of H. I fancied that with ease
You'd scribble off some verses that might please,
And so give help to us.
R. Why then--TAKE THESE!
THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT
One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the
realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of
the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable,
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.
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