This edition on handmade paper is limited 
 153 copies, of which this is No.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT SINKER, D.D. 
 
 LIBRARIAN OF TRINITY COLLEGE ; 
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL BOHEMIAN 
 
 SOCIETY OF SCIENCES ; 
 AUTHOR OF MEMORIALS OF THE HON. ION KEITH-FALCONER. 
 
 (JTambriUge : 
 DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, 
 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1891
 
 the youth 
 
 Who loved the Poet, hoped to see him set 
 
 Within the Library of Trinity, 
 
 One great man more o' the house, among the great, 
 
 Who grace that still Valhalla, ranged in row, 
 
 Along the chequered marbles of the floor, 
 
 Two stately ranks to where the fragrant limes 
 
 Look thro' the far end window, cool and green. 
 
 A band it is, of high companionship, 
 
 Chief, Newton, and the broad-browed Verulam, 
 
 And others only less than these in arts 
 
 Or science ; names that England holds on high.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORP 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE substance of the following pages originally 
 appeared in "Notes and Queries" in 1881 and 1882. 
 The then editor, the late Mr Turle, conceived the idea 
 of a series of papers on collegiate and other Libraries ; 
 and several Librarians contributed more or less full 
 descriptions of the Libraries under their care. One of 
 these, that on Eton College Library, by the Rev. F. 
 St John Thackeray, has since been republished in 
 collected form. 
 
 While I have corrected occasional slips here and 
 there, and have made a few slight additions, I have not, 
 with one exception, made any material change in the 
 present volume, as there has been no very important 
 accession to the Library during the last few years. 
 The appearance, however, of the great work on the 
 Architectural History of the University of Cambridge 
 s. b
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 by the late Professor Willis and Mr J. W. Clark, now 
 Registrary of the University, has enabled me to add 
 some very interesting details as to the buildings of the 
 earlier libraries of the College, as well as of the present 
 Library. 
 
 To have rewritten the whole book would doubt- 
 less have been to improve it in many ways ; but 
 this was a more ambitious flight than I was prepared 
 for. A professed history, written de novo, of so large 
 and so old a Library, would be a very formidable under- 
 taking, and would of necessity grow to a very much 
 greater size than the present small volume. Moreover, 
 it was obvious that to dwell on elements in the Library 
 which might fairly be assumed to be common to all 
 great Libraries would be superfluous, though no one 
 knows better than myself how large is the mass 
 of topics of interest which perforce I have omitted. 
 However, ex pede Hemtlem. 
 
 As regards the illustrations, for the frontispiece and 
 the four fac-similes of MSS. I am indebted to the 
 skill of Mr A. G. Dew-Smith, of Trinity College. For 
 the woodcut representing the interior of the north-east 
 corner of the Library, which forms the tail-piece of 
 chapter ii, I have to thank the Syndics of the Uni- 
 versity Press, who kindly lent the block which had 
 already been used for Prof. Willis and Mr Clark's book.
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 It will be noticed that the picture represents a state of 
 things before the dwarf-cases had been introduced into 
 the Class. 
 
 The tail-pieces to the chapters, other than chapter 
 ii, are from drawings by Miss Ellen Nichols. That to 
 Chapter i represents the old Library of the College 
 during the seventeenth century ; the others are from 
 the carving of Grinling Gibbons, still one of the most 
 charming ornaments of the Library. The remaining 
 illustrations represent the building itself under various 
 aspects, and the Byron Statue. 
 
 The verses at the back of the title-page are from 
 a poem by the late Tom Taylor, sometime Fellow 
 of Trinity. It originally appeared in the pages of 
 Punch, when the bust of Tennyson, which had been 
 given to the College, was, by the Master and Seniors, 
 ordered to be placed in the vestibule of the Library, 
 and not in the Library itself. It was held in those days 
 that the bust of no living person might be placed within 
 the sacred precincts. 
 
 I feel strongly that the very richness and abun- 
 dance of the materials at my disposal makes it 
 difficult to do anything like justice to it ; and I can 
 but offer my little volume as a very humble contribu- 
 tion to the subject. To a Trinity man, at any rate, 
 who may fairly claim, like one of old, that he is
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 OVK darjfiov TrdXew? iroXinj^, it will, I hope, be not 
 without interest to learn something of the history and 
 contents of a Library, which all members of the College 
 agree in viewing as so splendid a possession. 
 
 R. S. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY, 
 Aug. 28, 1891.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE INCUNABULA 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE INCUNABULA (continued) 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS 86 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE CAPELL COLLECTION 115 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE BYRON STATUE 125
 
 LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 INTERIOR OF LIBRARY Frontispiece 
 
 OLD LIBRARY, GREAT COURT PAGE 20 
 
 FROM MILTON MS., 'LYCIDAS' 32 
 
 INTERIOR OF NORTH-EAST CORNER OF LIBRARY . 37 
 
 LORD BACON'S LETTER TO TRINITY COLLEGE . 60 
 
 VIEW OF LIBRARY FROM RIVER .... 86 
 
 LETTER OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON .... 96 
 
 VIEW OF LIBRARY FROM NEVILE'S COURT . . 105 
 
 PAGE OF MS. OF THACKERAY'S 'ESMOND' . . 115 
 
 THORWALDSEN'S STATUE OF BYRON .... 125
 
 Cfje gftrarp of Crimtp College, Cambridge, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 THE name of Trinity College carries us back to 
 1546, when, in the last year of his reign, Henry VIII. 
 determined to develope an existing College, King's Hall, 
 into a larger foundation, by associating with it the neigh- 
 bouring College of Michaelhouse and sundry smaller 
 hostels, and further by largely endowing the united 
 foundation from the spoils of the monasteries. Michael- 
 house and King's Hall were founded in 1324 and I337 1 
 respectively, and each, it need not be said, possessed a 
 library of its own. It might therefore have been hoped 
 that Trinity Library would contain numerous treasures 
 inherited from them. Such, however, as we shall see, 
 is unfortunately not the case. 
 
 1 This is the date of the actual foundation by Edward III., in pur- 
 suance of an uncompleted plan of his father; but the first appointment of 
 a Warden of the King's Scholars goes back to 1316. 
 
 S. I
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 As regards Michaelhouse, very little seems to be 
 known of any of the buildings, but we find Richard 
 Holme, who was Warden of King's Hall from 1418 to 
 1422, leaving a large sum of money for the repair of the 
 Library of Michaelhouse, and also many valuable theo- 
 logical books 1 . These were of course all MSS., but none 
 of them, or indeed any of the Michaelhouse MSS., can 
 be traced in the present Library. As regards printed 
 books, two or three once belonging to Michaelhouse still 
 remain, with the inscription, " Sum domus Michaelis," 
 or some similar note on the first leaf. One of these (the 
 only one whose earlier history is traceable) is Peter 
 Comestor's Historia Scholastica (Argentinae, 1503), which 
 is inscribed " Liber sci Michaelis ex dono W. Filey." 
 This donor (B.A. 1505-6) is mentioned by Fox (Acts and 
 Monuments, Vol. III. p. 380, ed. 1684) as a prominent 
 opponent of Latimer at Cambridge. Fox calls him 
 Master of Michaelhouse, but this is apparently an error. 
 Dr Filey lived to see his college absorbed in the new 
 foundation, and died in 1549. 
 
