full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their
magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in
noblemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's
verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of
flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes
them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be
mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246
pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in
S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the
_editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in
the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake
and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or
dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies
and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle,
than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any
case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint
"coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for
them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at
the _Peacock_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years
later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to
come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite
perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than
L1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved
owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great
library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr.
Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and
dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and
gone apparently beyond reach of recovery.

These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have