Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/470

428 428 CHARLES EDWARD MUD IE. volumes, that we were told that it was impossible to give anything like an estimate of the numbers. Some idea of the magnitude of the library may, however, be gathered from the following : Of the last two volumes of Macaulay's " History of England," 2400 copies were taken, and the public demand for them was so extraordinary that a whole shop, now the large room on the left as one enters, was devoted to their stowage and exchange. There were taken, of Dr. Livingstone's first African Travels, 2000 copies ; and of Mr. Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," 2500 (the largest number required of any poetical work); of Mr. Disraeli's "Lothair" 1500 copies were at first subscribed, but it was soon found necessary to increase the number to 3000. The demand was, however, as brief as it was eager, and the monumental pile of " remainders " in Mr. Mudie's cellar is the largest that has ever been erected there to the hydra of ephemeral admiration. About 600 copies of each of the two great reviews the Edinburgh and Quarterly are required as a first instalment ; but should any article prove more than usually attractive to the public, a large addition is made this was notably the case with that number of the Quarterly containing the famous article on the "Talmud;" 100 copies of the Revue des Deux, Mondes are required fortnightly to satisfy foreign students ; and we believe that, of all novels which are likely to prove ordinarily popular, .as many as 400 are at once ordered. The onus of selecting the books rests entirely in Mr. Mudie's own hands, and it has often been objected that his de- cisions are somewhat arbitrary ; for instance Mr. Swinburne is tabooed, while M. Paul de Koch is made free of the establishment that, in short, the subscri-