 King's Hall, like Trinity College, had an old and a 
 new library, the latter, which was built partly by sub- 
 scription 2 , being begun in 1416-7 and finished in 
 1421-2. Long before this, however, in 1393, we find 
 an allusion to the older Library in the record of a 
 1 Willis-Clark, n. 399. * Ibid. p. 441.
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 bargain between King's Hall and its next neighbour, 
 the Hospital of St John. Again, in the account-book 
 for 1394-5, is a charge of five shillings for twenty-three 
 chains for the books and a like sum for " one lock and 
 thirty-three keys," the latter being for the Master and 
 thirty-two Fellows 1 . At the beginning of the same 
 volume is a list of the books then in the Library of 
 King's Hall, eighty-seven in number, arranged under 
 the heads of libri grammaticales, dialectici, de medicina, 
 juris civilis, juris canonici, tJieologie, and juris canonici 
 again. The new Library, as we have said, was finished 
 in 1421-2; and in the account-book for that year are 
 numerous charges for the interior fittings, and also for 
 binding, with various skins for the same. 
 
 As regards the position of the two buildings, Mr 
 Clark points out that the older Library was evidently on 
 the north side of the inner quadrangle of King's Hall, 
 that is, the side adjoining the Hospital of St John. 
 The case of the new Library is less certain, but it was 
 probably on the west side of the same quadrangle, so 
 that it would practically coincide with the line of rooms 
 which now look down the Bowling-Green 2 . 
 
 What then have we inherited from the King's Hall 
 Library ? The account-books of the College still survive 
 in great part, in twenty-six folio volumes ; but of all 
 
 1 Willis-Clark, p. 44 , n.^i. 2 Ibid. p. 459. 
 
 I 2
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 other MSS. and of the printed books there is not, so far 
 as I am aware, a single representative in the present 
 Library. 
 
 With the absorption of the various earlier founda- 
 tions to form Trinity College, great changes were of 
 course inevitable, and we must now speak of the 
 original library of the new foundation. It has generally 
 been stated that this was commenced in the reign of 
 Queen Mary, because in an order issued by Elizabeth 
 (December, 1560), for providing materials for building 
 part of the College, she refers to the " librarye lately 
 begonne in the time of our late deere syster Quene 
 Marye." Mr Clark shews, however, that for some time 
 after Queen Mary's reign, the Library existed only in 
 idea, for in a plan of the Great Court, now preserved in 
 the Library, and probably made about 1595, two rival 
 sites are suggested for the Library, the dimensions of 
 which shew that neither was ultimately chosen. More- 
 over in 1556 Dr John Christopherson, Master of the 
 College, bequeathed his books and MSS. to the Library 
 " so sone as it shall be builded " : and Dr Robert 
 Beaumont, also Master, leaves in 1567, 40 to "y e 
 buildinge of a Librarie 1 ." 
 
 When this Library was actually begun it is impossi- 
 ble to say exactly, though doubtless somewhere between 
 
 1 Willis-Clark, n. 480.
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 5 
 
 1592 and 1598, for which years the Bursar's books have 
 not been preserved, and finished between 1599 and 1601. 
 It was a room measuring 75 feet by 30, and formed the 
 uppermost floor of that part of the Great Court which 
 stands between the Clock-Tower and the Master's Lodge. 
 It may fairly be conjectured, but is not certainly known, 
 that, for the first half century of its existence, Trinity 
 College made use of the Library of King's Hall built in 
 1421-2. 
 
 By the beginning of the seventeenth century, how- 
 ever, as we have said, the books were transferred to their 
 new home ; and here, as we shall see, they remained for 
 nearly a hundred years. Once indeed they were in 
 special peril, when in 1665 a fire destroyed the roof of 
 the Library, but happily did no further damage. 
 
 If we now pass from the building to the books, we 
 find that the history of the Library is mainly a record 
 of successive donations. Doubtless the troublous days 
 of the middle of the sixteenth century would not be 
 favourable to the development of the Library ; but these 
 once over, it is clear that the growth was rapid. Among 
 the earliest donors to the Library at this period three 
 may be specially singled out: (i) Sir Edward Stanhope 
 (elected Fellow in 1564), the founder of the Librarian- 
 ship, the first holder of the office being William Hickes, 
 appointed in 1609. Among the books bequeathed to
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 the Library by Sir Edward Stanhope, one is particularly 
 deserving of note, a magnificent copy on vellum of the 
 Sarum Missal, printed by Pynson in 1500. (2) Thomas 
 Skeffington (elected Fellow in 1571), who bequeathed a 
 large number of books, in every volume of which is 
 written the loyal motto, dvrnreXapyiav servo. (3) Dr 
 Thomas Nevile, the munificent head of the College from 
 1593 to 1615, by whom the cloisters were built, yet 
 preserving his name, Nevile's Court. Among the many 
 books given by Dr Nevile to the Library may specially 
 be mentioned the great MS. known as the Canterbury 
 or Eadwin's Psalter, from the name of the writer, a 
 monk of Canterbury in the early part of the twelfth 
 century. In this is the threefold Latin Psalter (Roman, 
 Gallican, and Jerome's), and an interlinear Anglo-Saxon 
 and Norman-French gloss. Every Psalm is adorned 
 with its special illustration, very similar to those found 
 in the Utrecht Psalter. 
 
 Among other donors whose names it will suffice to 
 mention were John Christopherson (Master, 1553-58), 
 William Bill (Master, 1551-53, 1558-61), Robert Beau- 
 mont (Master, 1561-67), and John Whitgift (Master, 
 1567-77), afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 Passing now to the seventeenth century, we may 
 note the following important benefactors to the Library: 
 Sylvius Elwis (formerly Chaplain ; his name occurs on
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 the list of Chaplains as late as 1637 '> the booksTor the 
 two following years are missing, and in that for 1640 the 
 name does not appear); Thomas Whalley, Fellow 
 (elected in 1591), and Vice-Master, who left in 1637 his 
 books and ;ioo to the College; Dame Anne Sadleir 1 , 
 daughter of Sir Edward Coke, who gave a valuable 
 collection of books and coins ; Dr James Duport (Dean 
 of Peterborough, 1664-79), wn o left two thousand 
 volumes of books to the College ; and Dr John Pearson 
 (Master, 1662-73), afterwards Bishop of Chester, to 
 whom we owe the well-known Exposition of the Creed, 
 Besides these, good Bishop John Racket (elected Fellow, 
 1614; Bishop of Lichfield, 1661-70) must not be lost 
 sight of. This worthy prelate not only presented a 
 number of books to the Library, in each of which is 
 pasted his portrait with the wholesome motto, " Serve 
 God and be chearful," but also rebuilt for the College 
 Garret's Hostel (now Bishop's Hostel, in memory of his 
 liberality), the rents of the new building being devoted 
 to Library purposes for ever. 
 
 One more name may suffice, that of Sir Henry 
 Newton, who assumed the surname of Puckering, on 
 becoming his uncle's heir. He was the son of Sir 
 Adam Newton, who had been tutor to Henry, Prince of 
 
 1 The spelling of the name varies, but Dame Sadleir herself always 
 spells it as above.
 
 8 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Wales. Sir Henry Puckering gave to the College in 
 1690-1, a most valuable collection of books, including 
 many French and Italian works. Of one special trea- 
 sure of this collection, I shall speak subsequently. 
 During the mastership of Dr Barrow, the successor of 
 Dr Pearson, the need of more room for the rapidly 
 increasing Library began to be greatly felt; and, mainly 
 through Dr Barrow's exertions, large funds were raised 
 to erect a new building. It is said that Dr Barrow had 
 tried to induce the Heads of Houses to favour the plan 
 of building a Theatre for the University which should 
 rival the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford ; failing in this 
 attempt, he resolved to shew how well-founded were his 
 hopes of support, by erecting a building equally grand 
 in its way in his own College ; and accordingly, so says 
 the tradition, himself with his servants staked out the 
 ground that very afternoon. 
 
