also Walking Stationers,"--for such is a
portion of the imprint to be found on several of the early Chap Books
printed at Banbury--is to be seen in the Library of the British Museum;
but the richest collection of these celebrated little rarities of Toy
Books is in the venerable Bodleian Library. Among the very interesting
block relics of the past are the pretty cuts to Mrs. Trimmer's "Fabulous
Histories, or The Robins:" these were designed by Thomas Bewick, and
engraved by John Thompson, his pupil, who enriched Whittingham's
celebrated Chiswick Press with his fine and tasteful work. A numerous
series of little fable cuts by the same artist are to be found in this
volume. One of the quaintest sets engraved at an early period by John
Bewick (the Hogarth of Newcastle), are to "The Hermit, or Adventures of
Edward Dorrington," or "Philip Quarll," as it was most popularly known
by that title a century ago. The earliest edition I have seen of Philip
Quarll is as follows: "The Hermit, or the unparalleled sufferings and
surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman who was lately
discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol merchant, upon an uninhabited
island in the South Sea, where he lived above fifty years without any
human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away,"
etc. Westminster: Printed by J. Cluer and A. Campbell, for T. Warner in
Paternoster Row, and B. Creape at The Bible in Jermyn Street, St.
James's, 1727. 8vo, xii pp., map and explanation, 2 pp., and 1 to 26
appendix, with full page copper plate engravings. He was born in St.
Giles', left his master a locksmith, went to sea, married a famous
w----e, listed for a soldier, married three wives, condemned at the Old
Bailey, pardoned by King Charles II., turned merchant, and was
shipwrecked on a desolate island on the coast of Mexico, etc. Other
editions in the British Museum are 1750; 1759 (third); 1780 (twelfth);
1786 (first American edition, from the 6th English edition, Boston,
U.S.A.); 1787 (in French); 1795 (seventeenth); 1807; and also in a
"Storehouse of Stories," edited by Miss C. M. Yonge, 2 vols, 8vo
(Macmillan, 1870-2), Philip Quarll (also Perambulations of a Mouse,
Little Jack, Goody Two Shoes, Blossoms of Morality, Puzzle for a curious
Girl), and others are given. The text is useful to refer to, as the
originals are rare: the woodcuts of several of them are in this volume.
"Philip Quarll," Miss Yonge says, "comes to us with the r