London: by Edw. Allde, for John Tappe, and are to be solde at his shop,, 1612 [1642]. Too much reading is ill for the eye-sight, and too little reading is ill for the insight An extremely rare publication by Nicholas Breton (Britton), a prolific writer in both prose and verse. Among his prodigious output were "light but entertaining miscellanies of popular aphorisms, social observations, and pithy nuggets of popular wisdom" such as the present work, which was one of his most successful publications. In his preface, Breton explains that he has set down a sentence for every day of the year, and that "some of them were written by wiser men than my selfe". The title was entered in the Stationers' Register on 16 January 1606. Dedicated to Sir John Crooke of Buckinghamshire, it went through 12 editions between the first of 1607 and 1670, but the ephemeral nature of such publications means that very few copies of any edition survive. ESTC locates one copy of the first and only two copies of the 1612 edition, which was until 1932 thought to be the earliest surviving edition. Only two copies of this title appear in auction records: a copy of the 1642 edition, sold at Sotheby's in 1946, and the hitherto unrecorded 1611 edition, from the library of Sir Walter Halsey, Bart, which brought £60 in 1932. A copy of Breton's 1597 work Wits Trenchmour, formerly in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield, brought $22,500 in the Pirie sale, Sotheby's New York, 2015. This copy has the collector's bookplate of Thomas Gaisford (1816-1898), eldest son of the noted book collector and Roxburghe Club member of that name, and was likely bound for him by Roger de Coverly. The title leaf is that of the 1612 edition but the rest of the volume comprises the text leaves of the 1642 edition, which is equally rare, ESTC locating only the British Library copy in Britain and the University of Illinois copy in North America. It is unlikely Gaisford knew his copy to be made up; an accompanying letter from J. C. C. Taylor of Sotheby's dated 5 September 1965, to a later owner, Peter Wordie, shows no recognition that this is anything other than an unsophisticated copy of the 1612 edition. Given the survival of so few copies, the accurate collation of different editions was a thankless task in the days before digitisation. Small quarto (181 x 138 mm): A-C4; 12 leaves, unnumbered, as per the 1642 edition, A1 supplied from the 1612 edition. Bound by Roger de Coverly in late 19th-century straight-grain morocco, smooth spine lettered in gilt, gilt fillet border to covers, elaborate gilt cornerpieces, board edges and turn-ins ruled in gilt. Bookplate of Thos. Gaisford. Light foxing to title leaf, second leaf recto and last leaf verso lightly dust-soiled (presumably where once disbound), else very good. ESTC S104693 (1612 ed.) and R21010 (1642).
