The ordinary small collection of rarities has no room for three-volume novels, those signs-manual of our British dulness and crafty disdain for literature. One or two of these _simulacra_, these sham-semblances of books, I possess, because honoured friends have given them to me; even so, I would value the gift more in the decency of a single volume. The dear little duodecimos of the last century, of course, are welcome in a library. That was a happy day, when by the discovery of a _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, I completed my set of Smollett in the original fifteen volumes. But after the first generation of novelists, the sham system began to creep in. With Fanny Burney, novels grow too bulky, and it is a question whether even Scott or Jane Austen should be possessed in the original form. Of the moderns, only Thackeray is bibliographically desirable. Hence even of Mr. George Meredith's fiction I make no effort to possess first editions; yet _The Shaving of Shagpat_ is an exception. I toiled long to secure it, and, now that I hold it, may its modest vermilion cover shine always like a lamp upon my shelves! It is not fiction to a bibliophile; it is worthy of all the honour done to verse. Within the last ten years of his life we had the great pleasure of seeing tardy justice done at length to the genius of Mr. George Meredith. I like to think that, after a long and noble struggle against the inattention of the public, after the pouring of high music for two generations into ears whose owners seemed to have wilfully sealed them with wax, so that only the most staccato and least happy notes ever reached their dulness, George Meredith did, before the age of seventy, reap a little of his reward. I am told that the movement in favour of him began in America; if so, more praise to American readers, who had to teach us to appreciate De Quincey and Praed before we knew the value of those men. Yet is there much to do. Had George Meredith been a Frenchman, what monographs had ere this been called forth by his work; in Germany, or Italy, or Denmark even, such gifts as his would long ago have found their classic place above further discussion. But England is a Gallio, and in defiance of Mr. Le Gallienne, cares little for the things of literature.