 He appealed for help to present and former members 
 of the College, and his appeal was heartily responded to. 
 In the subscription list, a very lengthy one, his name 
 appears as a donor of 100; we also find Dr James 
 Duport giving 200, Dr Thomas Gale 60, the Hon. 
 John Montagu (afterwards Master) 228, the Hon. John 
 North (afterwards Master) ,100, Bishop Pearson 228, 
 Roger Pepys (brother of the diarist) 20, Archbishop 
 Bancroft 100, and the Duke of Somerset $OO.
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren was chosen as the architect, 
 and gave his services gratuitously. It is worth noting 
 that Wren's original plan was to have made a circular 
 library, 65 feet in width and 90 feet in height, to which, 
 access was to have been given by " a double staircase 
 leading to a hexastyle portico 1 ." This plan, however, 
 was not approved of, and drawings from which the 
 present stately building was erected were accordingly 
 made 2 . 
 
 The work was actually begun on Feb. 23, 1675-6; 
 in 1680, the lead was bought for the roof; in 1685-6, 
 timber was bought for the flooring ; before the end of 
 1685, the bookcases were begun; the marble pavement 
 was laid down in 1688 ; the masons were finally paid off 
 before the end of 1690; between March 1691 and March 
 1693, the carved work, of flowers, fruit, and coats of 
 arms by Grinling Gibbons, was added; and in 1694-5, 
 the books were moved in. The whole cost was 16,425 ; 
 though of this sum a slight amount defrayed certain 
 work in the neighbouring part of the College. 
 
 The old Library was now broken up into a set of 
 rooms ; these, to the present generation will long be 
 
 1 Willis-Clark, n. 533. 
 
 2 The original drawings of Wren, including those of the rejected circular 
 design, are now preserved in the Library of All Souls' College, Oxford. 
 An interesting account of them, with Wren's explanation at full length, is 
 given in the Builder for Aug. 1 1, 1860.
 
 10 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 associated with the honoured name of Adam Sedgwick, 
 who lived in them for many years and died in them in 
 
 1873- 
 
 It will be convenient to add at this stage that the 
 
 Library is a room of 200 feet in length, 42 in width and 
 37 in height ; lighted by thirteen windows on each side, 
 and one at each end. That ,at the South end, though 
 its effect is not unpleasing, is a curious mass of ana- 
 chronism. To bring in the two most famous sons of 
 Trinity, we have here Newton presented to George III., 
 by a female figure apparently representing Fame, while 
 Bacon sits by as though recording the fact. This 
 window, which is from a design by Cipriani, was set up 
 
 in 1774-5- 
 
 The Library evidently became one of the "lions" of 
 Cambridge, and different royal visitors were taken to 
 inspect it: Charles II. and his Queen in 1681, while the 
 building was yet in progress; William III. in 1689, 
 when the work was nearly completed ; Queen Anne in 
 1705; and George I. in 1717. 
 
 Besides these royal personages, who have not left 
 their opinion as to the Library on record, it is interesting 
 to note the impression left on one or two observant 
 visitors of less exalted rank. Abraham de la Pryme, 
 then an undergraduate at St John's, notes in his diary 
 for Jan. I, 1693, "I went lately to take a view of the new
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. II 
 
 library of Trinity College in this University, and it is 
 indeed a most magnificent piece of work within and it is 
 very well built throughout " (Diary, p. 27). On Ralph 
 Thoresby's first visit (May 16, 1695) the books cannot 
 at any rate have been completely moved in, for he 
 speaks of " the stately library, which is the noblest case 
 of all, but not yet furnished " (Vol. I. 294). The most 
 interesting account, however, is that of Zach. Conr. von 
 Uffenbach, who visited Cambridge in July and August, 
 1710. He gives a detailed description of the building, 
 and speaks at length of the MSS. which he carefully 
 examined. The internal fittings pleased him: "It is 
 very neat, made like little closets an excellent device, 
 because in the first place you can stow away many more 
 books, on both sides and on the walls ; and in the next 
 place, it is good for those who study there, as they are 
 not put out by seeing others facing them 1 ." The ar- 
 rangement of the books, however, did not please him, 
 "as it is not according to subjects. ..but according to 
 benefactors, as they have been bequeathed. This is 
 probably done to allure others by such good examples." 
 Gibbons' carving struck him with admiration, as well it 
 might ; " the carving and the foliage on the panels and 
 bookcases is so slender, that it quivers when you touch 
 the panelling below 2 ." 
 
 1 Prof. Mayor's trans, p. 125. 2 Ibid. p. 153.
 
 12 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 It is pleasant to think that we may connect with the 
 early days of the " new Library " two men unsurpassed 
 in their several ways, Newton and Bentley, the latter of 
 whom was Master from 1700 to 1742. Of both of these, 
 numerous relics exist in the Library. Of Newton, I may 
 specially note a large volume of autograph letters of 
 Newton himself, and of Cotes, his successor as Lucasian 
 Professor, who superintended the publication of the 
 second edition of the Principia. From one letter in this 
 volume we learn that even the great Sir Isaac dabbled 
 in South Sea stock. 
 
 The history of Bentley's troublous College life is well 
 known from his memoirs by Bishop Monk and Professor 
 Jebb, and the correspondence published by Bishop 
 Wordsworth. In spite of his prodigious learning, it is 
 to be most devoutly hoped that the College will never 
 see such a master again. A great mass of papers, printed 
 and MS., bearing on Bentley's numerous conflicts and 
 having rather a local interest, is preserved in the Library. 
 Besides this, however, there is much of great value 
 collected or noted by him with a view to his projected 
 edition of the Greek Testament. These were be- 
 queathed in the first instance to Richard Bentley, 
 nephew of the "awful Aristarch," and from him the 
 College received most of what it now possesses. Among 
 these treasures are such things as Mico's and Rulotta's
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 13 
 
 collations of the Codex Vaticanus, Wetstein's collation 
 of the Codex Ephraemi, the famous Paris palimpsest, and 
 the Codex Augiensis itself, a Graeco-Latin MS. of St 
 Paul's Epistles of the ninth century. 
 
 The same steady increase which we have seen cha- 
 racterizing the seventeenth century is carried on in the 
 eighteenth, during which a large number of gifts of con- 
 siderable value were made to the Library. It will be 
 most convenient to go through the chief of these, as 
 before, in chronological order. 
 
 John Laughton, an intimate friend of Sir Isaac 
 Newton, Librarian of Trinity College (1669-73), and 
 afterwards Librarian of the University, and Canon of 
 Lichfield and of Worcester, left at his death, in 1712, a 
 very large collection of books to the Library. In 1727 
 came a large bequest from Edward Rud, formerly 
 Fellow and rector of North Runton, in Norfolk. His 
 Diary, mostly written during the time that he was a 
 resident Fellow, was edited a few years ago from the 
 MS. in the Library by Dr Luard for the Cambridge 
 Antiquarian Society, and will well repay perusal for the 
 light it throws on university life at that time. A few 
 years later came the very important collection of Gale 
 MSS., still forming a separate class in the Library. 
 These had been amassed by Dr Thomas Gale, Dean of 
 York, after whose death, in 1702, they passed to his son
 
 14 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Roger, who gave them to the College in 1738. Of the 
 contents of this very varied collection I shall not speak 
 at present, beyond mentioning the MS. of the Lexicon 
 of Photius, from a transcript of which by Porson an 
 edition was published in 1822. A list of the Gale MSS. 
 will be found in Bernard's Catalogus MSS. Angl. ct 
 
 Hib. 
 
