has it been examined with undilating eyes, and cold, unenvious hearts!
Yet so he must confess himself to have looked upon a friend's superb
first edition of "Pickwick" though surely not without that measure of
interest which all, save the quite unlettered or unintelligent, must
feel in seeing the first visible shape of a book of such resounding
significance in English literature.

Such interest may, without fear of denial, be claimed for a facsimile
of the first edition of "The Compleat Angler" after "Robinson Crusoe"
perhaps the most popular of English classics. Thomas Westwood, whose
gentle poetry, it is to be feared, has won but few listeners, has drawn
this fancy picture of the commotion in St. Dunstan's Churchyard on a
May morning of the year 1653, when Richard Marriott first published the
famous discourse, little dreaming that he had been chosen for the
godfather of so distinguished an immortality. The lines form an
epilogue to twelve beautiful sonnets_ a propos _of the bi-centenary of
Walton's death:

"What, not a word for thee, O little tome,
Brown-jerkined, friendly-faced--of all my books
The one that wears the quaintest, kindliest looks--
Seems most completely, cosily at home
Amongst its fellows. Ah! if thou couldst tell
Thy story--how, in sixteen fifty-three,
Good Master Marriott, standing at its door,
Saw Anglers hurrying--fifty--nay, three score,
To buy thee ere noon pealed from Dunstan's bell:--
And how he stared and ... shook his sides with glee.
One story, this, which fact or fiction weaves.
Meanwhile, adorn my shelf, beloved of all--