AN EXPENSIVE MEAL [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—"
A book published in 1859 " (Spectator, August 29th) is not the same thing, bibliooraphically, as " the little volume published in 1859 " (Spectator, September 19th). I repeat that Original Poems for Infant Minds was by -Ann and Jane Taylor, and was first published by Darton and Harvey. in 1805-6.- The poem " Idle Richard " was in that first edition. The text was slightly revised now and then in the -lifetime of- Ann Taylor (Mrs. Gilbert), who died in 1866. By 1846 there were no Dartons or Ilarveys left in the original firm, whose copyrights (Ann Taylor had assigned hers) were bought about that date by Messrs.- Hall (not Hill),. Virtue and Co. Mr. Arthur Hall, of that firm, gave my father his corrected copy of the latest authorized text, and it was placed at the disposal of Mr. E. V. Lucas for his Centenary Edition of the Poems (1906). The goat incident happened a quarter of a century before 1831. I do not know what, numerically, the 1859 edition was ; but the twentieth edition was published in 1832. The facts are available in Mr. Lucas's edition, in the Bookseller for September 2nd, 1873, and in the .4utobiography of Mrs. Gilbert (1876).--I am, Sir, &c., F. J. HARVEY DARTON,
The queen's Head, Sutton Valence, Kent.
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