 Other donors to the Library in this period were Dr 
 John Paris, Senior Fellow, who bequeathed his books in 
 1742; Beaupre Bell, of Beaupr6 Hall, in Norfolk, who 
 was evidently animated by a very warm feeling to his 
 College, to which, in 1745, he left a large number of 
 books and a sum of money; John Colbatch, Bentley's 
 keen adversary (ob. 1749) ; and Robert Smith (Master, 
 1742-68), founder of the prizes which bear his name. 
 In 1779 a rare piece of good fortune befell the Library, 
 in the gift on the part of Mr Edward Capell, the 
 Shakspearian critic, of his valuable collection of books, 
 consisting mainly of early editions of Shakspeare, 
 precious folios and still more precious quartos, and of 
 Elizabethan and other early English literature. In 
 compliance with Mr Capeli's express desire, it was ruled 
 by the Master and Seniors (June 26, 1779) that none of 
 these books should ever be allowed to leave the Library ; 
 and this wise rule, strictly adhered to, has ensured the 
 integrity of the collection.
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 15 
 
 Besides the accessions of books above mentioned, 
 an event of a different kind in the history of the Library 
 in the eighteenth century must not be overlooked the 
 robbery of books by Henry Justice. This unhappy 
 man was a Fellow-Commoner of the College, and had 
 removed a large number of the Library books to his 
 rooms in the Temple, where, on a search-warrant being 
 obtained, they were found. The main line of his defence 
 at his trial (March, 1736) was a curious one, that being 
 a Fellow-Commoner, he was a member of the founda- 
 tion, and therefore could not be said to steal when 
 he himself was in a certain sense part owner. Such a 
 view was, of course, entirely untenable, and Justice was 
 transported (see Proceedings at Session of Peace and 
 Oyer and Terminer for the City of London and County of 
 Middlesex, March, 1736). Among the books thus stolen 
 were a copy of the Complutensian Polyglot, and of the 
 Aldine Bible of 1518, besides a large number of classical 
 and archaeological works. Some remarks as to the 
 family of Henry Justice will be found in Davies's 
 Memoir of t fie York Press, p. 193. 
 
 During the present century the Library has gone on 
 steadily increasing, both by gifts and purchases. In the 
 year 1825 came three large accessions in the books 
 bequeathed by Prof. Dobree, the successor of Person 
 and Monk, and by the Rev. Robert Hole, late Senior
 
 1 6 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Fellow, and those given by the Ven. R. W. Evans, late 
 Archdeacon of Westmoreland. In 1831, however, came 
 a bequest of exceptional value in the books that had 
 been collected by Dr Matthew Raine (B.A. 1782), 
 formerly Fellow of the College and Master of the 
 Charterhouse, which were first left to his brother Jona- 
 than Raine (B.A. 1787), also formerly Fellow, and which 
 came on the death of the latter into the possession of 
 the College. This exceedingly precious collection con- 
 tains a large number of early printed Greek books, 
 Aldine and otherwise. Thus, of Greek Aldines con- 
 fining ourselves, for the sake of brevity, to those printed 
 in the fifteenth century we have, e.g., the grammars of 
 Theodorus Gaza, &c. (1495), Theocritus, Hesiod, &c. 
 (1495), a very fine copy of Aristotle (1495-98), the 
 TJiesaurus, &c. (1496), the Greek grammar of Urbanus 
 Bolzanius (1497), the Greek Psalter (1497 or 1498) 
 Aristophanes (1498), Epistola Grcecce (1499). Of Greek 
 books, other than Aldines, printed at Venice in the 
 fifteenth century, there are in the Raine collection the 
 Phalaris, &c. (1498), and ^Esop (1498) printed by Barth. 
 Justinopolitanus and his partners, and the Etymologicum 
 Magnum (1499), Simplicius (1499), an d Ammonius 
 1500), printed by Calliergus. Of Greek books printed 
 at Florence in the above-mentioned period is the Homer 
 of 1488, and most of the Greek books printed by Laur.
 
 HISTORY OP THE LIBRARY. 1 7 
 
 Francisci de Alopa, as the AntJwlogia(\4f)^) y Apollonius 
 Rhodius (1496), Callimachus (c. 1496), Euripides (c. 
 1496), Gnomes (c. 1496), also the Lucian (1496), printed 
 apparently with the same types as those of the scliolia 
 to the Callimachus mentioned above. To the above 
 list may also be added Isocrates (Milan, 1493). I may 
 note that the copy of Callimachus is that which was 
 sold at the Duke of Roxburghe's sale in 1813, where it 
 fetched 6$ (see Dibdin, Bibl. Spenc. I. 291). To go on 
 enumerating the chief books of so rich a bequest would 
 occupy too much space, and I will content myself with 
 noting a beautiful copy of the Complutensian Polyglot, 
 finer and taller than the one which excited Justice's 
 cupidity, a copy of the Aldine Greek Bible of 1518, and 
 among books not Greek a copy of Cicero De Officiis, 
 printed at Mentz in 1466 by Fust and Schceffer, the 
 oldest printed book in the library. 
 
 Passing along in chronological order, we have in 1834 
 the bequest of the Rev. Daniel Pettiward, a very loyal 
 son of Trinity, who, in addition to the large collection 
 of books, left also (besides two plain ones of lava and 
 of Devonshire marbles respectively) the beautiful 
 table of varied Italian and other marbles that forms 
 so pleasing an ornament to the upper end of the 
 Library. In 1842 Archdeacon Wrangham left the 
 College 1,000 volumes of pamphlets, of the most 
 s. 2
 
 1 8 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 varied description imaginable. For an interesting ac- 
 count of this distinguished man and of his dispute 
 with Trinity Hall see Gunning's Reminiscences, vol. II. 
 pp. 12 sqq., ed. 2. 
 
 In 1855 Mrs Hare, widow of Archdeacon Julius 
 Hare, late Fellow of the College, presented to the 
 Library, in pursuance of her late husband's wishes, 4950 
 volumes, a very large number being of German theology 
 and philosophy. One hardly knows whether to be 
 amused or angry at the way in which (so at least it is 
 currently reported) the College missed the chance of 
 receiving an exceedingly fine collection, one part of 
 which would have given us for French what the Hare 
 books did for German. It is said that the possessor of 
 this collection, a distinguished Fellow of the College, 
 now deceased, communicated to a brother Fellow, who 
 has also passed away, his intention of bequeathing his 
 books to the College. This laudable purpose was balked 
 by the answer, " Nonsense ! there are far more books in 
 the Library already than any one can read." The result 
 was that on the owner's death the collection was sold 
 and dispersed. 
 
