“Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,”

and the hours often slip by into the afternoon, and glide noiselessly into twilight, before dinner-time is remembered.  Drifting about only a few days ago, I came by accident upon a magic quarto, shabby enough in its exterior, with one of the covers hanging by the eyelids, and otherwise sadly battered, to the great disfigurement of its external aspect.  I did not remember even to have seen it in the library before, (it turned out to be a new comer,) and was about to pass it by with an unkind thought as to its pauper condition, when it occurred to me, as the lettering was obliterated from the back, I might as well open to the title-page and learn the name at least of the tattered stranger.  And I was amply rewarded for the attention.  It turned out to be “The Novels and Tales of the Renowned John Boccacio, The first Refiner of Italian Prose:  containing A Hundred Curious Novels, by Seven Honorable Ladies and Three Noble Gentlemen, Framed in Ten Days.”  It was printed in London in 1684, “for Awnsham Churchill, at the Black Swan at Amen Corner.”  But what makes this old yellow-leaved book a treasure-volume for all time is the inscription on the first fly-leaf, in the handwriting of a man of genius, who, many years ago, wrote thus on the blank page: 

“To MARIANNE HUNT.

“Her Boccacio (alter et idem) come back to her after many years’ absence, for her good-nature in giving it away in a foreign country to a traveller whose want of books was still worse than her own.

“From her affectionate husband,

“LEIGH HUNT.

“August 23,1839—­Chelsea, England.”

This record tells a most interesting story, and reveals to us an episode in the life of the poet, well worth the knowing.  I hope no accident will ever cancel this old leather-bound veteran from the world’s bibliographic treasures.  Spare it, Fire, Water, and Worms! for it does the heart good to handle such a quarto.

* * * * *

One does not need to look far among the shelves in my friend’s library to find companion-gems of this antiquated tome.  Among so many of

  “The assembled souls of all that men held
  wise,”

there is no solitude of the mind.  I reach out my hand at random, and, lo! the first edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost”!  It is a little brown volume, “Printed by S. Simmons, and to be sold by S. Thomson at the Bishop’s-Head in Duck Lane, by H. Mortlack at the White Hart in Westminster Hall, M. Walker under St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street, and R. Boulten at the Turk’s Head in Bishopsgate Street, 1668.”  Foolish old Simmons deemed it necessary to insert over his own name the following notice, which heads the Argument to the Poem:—­

“THE PRINTER TO THE READER.

“Courteous Reader, There was no Argument at first intended to the Book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withall a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem Rimes not.”