priated fractional relic, not a trunk even; it
fascinates us like a coin of which the legend is almost beyond
identification; there is mystery behind it; we may be on the track of
a discovery which will help to make us famous.

We have all heard of the _Hundred Merry Tales_, rescued by Mr.
Conybeare in the early years of the century from another book, of
which the fragments assisted to form the covers, and how the treasure
was prized till a complete copy occurred in a Continental library and
dispelled the charm. It was pointed out many years ago by the present
writer (_Old English Jest-Books_, 1864, i., Additional Notes) that
Scot, in his _Discovery of Witchcraft_, 1584, quotes the story from
this miscellany of the miller's eels, and enabled us, before the
Goettingen copy was brought under notice, to complete the text, which
is almost undecipherable in the Conybeare (now Huth) one.

The fragmentary state by no means restricts itself to literary items
of insignificant bulk. For, as we see, a potential factor in the
creation of rare books has been a vast temporary popularity, succeeded
by a prolonged period of neglect. The result is before us in the
almost total evanescence of thousands of books extending to hundreds
of pages. Look at Blind Harry's _Wallace_, a large volume, first
printed in folio about 1520; a few leaves are all that remain of the
_editio princeps_; and others have totally vanished. Many of us are
familiar with the tolerably ample dimensions of the service-books of
various uses in the English Church; and yet those of Aberdeen,
Hereford, and York survive only in fragments or _torsi_; and the
modern reprint of the first was formed from a combination of several
imperfect originals. A similar fate has all but overtaken such
excessively popular works as Coverdale's Bible, 1535, and Fox's
_Martyrs_, 1563, an absolutely perfect copy of either of which I have
never beheld.

Henry Oxinden, of Barham in Kent, was the earliest recorded collector
of old English plays, and bound up his 122 dramatic possessions in six
volumes before 1647. He has left a list of them in his manuscript
common-place book. Tears almost steal into our eyes as we read the
titles: the _Hamlet_ of 1603, the _Taming of the Shrew_, 1594, _Ralph
Roister Doister_. Of the first we know well enough the history to
date: two copies, both imperfect. The second exists in the unique
Inglis, Heber, and Devonshire example; it is mentioned in Longman's