces of which the execution is less certain must
be sought only in the old volume of 1830. In the same way "The
Strayed Reveller, and other poems, by A." (London: B. Fellowes,
Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much that Mr. Matthew Arnold has
altered, and this volume, like the suppressed "Empedocles on Etna,
and other Poems, by A." (1852), appeals more to the collector than
do the new editions which all the world may possess. There are
verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough's "Ambarvalia" (1849),
which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which "repay
perusal." These minutiae of literary history become infinitely more
important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and
the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of
critical science. The preservation of rare books, and the