The fragments preserved, and now in my possession, are a goodly portion of one of the most rare books from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor.

The title is a curious woodcut with the words "Gesta Romanorum" engraved in an odd-shaped black letter.

It has also numerous rude wood-cuts throughout.

It was from this very work that Shakespeare in all probability derived the story of the three caskets which in "The Merchant of Venice" forms so integral a portion of the plot.

Only think of that cloaca being supplied daily with such dainty bibliographical treasures! In the Lansdowne Collection at the British Museum is a volume containing three manuscript dramas of Queen Elizabeth's time, and on a fly-leaf is a list of fifty-eight plays, with this note at the foot, in the handwriting of the well-known antiquary, Warburton: "After I had been many years collecting these Manuscript Playes, through my own carelessness and the ignorance of my servant, they was unluckely burned or put under pye bottoms." Some of these "Playes" are preserved in print, but others are quite unknown and perished for ever when used as "pye-bottoms." Mr.W.B.Rye, late Keeper of the Printed Books at our great National Library, thus writes:-- "On the subject of ignorance you should some day, when at the British Museum, look at Lydgate's translation of Boccaccio's 'Fall of Princes,' printed by Pynson in 1494.