The constant increase of books is not, we are inclined to think, so great a curse or so wholly to be ascribed to malevolent intentions as many despondent people suppose. A very considerable, if not the greater, number of new works have for their aim not to add to, but to diminish, the literature of the world, and so to lighten the burden imposed on each successive generation of readers. The great bulk of the writers of our day are employed not in producing anything new, but in summarizing, epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those who are skilful in it. It used, however, to be thought that there were limitations to the practice of it--that while it was lawful and right to treat as a _caput mortuum_ any work containing merely a certain amount of useful information or of original thought, a sacredness attached to the masterpieces of literature and to books which, having survived the accidents of time and changes of fashion, were ranked as classics and [Greek: ktêmata es aei]. These were held entitled to a place in every library, and, far from being subjected to condensation or abridgment, were too often supplemented by commentaries and illustrative matter exceeding in bulk the original text. It is less than half a century since the publication of Croker's edition of Boswell's _Johnson_, "with numerous additions and notes," excited a prolonged tumult, and the editor was arrayed at the bar of criticism and solemnly condemned, not for having contributed elucidations to the text, but for having mutilated it by insertions which should have been relegated to an appendix. But now, while one literary craftsman announces an edition from which all that is "obsolete" or "unimportant" is to be expurgated, another offers us in lieu of the five venerated tomes a rifacimiento in a single volume of less than two hundred pages. It is, of course, not to be denied that Boswell's _Life_ includes a large amount of matter wholly unimportant in itself, relating to persons and events that have no independent claim on the interest of readers of the present day. But it does not follow that such details are superfluous and may properly be weeded out. They give us the _milieu_, to use M. Taine's word, in which Johnson's character and intellect were developed and displayed, the perspective in which his career is to be viewed, the background from which his figure stands out in bold relief. The impression they make upon us is an essential part of the effect which is produced by the book, deepening the sense of reality and the charm of intimate familiarity which have so much to do with its abiding fascination. And