Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller

(London, 1861). Pen and ink drawing on blue laid paper, with three-line ink manuscript limerick below image, by Lear. Approximately 5 1/2 x 8 in. (140 x 203 mm). In frame, 13 1/4 x 17 1/4 in. (336 x 438 mm).

"There was an Old Man who said, 'How,--shall I flee from this horrible Cow I will sit on this stile, and continue to smile, which may soften the heart of that Cow."

An original nonsense drawing and limerick by Edward Lear. A version of this drawing was published in the 1861 third edition of A Book of Nonsense (p. 52). Justin Schiller records six other versions of this drawing, three in the Morgan Library (Duncan, Mead, and Pickering copies), Private collection (Peto copy), Houghton Library at Harvard, and the Houghton copy.