As, however, I desired to meet the wish of many friends and others of the public who often asked for a handsomer form, suggesting a reproduction of Hatchards' quarto, with additional illustrations for the new matter, I applied to Cassell, and made arrangements to have the whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to meet (as Cassell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle and artisan class; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring on a new sale. I did not then know that Cassell's had numerous serials already on hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; and so I was a little surprised and vexed to find that my book was after all to appear as a whole and not in numbers, and that at a higher price, half-a-guinea, in these cheap times quite prohibitive, I protested vainly as to this; as I did also at the unsatisfactory character of the illustrations to the third and fourth series, promised to be equal to Hatchards' first and second, which had cost £2000: but Cassell's additions were cheaply and insufficiently supplied by old German plates, adapted as much as might be to my words for illustration. This manifest inferiority of the last half of the volume, as well as its too great price, stopped the sale,--and after a time with a high hand all the copies were sold off by auction, to the loss of both publisher and author. As I had supplied gratis the plates of Hatchards' edition, buying up the half not mine and giving the other, I found myself thus mulcted in a large sum, for which I have only to show in return about a hundredweight of wood-blocks and stereotypes:--which may be bought by any publisher at bargain price. Altogether the whole affair was unsatisfactory and disappointing. Individuals may be genial, honest, and considerate, but a company or a partnership simply looks to the hardest bargain in the shrewdest way. Of all this I'll complain, vainly enough, no more.
In their several places, many anecdotes about "Proverbial Philosophy" shall duly appear: I may mention one or two now, as timely. When that good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, "You will thank God for this book when your head comes to be as white as mine." Let me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet. When I was writing the concluding essay of the first series, my father (not quite such a prophet as old Hatchard) exhorted me to burn it, as his ambition was to make a lawyer of me, the Church idea having failed from my stammering, and he had very little confidence, as a man of the world, in poetry bringing fortune. However, it did not get burnt, though I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me get it printed instead. The dear good man lived to bless me for it, especially for my essay on Immortality, which I know affected him seriously, and he gave me £2000 as a gift in consequence.