At all events, the book weathered the storm of royal displeasure, however manifested. A second edition appeared in 1617. Down to the standard Oxford collection of Ralegh's works in 1829, which includes it, eight have been published since. The last folio edition appeared, with a biography by the editor, Oldys, in 1736. Gibbon commends it as the best which had to that time appeared, though it is open to charges of gross carelessness in the printer, and of arbitrary alterations by the editor, to the injury of the sense. The work was popular enough to attract epitomists. Alexander Ross, in 1650, condensed it into his _Marrow of History_, which is rather its dry bones. Philip Ralegh, Sir Walter's grandson, in 1698 printed an abridgment. The _Tubus Historicus_, or _Historical Perspective_, published in 1631, a brief summary of the fortunes of the four great ancient Empires, which bears Ralegh's name on the title-page, suggests rather the hand of a book-maker. For half a century from the time of the original issue it was an accepted classic. No folio of the period, it has been said, approached it in circulation. Its success tempted Alexander Ross to put forth in 1652 a second part, B.C. 160 to A.D. 1640. The popular favour was enough to have encouraged the author to continue his own design. Two explanations of his interruption of it have been invented. For the first, the eldest authority is W. Winstanley's _English Worthies_, published in 1660. Winstanley, whom Aubrey follows, relates that Ralegh, a few days before his execution, asked Burre how that work of his had sold. So slowly, answered Burre, that it had undone him. Thereupon Ralegh, stepping to his desk, took the other unprinted part of his work into his hand with a sigh, saying 'Ah, my friend, hath the first part undone thee? The second volume shall undo no man; this ungrateful world is unworthy of it.' Then immediately, going to the fireside, he threw it in, and set his foot on it till it was consumed. The story is impossible, if only for the circumstance that the publication notoriously was not a failure. At the period to which the fable is assigned a second edition had been printed. So rapid was its sale, furthered, it may be admitted, by the circumstances of the author's death, that a third edition appeared in 1621. As, moreover, has been with prosaic common sense observed, a manuscript of some 1000 printed pages would have taken very long to burn.