ad by easy perusal instead of costly purchase: and thus he is cheated
of his second edition. Most authors know how their interests are
affected wholesale by that modern system of subscription libraries: but
cheapness pleases the voracious multitude, and so in this competitive
free-trade era the units who feed those devourers are swallowed up
themselves. However, "what must be, must,"--_che sara sara_,--and I care
not even to complain of what cannot be helped, and wins fame to the one,
whilst it does good to the many, though financially unprofitable to
individual authorship.

In the scarce copy of "AEsop Smith" now before me, I find a few
manuscript notes of mine perhaps worth transcribing. One has it, "This
book is actually autobiographical; but (as Rabelais did) I often mix up
irrelevant and extraneous matter by way of gilding pills, &c., and that
&c. is like one of Coke's upon Littleton, full of hints to be
amplified." Further, "Let readers remember that this book was written
and published long before recent changes in our laws of marriage and
divorce and libel: also when no Englishman dared to go bearded, and no
civilian was permitted to be armed. In advocacy of all these things and
many more, then unheard of but now common, I was in advance of the age;
and in some degree my private notions conduced to very wholesome public
changes." Again: "When Rabelais is diffuse, or a buffoon, or worse, it
may be to throw disputers off the scent as to his real mark of satire or
philosophy. Perhaps, like Liguori, AEsop has written a book for the sake
of a sentence, and veils his true intent in a designed mist of all sorts
of miscellaneous matter. I shan't tell you clearly, but you may guess
for yourselves." The book includes a hundred and thirty original fables,
essayettes, anecdotes, tirades, songs, and musings, all of which
thronged my brain as I cantered along, and were set down in black and
white as soon as I got home. Stay: some were even pencilled in the
saddle,--in especial this, which became very popular afterwards,
particularly in the charming musical composition thereof by Mrs.
Stafford Bush, and as sung by Mr. Fox at St. James's Hall and elsewhere.
It was printed in an earliest edition of my Ballads and Poems (Hall &
Virtue), and is headed there, "Written in the saddle on the crown of my
hat." I reproduce it here for the sake of that heading, though it occurs
also in my extant volume of poems without it:--

_The Ea