The fame of the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmingham was world-wide and to us it had extra value as emanating from the love which George Dawson bore for the memory of Shakespeare.  It was his wish that the library should be possessed of every known edition of the bard’s works in every language, and that it should contain every book ever printed about him or his writings.  In the words of Mr. Timmins, “The devotion of George Dawson to Shakespeare was not based upon literary reasons alone, nor did it only rest upon his admiration and his marvel at the wondrous gifts bestowed upon this greatest of men, but it was founded upon his love for one who loved so much.  His heart, which knew no inhumanity, rejoiced in one who was so greatly human, and the basis of his reverence for Shakespeare was his own reverence for man.  It was thus, to him, a constant pleasure to mark the increasing number of the students of Shakespeare, and to see how, first in one language and then in another, attempts were made to bring some knowledge of his work to other nations than the English-speaking ones; and the acquisition of some of these books by the library was received by him with delight, not merely or not much for acquisition sake, but as another evidence of the ever-widening influence of Shakespeare’s work.  The contents of this library were to Mr. Dawson a great and convincing proof that the greatest of all English authors had not lived fruitlessly, and that the widest human heart the world has known had not poured out its treasure in vain.”  So successful had the attempts of the collectors been that nearly 7,000 volumes had been brought together, many of them coming from the most distant parts of the globe.  The collection included 336 editions of Shakspeare’s complete works in English, 17 in French, 58 in German, 3 in Danish, 1 in Dutch, 1 in Bohemian, 3 in Italian, 4 in Polish, 2 in Russian, 1 in Spanish, 1 in Swedish; while in Frisian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Greek, Servian, Wallachian, Welsh, and Tamil there were copies of many separate plays.  The English volumes numbered 4,500, the German 1,500, the French 400.  The great and costly editions of Boydell and Halliwell, the original folios of 1632, 1664, and 1685, the very rare quarto contemporary issues of various plays, the valuable German editions, the matchless collection of “ana,” in contemporary criticism, reviews, &c., and the interesting garnering of all the details of the Tercentenary Celebration—­ wall-posters, tickets, pamphlets, caricatures, &c., were all to be found here, forming the largest and most varied collection of Shakspeare’s works, and the English and foreign literature illustrating them, which has ever been made, and the greatest literary memorial which any author has ever yet received.  So highly was the library valued that its contents were consulted from Berlin and Paris, and even from the United States, and similar libraries have been founded in other places.  Only 500 of the books were preserved, and many of them were much damaged.