The general rule may be applied to our modern books, that, whatever they may be for purposes of instruction or entertainment, they seldom represent the outlay, and still more rarely a profit upon it when the day arrives for realising. During some time past we have witnessed the rise and fall, or at least disappearance from the front rank, of individuals and schools of individuals whose writings no amount of friendly support in the press was capable of propping up beyond three or four seasons. It is not that some of them may not hereafter, like our older authors, return to notice and currency; but they will suffer that intermediate period of neglect which has been experienced by well-nigh all our greatest names in letters. There is for literature, in common with its buyers, an earth, a purgatory, and a heaven--or something else. The public cannot keep pace with the vast and unbroken succession of literary produce, and the favourites of the day pass over to neutral ground, with very few exceptions, when their honeymoon has expired, to await the deliberate verdict of posterity on their merit and their station. To the investor for a more or less immediate return, however, they are precarious possessions, unless the market be carefully watched. The wealthy and absolutely uncommercial amateur disregards these risks and these counsels; and he is in a sense to be envied.
The question of the First Edition is not limited to any era of literary history and production, and the call for this class of book, at first (as usual) rather unreasoning, begins to be more critical and narrow. The author to be thus honoured by his posterity must have a certain bouquet and vogue. He must be a Shakespeare, a Jonson, a Herrick, a Burton, a Defoe, a Bunyan, a Burns, or (if we cross the sea) a Molière, a Montaigne, or a Cervantes.
With the first edition in some bibliographical schemes is associated the Best One. The possessor of both may pride himself on being able to show the earliest and latest state of the writer's mind, what he originally conceived, and what he decided to leave behind him as his _ultimum vale_. For the most part, however, first thoughts are treated as better than second, and it may actually be the case that, alike in ancient and modern books, the too fastidious and wavering ancient poet, or playwright, or essayist has done himself in maturer years an injustice by blotting the fresh impulses of his noviciate. It is a case, perhaps, where the public is entitled to intervene, and taking the two readings, deliver its award--always supposing that the text is that of a man worth the pains, and, again, that both versions are the language of the author, not that of the editor. It is obvious that, as a matter of literary and scientific or technical completeness, the last edition of a work is the most desirable; but it is particularly the case with volumes endeared by personal associations, such as Gilbert White's _Selborne_, that one prefers the text as the author left it, even if one has to be at the pains to consult a second publication for up-to-date knowledge. The present point is one to which I have adverted in an earlier place.