LEAVER THEY HAVE TOUCEED. 487 



serve to sKow you the precise, spot our delightful house and garden 

 occupy in relation to the steep-sti'eeted city of which you retain so 

 lively a remembrance." (The allusion is to Genoa.) Then a note 

 from J. O. Halliwell, whose folio Shakspeare in 16 volumes, fetches 

 when it comes into the market more than 100 guineas. "Pray 

 accej^t my best thanks for your exceedingly clever little volume ; 

 it was truly kind of you sending it to me, and I am your truly and 

 obliged J. 0. Halliwell." And finally four lines of verse subscribed 

 by the hand of Gerald Massey, who more satisfactorily than any other 

 has interpreted Shakspeare's sonnets, and made them, independently 

 of their poetry, as absorbing in interest as a grand historic drama, 

 (They are dated "Toronto, Dec. 5, 1873.") 



"Trust.— When bent almost to breaking, Lord, I kaow 

 Tlay hand doth grasp the middle of the bow ; 

 And when it cracks at last, the strength will be 

 Upgathered in'Thy hand and safe with Thee." — Gerald Massey, 



I now proceed to a volume in my collection which shall be, at all 

 events, a Shakspeare memento, if it does not prove a Shakspeare 

 relic. But first I must evoke the shade of an old bookseller and 

 bibliographer, departed from the scene since 1869 — Mr. Edwin- 

 Jeans. Mr. Jeans' sphere of business was first Exeter in Devon- 

 shire, and then Norwich. He made old English black-letter lite- 

 rature a specialty, and in this department he acquired by experi- 

 ence an extra degi-ee of knowledge. The large booksellers of London 

 and other considerable places, are accustomed, as we know, to issue 

 periodically very full catalogues of the works that accumulate upon 

 their shelves. Minute descriptions are given in these publications 

 of rare and curious books — -the salient and attractive points of each 

 volume are cleverly set forth. Such productions often contain much 

 entertaining and instructive reading. In the composition of an 

 elaborate catalogue, booksellers require the services of such men as 

 Mr. Jeans ; and accordingly in the capacity of a bibliographical 

 expert we find him employed in the later years of his life by the 

 house of WiUis and Sotheran in London. Previously he had assisted 

 in this and other ways the Messrs. Deighton of Cambridge. In 

 London I fell in with an old black-letter small quarto which had once 

 belonged to Mr. Jeans, and which- he had set some store by, having 

 discovered in it, as he believed, an autograph of Shakspeare. I sup- 

 pose the great Shakspearean authorities had finally disagreed in 