 In 1863 came one of those great gifts which may 
 fall to some libraries once or twice in the course of their 
 history, to most never. In that year died the Rev. 
 William Grylls (B.A. 1808), a former scholar of the
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 1 9 
 
 College, who had, through a long life, industriously 
 collected rare and choice works. Being a bachelor he 
 chose the College as the heir to his books, attaching to 
 his bequest the condition that the volumes should be 
 kept together as a distinct collection. In order to fulfil 
 this requirement, the central floor of the Library, here- 
 tofore left intact, was edged on each side with dwarf oak 
 cases, which now contain the 9,600 volumes taken of 
 Mr Grylls's Library, as well as the Hare books and 
 some others. The Grylls collection, besides a large 
 number of valuable works of reference of the choicer 
 kind, is especially strong in early printed and rare books. 
 Of fifteenth-century books, for instance, there are rather 
 more than three hundred, none of which, however, is 
 English printed. By way of illustration, and for the 
 sake of brevity, I will note the books in the Grylls 
 collection due to two famous printers, Arn. Pannartz 
 (with or without Conr. Sweynheym) at Rome, and 
 Vindel. de Spira at Venice. Of the former there are 
 Roderici Sanctii Spectilum Vita Humana, 1468 ; Cy- 
 priani Epist. et Opusc., 1471 ; Suetonius, De XII. 
 Ccesaribus, 1472 ; Statii Sylv&, &c., 1475 ; Thorn, de 
 Aquino De Veritate Cath. Fidei, 1475 ; Josephi Histo- 
 riarum Libri VII. , 1475. Of the latter there are 
 Tacitus, 1469-70 ; Sallust, 1470 ; Quintus Curtius, 
 1470-71 ; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, &c., 1471 ; 
 
 22
 
 20 
 
 HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Valerius Maximus, 1471 ; Martial (c. 1471); Boccaccio, 
 Genealogies Deorum Gentilitim, 1472 ; Strabo, 1472. 
 
 Since the year 1863 a steady stream of donations 
 has poured into the Library, of which I shall only 
 mention the 1,000 volumes from the collection of Dr 
 Whewell, formerly Master, whose name will long be in- 
 dissolubly connected with the college of which he was 
 for many years so distinguished and so munificent a 
 head.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 THE total number of volumes in the Library is about 
 8o ; ooo, of which 1918 are MSS. These MSS. are dis- 
 posed in three of the four locked compartments, the 
 remaining one being devoted to early printed books. 
 
 Beginning with Oriental MSS., there is an interesting 
 collection of Sanskrit MSS., eighty-eight in number, of 
 which there is a printed critical catalogue by Prof. 
 Aufrecht. These MSS. are, with a few exceptions, a 
 comparatively recent acquisition on the part of the 
 College, and are mostly copies of older MSS., made 
 about the end of the last or the beginning of the present 
 century. The mass of them formerly belonged to Mr 
 John Bentley, author of An Historical View of the Hindu 
 Astronomy, at whose death they came into the posses- 
 sion of Dr Mill, late Regius Professor of Hebrew and 
 Fellow of Trinity College. From his executors the col- 
 lection was acquired for the College in 1858. There are 
 also a few Pali MSS., of which, besides those mentioned 
 in Prof. Aufrecht's catalogue, some were given a few
 
 22 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 years ago by the late Mr R. C. Childers, the accom- 
 plished editor of the well-known Pali Dictionary. 
 
 Another collection of Oriental MSS., consisting 
 mainly of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian MSS., the mass 
 of which once belonged to Dr Thomas Gale, Dean of 
 York (ob. A.D. 1702), may be found described in the 
 critical catalogue of the late Prof. E.- H. Palmer. In 
 this are numerous copies of the Koran, and of works 
 on Arabian theology, philosophy, and mathematics. 
 Two MSS. in the collection may claim a passing notice : 
 one is a beautifully illuminated copy of the works of the 
 Persian poet Jami, written A.D. 1531. One of the 
 numerous large illustrations in this volume has attracted 
 some attention as being a perfect representation of the 
 favourite modern game of polo, an enthusiast for which 
 recently obtained the leave of the College to have the 
 page photographed. The other MS. is in Carshunic 
 (Arabic in Syriac letters), and contains some early 
 apocryphal Christian writings, the " Apocalypse of Paul," 
 the " Death and Assumption of the Virgin," traditionally 
 ascribed to St John, the "Testament of Adam to 
 Seth," &c. 
 
 There are also about twenty-five Hebrew MSS. in 
 the Library, parts of the Bible (Isaiah, Psalms, Esther, 
 &c.), Biblical commentaries, liturgical works, &c. I 
 may mention a valuable early fourteenth century MS. of
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 2$ 
 
 part of the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, specially 
 interesting as preserving the Anti-Christiana intact, and 
 as a very different sort of example, a translation into 
 very bad Hebrew of the Assembly's " Shorter Catechism," 
 made soon after 1650. 
 
 Attention may also be called to a very fine copy of 
 the Samaritan Pentateuch, given to the College by Dr 
 Lightfoot, the late Bishop of Durham. According to 
 a Hebrew note in the MS. it would appear to be written 
 entirely on the skins of paschal lambs. As is well 
 known to scholars, the above Pentateuch is in Hebrew, 
 though in Samaritan letters, but the Library possesses 
 also a fragment of the Samaritan version of the Penta- 
 teuch (Exod. xxxix. 22 Num. iii. 3). 
 
 Some of the more noteworthy Greek MSS. may next 
 be mentioned. Most interesting to many will be the 
 well-known Codex Augiensis of St Paul's Epistles (F 
 of critical editions), a Graeco-Latin MS. of the ninth 
 century. This MS. was one of those bought by Bentley 
 when engaged on his projected edition of the Greek 
 Testament, and on the death of Bentley's nephew in 
 1786 it came to Trinity Library. One noticeable fact 
 about this MS. is that in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 there is no Greek forthcoming, and the Latin occupies 
 both columns. Another MS. which, fragment though it 
 be, claims a place in the list of New Testament uncials,
 
 24 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 is that known to critics as W d , consisting merely of two 
 leaves of St Mark and fragments of two more. These 
 were discovered about thirty years ago in the form of 
 strips inserted into the binding of a volume of Gregory 
 Nazianzen by the late Mr Bradshaw, to whom the 
 world of letters in Cambridge and beyond Cambridge 
 owes so much. These strips, carefully put together to 
 make up the pair of leaves, are now fixed for con- 
 venience between two sheets of glass. Besides the two 
 now mentioned, there are also four cursive MSS. of the 
 New Testament, two of the twelfth century, one of the 
 thirteenth, and one dated A.D. 1316. The last two were 
 brought from Mount Athos and Mount Sinai respec- 
 tively. There are a few MSS. of the Psalms and other 
 parts of the Old Testament in the LXX. version, which, 
 however, need not call for any special remark. 
 
 Of the Greek fathers there are, as might have been 
 anticipated, a considerable number of MSS., a goodly 
 addition having been made to the existing stock through 
 those procured by Bentley from Mount Athos. Thus we 
 have MSS., and in some cases not a few, of Origen, 
 Eusebius, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa and of Nazian- 
 zum, Basil, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, 
 and others. These, however, are too numerous to allow 
 of more than this brief passing notice. One of them, a 
 MS. on paper of Origen on St Matthew, has a special
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 2$ 
 
 interest from its associations. It once belonged to 
 Isaac Vossius, the friend and librarian of the blue- 
 stocking Queen Christina ; by Vossius it was given to 
 Herbert Thorndike, and by him to Trinity College. 
 Here, too, may be mentioned a very large MS. of Philo, 
 given by Dean Nevile. 
 
 Of Greek classical authors there are also some MSS., 
 of which a few may be mentioned : a Sophocles (Ajax, 
 Electra, CEdipus Tyrannus) with scholia, a pretty, 
 though late, little MS. of Pindar with scholia, a MS. of 
 the Ctiaracters of Theophrastus, and the well-known 
 Gale MS. of the Lexicon of Photius. This last, unfor- 
 tunately far from complete, is generally considered the 
 parent MS. from which all the other copies of the 
 lexicon have been taken. It was transcribed by Person 
 in his beautiful Greek hand, and from this transcript, 
 now exhibited in the Library, an edition of the lexicon 
 was published in 1822. With respect to Person's 
 writings it may be remarked that besides two large 
 cases filled with books once belonging to him, in which 
 specimens of his writing are found more or less plenti- 
 fully, there are complete transcripts of two plays of 
 Euripides, the Phcenissa and Medea, written with the 
 most perfect and wonderful neatness and exactness. 
 Indeed, no two manners of writing could well be more 
 unlike than those of the two most famous of all Cam-
 
 26 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 bridge scholars, the rough spiky characters of Bentley 
 legible, it is true, but unpleasing and the tiny, precise, 
 print-like letters of Person. I may finally mention a 
 MS. of the Greek lexicon of Harpocration, of the four- 
 teenth century, the readings of which are given in 
 Dindorf's edition. 
 
