d Adonis' only
twenty-two copies have so far been traced. Yet if each of these editions
comprised only 250 copies, the tale of survivors is not large out of a
total of 3,250. 'Printers and publishers . . . strained their resources
to satisfy the demands of eager purchasers,' remarks Sir Sidney Lee; so
presumably the estimate of 250 per edition is a conservative one.

Where are these volumes now? It is difficult to believe they have been
utterly destroyed, leaf by leaf, so that no vestige of them any longer
exists. Surely they will turn up at an auction sale some day, for they
may well be safely ensconced, at this very moment, on the shelves of some
neglected country library. Mr. Duff himself records the discovery
recently of a copy of Caxton's 'Speculum,' 'amongst some rubbish in the
offices of a solicitor at Birkenhead.'

What a vast number of books there is, also, of which only one copy is
known to exist. Of the early editions of Shakespeare's plays alone, more
than a dozen are known by solitary examples. Of such books Hazlitt
remarks that he 'has met in the course of a lengthened career with
treasures which would make a small library, and has beheld no
duplicates.' Probably many of these _incognita_ and _rarissima_ perished
in the great fire of London; others again met their fate solely through
their own popularity, being 'thumbed' to pieces. In 1494 Pynson thought
well enough to reprint Caxton's 'Book of Good Manners'; but of this once
popular book one copy only--that which was formerly in the Amherst
Library--now survives.

Then there is that ancient romance of European popularity 'The four Sons
of Aymon.' One of the great cycle of Charlemagne romances, such was its
popularity that by the end of the thirteenth century it had penetrated
even to Iceland. Many and various were the editions that issued from the
early presses. Caxton printed it about 1489, but of this thick quarto
impression one imperfect copy only has survived. A second edition, as we
learn from the colophon of the third edition, was 'imprinted at London by
Wynken de Worde, the viii daye of Maye, and the year of our lorde
M.CCCCC. iiii'; but a solitary leaf, discovered in the binding of an
ancient book, is the sole representative of an edition that ran probably
into several hundreds.

In the case of some at least of these early books there is another reason
for their disappearance and scarcity. Stephen Vaughan, the indefatigable
agent of Mr. Secret