&c." It is a pity (at least the author of sold-out volumes may be forgiven for the sentiment) that most of my books are not to be bought: they are not in the market and are only purchasable at old-literature stores, such as Reeves' or Bickers': some day, I hope to find a publisher spirited enough to risk money in a ten-volumed "Edition of my Prose and Poetry complete," &c.; but in the past and present, the subscription system per Mudie and Smith, buying up whole editions at cost price whereby to satiate the reading public, starves at once both author and publisher, and makes impossible these expensive crown octavo editions, "which no gentleman's library ought to be without." Some of the beat smaller pieces in my "Geraldine and other Poems" will be found in Gall & Inglis's Miscellaneous Tupper before mentioned: but my two Oxford Prize Poems, The African Desert and The Suttees, are printed only in the Geraldine volume.
Anecdotes innumerable I could tell, if any cared to hear them, connected with each of my books, as friends or foes have commented upon me and mine in either hemisphere.

In this place I cannot help recording one, as it led to fortunate results.

In 1839 I was travelling outside the Oxford coach to Alma Mater, and a gentleman, arrayed as for an archery party with bow and quiver, climbed up at Windsor for a seat beside me.

He seemed very joyous and excited, and broke out to me with this stanza,-- "How fair and fresh is morn! The dewbeads dropping bright Each humble flower adorn, With coronets bedight, And jewel the rough thorn With tiny globes of light,-- How beautiful is morn! Her scattered gems how bright!" There,--isn't that charming?
he said,--little aware of whom he asked the amiable query.

But when I went on with the second verse, he opened his eyes wider and wider as I added: "There is a quiet gladness On the waking earth, Like the face of sadness Lit with chastened mirth; There is a mine of treasure In those hours of health, Filling up the measure Of creation's wealth!" Of course, discovery of the author was unavoidable: so we collided and coalesced, and I rejoiced to find in this "Angel unaware" no less a celebrity than John Hughes of Donnington Priory, father of the still greater celebrity (then a youth) Tom Hughes of Rugby and "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Some time after I spent several pleasant days at his fine old place in Berks, and made happy acquaintance with the brightest old lady I ever met, his mother, who had known Burns and Byron and Scott; as also with his pleasant good wife and her clever sons, one of whom, in the ripeness of time, married a then charming little girl, the heiress-ward of my host, and since well appreciated in society as a _grande dame_; wife also to one famous for a Rugby in both hemispheres, for rifledom, the White Horse of Wilts, and now full-fledged county judgeship.