 There are a large number of Latin MSS., both 
 classical and patristic. Of the former I may notice a 
 choice MS. of Livy, unfortunately not beginning till 
 book xxi. This MS., the writing of which is exceedingly 
 fine and clear, is believed to have been the work of an 
 English scribe towards the end of the twelfth century. 
 It appears once to have belonged to the cathedral church 
 of Canterbury. There is also in the Gale collection a 
 well-written MS. of the first decade of Livy, inferior, 
 however, in antiquity to the preceding. I may also 
 mention a very prettily written little MS. of Cornelius 
 Nepos of the fourteenth century, given to the Library by 
 Thomas Docwra, " ad aemulationem posterorum " ; and 
 a well-written Macrobius, De Somnio Scipionis. The 
 latter appears to have been bought in London in 1469 
 by John Gunthorpe for $s. <\d. Of Roman poets, 
 Horace and Ovid are very well represented, and there 
 are also MSS. of Virgil, Lucan, Juvenal, Persius, Statius, 
 and Claudian. One MS. of Juvenal and Persius, a tall 
 folio in the Gale collection, is of considerable value,
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 2J 
 
 being of the ninth or tenth century, and in the same 
 collection is another MS. of Persius, of the twelfth 
 century, the 7 of Jahn's edition. Besides these is yet 
 another, in one volume, with Horace's Ars Poetica, and 
 some other writings, formerly belonging to the monastery 
 of St Mary at Holm-Cultrain, a house founded by David, 
 King of Scotland. 
 
 Of the Latin fathers the MSS. are too numerous to 
 allow of more than the hastiest notice. Those most 
 frequently occurring are of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, 
 Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and Bede. I will 
 single out a MS. of the Epistles and Commentary on 
 St Luke, of St Ambrose; a MS. of Jerome, dated 
 1477-8, the largest and heaviest MS. in the library; and 
 a well-written MS. in red and black of the Christian poet 
 Arator, " de actibus Apostolorum Petri et Pauli." Be- 
 sides the fathers above named there are also MSS. of 
 Prudentius, Orosius, Prosper, Leo, Cassiodorus, Gregory 
 of Tours, Anselm, and others. 
 
 Of Latin liturgical MSS. may be mentioned two 
 early fifteenth century Sarum Missals, both richly 
 illuminated, and in beautiful condition, save in so far as 
 they are disfigured by the stupid erasures of the names 
 and titles of popes in the calendars and elsewhere, from 
 which few missals have escaped. In one of them the 
 whole of the mass for the festival of St Thomas of
 
 28 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Canterbury (December 29) is altogether effaced. The 
 larger missal, given to the College by Dean Nevile, 
 once belonged to the Leventhorpe family, who have 
 used the calendar as their register of deaths, the latest 
 being that of John Leventhorpe in 1511. There are 
 two MS. pontificals in the library, one of the twelfth 
 century, apparently belonging to a bishop of Ely ; and 
 the other written while Chicheley was Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, i.e. t 1414-43. The use is that of Sarum. 
 A very beautifully written and richly illuminated Psalter 
 seems also to have belonged to the diocese of Ely, as 
 may be inferred from the fact that in the concluding 
 litany the names of female saints are headed by Ethel- 
 dreda, Wythburga, Sexburga, Ethelberga, Ermenilda, 
 after whom follows St Mary Magdalene. Now the 
 first-named saint was the foundress of the abbey and 
 church at Ely (the i2OOth anniversary of whose founda- 
 tion was celebrated in 1872), the next three were her 
 sisters, Sexburga being her successor as abbess, and 
 Ermenilda her niece, also afterwards abbess of Ely. 
 The same remark applies also to the pontifical, where 
 the names occur in the order, Etheldreda (Atheldrytha), 
 Sexburga, Ermenilda (Eormenhilda), Wythburga (Wiht- 
 burga). 
 
 Psalters are, of course, very numerous ; the most 
 important of all, the Canterbury Psalter, has already
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 29 
 
 been described, and the only other one I shall name is 
 a gigantic one, which once belonged to the family of the 
 Sydneys, who have entered the births, marriages, and 
 deaths of the members of their illustrious house in the 
 calendar at the beginning. The name of the noble Sir 
 Philip Sydney (the name is not spelt Sidney in the 
 MS.) of course occurs there, with his marriage to 
 Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, only 
 three years before his heroic death at Zutphen. 
 
 Of old English MSS. there are a considerable number 
 in the Library, the texts or collations of several of which 
 have been published by the Early English Text Society. 
 Of these may be mentioned an early fifteenth century 
 MS. of The Vision of Piers Plowman, or, more strictly, 
 as is insisted on by Prof. Skeat, who collated this MS. 
 for his edition of the text, William Langland's Vision of 
 William concerning Piers Plowman. This is one of the 
 many MSS. bequeathed by Nevile. There is also a 
 MS. of Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, a work totally un- 
 connected with the preceding. Of this work, which has 
 also been edited by Prof. Skeat, but two MSS. are 
 known, the one in Trinity College (which is of late 
 date, about A.D. 1600) and one in the British Museum. 
 
 There have also been edited for the above-named 
 society the poem of Generydes from a unique MS. in the 
 Gale collection of the middle of the fourteenth century ;
 
 30 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 a volume of old English homilies from a unique MS. of 
 the twelfth century; the Cursor Mundi (still in course 
 of publication), a Northumbrian poem of the fourteenth 
 century, from four MSS., whereof one is in Trinity 
 Library, and several others. 
 
 Of Wyclif's version of the Bible there are four 
 MSS. (three of which are of the New Testament and 
 one of the Pentateuch), all apparently of much about 
 the same date, A.D. 1420-30, and of the later recension 
 of the text (see Forshall and Madden's edition of 
 Wyclif's Bible, vol. I. p. Iviii.). One of these seems to 
 have been given to the College by Archbishop Whit- 
 gift, formerly Master. There is also a large volume of 
 Wyclif's works, which has been made use of in the 
 scholarly edition recently edited by Mr F. D. Matthew 
 for the Early English Text Society. 
 
 There may finally be enumerated, beautifully written 
 copies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Gower's 
 English, French, and Latin Poems, standing side by 
 side in two stately folio volumes ; a pretty MS. of Sir 
 John Mandevile's travels, numerous copies of various 
 poems of John Lidgate, a volume of English sermons by 
 Reginald Pecock, the unfortunate Bishop of Chichester ; 
 a late MS. of Gawin Douglas's translation of Virgil, &c. 
 To these may be added two MSS. on vellum of ./Elfric's 
 Anglo-Saxon Grammar.
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 31 
 
 A few more MSS. will claim a short notice which 
 have not fallen into the foregoing divisions. One of 
 these is a Bohemian MS. in the Gale collection, the so- 
 called Kronika Czeska of Dalimil, a national history 
 highly regarded in Bohemia. This MS., written in the 
 second half of the fourteenth century, about thirty or 
 forty years after the death of the author, was unknown 
 to Bohemian scholars when the earlier editions of the 
 work were printed ; but full use has been made of it, 
 by means of the collation by Mr Wratislaw, the well- 
 known Bohemian scholar, in the recent edition of 
 Jirecek (Prague, 1878). This MS. is of special im- 
 portance, inasmuch as it preserves the original form of 
 the text of about two-thirds of the whole work, the only 
 other MSS. available being two disjointed fragments of 
 a period coeval with the author, and MSS. of com- 
 paratively late date, where copyists had freely added to 
 the text. 
 
