To all collectors of the first editions of the works of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Ruskin, Charles Lamb, Carlyle, and Swinburne the name of Richard Herne Shepherd is a household word. He may be said to have invented that class of bibliography which modern book collectors most esteem. A considerable amount of excellent work was also done anonymously by Shepherd for John Camden Hotten, William Pickering, George Redway, and other publishers. He was, perhaps, the last man who regarded a business letter as a literary composition, and his briefest note was turned out as if it were a contribution to the Athenæum. His zeal for literature as literature was such that every fragment of printed matter became precious in his eyes and worthy of preservation, and if the author of the fragment or the author's friends chanced to take other views—tant pis. A man who tries to subsist by literary work of the class which alone appealed to the sympathies of Mr. Shepherd has a desperate fight with circumstances, and sometimes a hit
