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. 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.