 Another patriotic little race, the Welsh, are re- 
 presented by a MS. of about the end of the fourteenth 
 century, T/ie Laws of Howell Da, good king Howell. 
 A MS. of very great interest to my mind is the cata- 
 logue of books, printed and MS., once belonging to 
 John Dee, the Mortlake philosopher, written in his own 
 hand throughout. (That part of the above which gives 
 the list of the MSS. was published many years ago by the
 
 32 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Camden Society.) Dee was one of the original Fellows 
 of Trinity College, and had a penchant for astrology and 
 the like, as may be seen from a diary of his, printed in 
 the above-mentioned volume of the Camden Society 
 from MSS. in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. 
 This ultimately led to the sacking of his house by the 
 mob and the dispersal of the library. Another memento 
 of him is a MS. of Raymond Lully's Liber Experimcn- 
 torum, written specially for Dee in 1564. 
 
 Another curious MS., which has an interest for us 
 locally, is the original copy of the statutes of the Guild 
 of St Clement, Cambridge, written in 1431. This was 
 printed by the late Mr Toulmin Smith in his book 
 on English Giiilds, p. 272, sqq. The great day of St 
 Clement's Guild was the Sunday after Low Sunday, and 
 the members of the Guild were bound to attend St 
 Clement's Church for evensong on the Saturday, and 
 mass on the Sunday, the fines for non-compliance being 
 one pound and two pounds of wax respectively, for the 
 " amendment of the lights." 
 
 The next MS. which I shall mention is one second 
 in interest to none in the Library, that containing several 
 of Milton's poems in his own handwriting. These, it 
 would seem, were found among the papers of Sir Henry 
 Newton, or Puckering, of whom I have previously 
 spoken, a very munificent donor to the Library. The
 
 . 
 
 
 *CV"^ 
 
 ^ fofl ** tH*t* W 
 fvr */****} y* 
 **nJ fi***k hLl< 
 
 a <*-+**. yyiiV; /^( ^"f"** ^*^| y 
 /y H^'45 A%f^**^^** M '**^^3r7* 
 
 JT^TJ A^. ^y)tf^) ff-/ ^rmtjfcpMft 
 
 u i j* , / ^S- / / j 
 
 Conclusion of Lycidas. 
 
 To face pagt 32.
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 33 
 
 following entry, pasted at the beginning of the volume, 
 tells all the remaining history: 
 
 "Lib. Trin. Coll. Cantabr. Membra base Eruditissimi et paene 
 Divini PoetcC olim misere disjecta et passim sparsa, postea vero 
 fortuito Inventa et in usum denuo collecta a Carolo Mason ejus col. 
 Socio et inter miscellanea reposita deinceps ea, qua decuit, Religione 
 servari voluit Thomas Clarke [Master of the Rolls, 1755], nuper- 
 rime hujusce collegii nunc vero Medii Templi Londini socius, 
 1736." 
 
 The words I have italicized are inserted by a second 
 but contemporary hand. A minute description of this 
 volume will be found in Mr Sotheby's Ramblings in 
 Elucidation of t/te Autograph of Milton, 1861; but it 
 may be as well to note here the chief contents, Arcades, 
 At a Solemn Music, On Time, Upon the Circumcision, 
 Comus, Lycidas, the first rough notes for Paradise Lost, 
 originally planned as a drama, where "Moses irpo\o- 
 7tet," rough notes for other projected dramas, and 
 Sonnets. The MS., the paper of which is unfortunately 
 becoming exceedingly brittle, is mostly in the hand of 
 Milton himself, but part of the sonnets are written by 
 different amanuenses. Milton's habit of revising and 
 re-writing on the same paper gives additional interest 
 to this MS., for we see the whole process of develop- 
 ment before us. Thus the noble sonnet on The Death 
 of Mrs Catherine Thompson is given three times, twice 
 in the writing of Milton and once in that of an amanu- 
 S. 3
 
 34 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ensis. This sonnet was very different in its earliest 
 draft from what it ultimately became. Thus in line 4, 
 for "of death called life," there originally stood "of flesh 
 and sin." The four lines 6-10 originally stood: 
 
 "[And all thy good endeavour] 
 Strait follow'd thee the path that Saints have trod : 
 Still as they journey'd from this dark abode 
 Up to y e Realm of peace and joy for ever, 
 Faith who led on y e way and knew them best." 
 
 Beautiful as these lines are, none can fail to see the 
 vastly greater beauty of the revision. 
 
 Inferior, indeed, to the above in interest, and yet 
 having a very considerable interest of their own, are 
 such MSS. as Bishop Pearson's autograph notes on He- 
 sychius, Barrow's autograph sermons, and the volumes 
 of Sadleir MSS. One of the last is a volume of 
 "Reflections of Mr Coke," son of Sir Edward Coke, 
 transcribed by his sister, Dame Anne Sadleir. The fol- 
 lowing extract shews that Mr Coke had no hesitation 
 in calling "a spade a spade," though much in the volume 
 shews him to have been a pious, God-fearing man: 
 
 1658. "This year died that arch Trayter and Tyrant Oliver 
 Cromwell, sum say in that great unheard of wind, and it is worth 
 noting that his funarall was of (sic) St Clement's Day, on which 
 day all the Brewers kepes holliday. You have his epethite (sic) 
 before." 
 
 That Dame Sadleir had the courage of her opinions
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 35 
 
 as much as her brother may be seen, e.g., in a letter to 
 Roger Williams, in which, referring to Milton, she 
 declares that his treason and his views as to marriage 
 and divorce are justly punished by blindness in this life 
 and will have fuller punishment hereafter. The follow- 
 ing entry in her handwriting is found at the beginning 
 of a very striking illuminated MS. of the Apocalypse 
 given by her to the College : 
 
 "I commit this booke to the custodie ol the right Reuerend 
 Father in god, Raffe lo : Bishop of Exon, when times are better 
 setled (which god hasten) it is with my other booke and my coines, 
 giuen to Trinitie Colledge Librarie in Cambridge, god in his good 
 time restore her with her sister Oxford to there pristine happines, 
 the Vulger People, to there former obedience, and god bless, and 
 restore Charles the second, and make him like his most glorious 
 Father. Amen. 
 
 "ANNE SADLEIR. 
 "August the 2o tie 1649." 
 
 With three autographs of great writers of the 
 present century, all once undergraduates of Trinity, 
 Byron, Tennyson and Thackeray, our notice of the 
 MSS. may conclude, save in so far as we shall mention 
 interesting cases of writing in printed books. Of the 
 former poet we have the first letter at any rate the 
 letter claims to be such dated Nov. 8, 1798, when 
 Byron was ten years old. He begs that all errors may 
 be excused, but the only phrase to be found fault with 
 is " will accept off." Of Tennyson there is the original 
 
 3 2
 
 36 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 MS. of Audley Court. Of Thackeray we possess the 
 complete MS. of Esmond; partly, and that very largely, 
 in his own writing, partly in that of his daughter, and 
 partly in that of another amanuensis. 
 
 Of printed books deriving a special interest from 
 MS. matter contained in them a few may be men- 
 tioned, a copy of the Greek Anthology, printed at 
 Florence by Laur. Franc, de Alopa in 1494, which is 
 filled with MS. notes in the handwriting of the elder 
 Aldus, including thirty-three pages of MS. entirely by 
 him, which is certainly the copy from which was printed 
 the Aldine Anthology of 1503. Akin to this is a copy 
 of Stephens's edition of Xenophon of 1561, covered with 
 Henry Stephens's notes with a view to his new edition. 
 
 More generally interesting than the above, however, 
 will be the letter of Bacon, once a member of Trinity 
 College, contained in the copy of his De Dignitate et 
 Augmentis Scientiarum (London, 1623) presented to his 
 old college. This letter has already been printed by 
 Mr Spedding (Life and Letters of Lord Bacon, vol. VII. 
 p. 439), but some who have not his book at hand may 
 be glad to see it reprinted here: 
 
 " Fra. Baro de Verulamio, Vicecomes S cti Albani percelebri 
 Collegio S ctae et Individual Trinitatis in Cantabrigia. S. 
 
 " Res omnes earumque Progressus Initiis suis debentur. Itaque 
 cum Initia Scientiarum e fontibus vestris hauserim, Incrementa 
 ipsarum vobis rependenda existimavi. Spero itidem fore, ut haec
 
 THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 37 
 
 nostra apud vos, tanquam in solo nativo, fcelicius succrescant. 
 Quamobrem et vos hortor, ut salva Animi modestia et erga veteres 
 reverentia, Ipsi quoque Scientiarum Augmentis non desitis: ve- 
 rum ut post volumina sacra verbi Dei et Scripturarum, secundo 
 loco volumen illud magnum operum Dei et creaturarum, strenue et 
 prae omnibus libris (qui pro commentariis tantum haberi debent) 
 evolvatis. Valete." 
 
 I have already referred to the numerous books con- 
 taining MS. notes by Bentley and by Porson, on which, 
 however, I need not dwell, and I shall therefore now 
 pass on to speak of some of the choicest of the early 
 printed books.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 I PROPOSE now to speak of some of the more interest- 
 ing of the early printed books. It is by no means easy, 
 in thus sketching the salient points of a great collection, 
 to determine which method of treatment shall be 
 followed, whether by subject, or by country and town of 
 printing, or by date. In any case, the interest must 
 necessarily be unequally sustained, and it is hard to 
 avoid a certain amount of repetition. 
 
 Everything considered, however, it seems best in the 
 first instance to follow the method of date, and I shall, 
 therefore, for the present, confine myself to the incuna- 
 bula (sweet sound in the ear of a bibliographer), or 
 books printed before the close of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Of these the Library possesses rather more than 
 500, which have been arranged during the last few years, 
 and described in a printed catalogue. About three 
 hundred of these are in the collection bequeathed by 
 Mr Grylls, spoken of in my first chapter ; and most of
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 39 
 
 the early printed Greek books in that of Dr Matthew 
 Raine. Of other donors, those whose names most 
 frequently occur are Beaupre Bell (B.A. 1725), Sylvius 
 Elwis (B.A. circa 1600), John Laughton (Librarian 
 1669-73), Sir Henry Newton or Puckering, Thos. 
 Skeffington (Fellow 1571), and Thos. Whalley (Fellow 
 1591). These were all spoken of in my first chapter, 
 and I merely repeat the names here. To these must be 
 added the name of Mr A. A. VanSittart, late Auditor of 
 the College, and of living donors should be mentioned, 
 Mr S. Sandars. 
 
 Of the early printed English books, the number is 
 inconsiderable, but what there is is valuable. Of 
 Caxtons there are the following: (i) The Recuyell of 
 t/ie historyes of Troye, translated into English by Caxton, 
 from the JFrench of Raoul le Fevre. This book, of 
 which altogether twenty copies, most of which are more 
 or less imperfect, are known to exist, has the proud dis- 
 tinction of being the first book ever printed in the 
 English language. It has been almost certainly shewn 
 by Mr Blades (Life and Typography of William Caxton, 
 I. 45, sqq. ; see also II. 3) that this work was printed at 
 Bruges, where Caxton learnt the art of printing from 
 Colard Mansion. The College copy, which is not quite 
 perfect, wanting a few leaves at both beginning and end, 
 was given in 1673, by Valentine Pettit (Fellow, 1668),
 
 40 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 together with the next but one of the remaining 
 Caxtons. (2) The Dictes of the Philosophres (first 
 edition), the first book printed in England, for I suppose 
 no one will now maintain the date 1468 to be other than 
 an error for 1478, in the Exposicio Hicronymi, printed at 
 Oxford. The present work, a translation by Earl 
 Rivers from the French, was printed at " Westmestre," 
 under the shade of the Abbey, in 1477, tne y ear which 
 saw the overthrow and death of Charles the Bold, Duke 
 of Burgundy, at Nancy. (3) Ttie Game of tJie Chess 
 (second edition), translated from the French version of 
 the Latin work of Jac. de Cessolis. This work is un- 
 dated, but it was probably printed in 1483. The quaint 
 woodcuts, sixteen in number, of this book are well 
 known; the one which is reproduced by Mr Blades 
 (ll. 96) is, perhaps, the strangest, shewing how Evil- 
 Merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, " a jolly man 
 without justice," did have his father's body " hewn into 
 three hundred pieces." (4) T/te Eneydos, Caxton's 
 paraphrase of parts of the AZneid (" the boke of Eneydos, 
 compyled by Vyrgyle, which hath be translated oute of 
 latyne in to frenshe, and oute of frenshe reduced in to 
 Englysshe by me Wyllm Caxton"), finished in 1490, in 
 the last year of the great printer's life ; for Caxton died 
 in 1491, and Wynkyn de Worde, his assistant, succeeded 
 to the business. The three last-mentioned works are
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 4 1 
 
 perfect copies, save only a single blank leaf missing in 
 No. 2. To these four volumes, which were the only 
 Caxtons known to exist in the Library until recently, 
 another must now be added. During the summer of 
 1 88 1 Mr Bradshaw, while examining the account-books 
 of King's Hall, came across (in the volume for the year 
 1499-1500) two fragments, printed on vellum in the 
 same type as that used by Caxton in 1480 in the 
 Chronicles of England. The fragments, one consisting 
 of six whole lines from the middle, and the other of a 
 small fragment of the last six lines, form parts of an 
 indulgence, issued by John Kendale, Grand Prior of 
 the order of St John of Jerusalem in England, under 
 the authority of Pope Sixtus IV., for assistance at the 
 siege of Rhodes. An edition of this indulgence, printed 
 in the same type with the Game of Chess spoken of 
 above, is described by Mr Blades (ll. 79). It may be 
 noted that the copy of which the present fragments 
 form part must have been an unused one, as the gap 
 which is left for the date is not filled in. 
 
 On Caxton's death, Wynkyn de Worde, as we have 
 said, continued the business in the old place, though no 
 books seem to be known of his with a date earlier than 
 1493. At Westminster he continued only for a few 
 years, for about 1500 he removed his abode to Fleet 
 Street, where he continued till his death in 1534. At
 
 42 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 present, however, our concern is only with the West- 
 minster books. Of these there are two in the Library, 
 The Festival and IV. Sermons of 1493, and the splendid 
 edition of the Golden Legend of 1498. Unfortunately 
 neither of these copies is quite complete. 
 
 It need not be said that at the time when these 
 books were printed, London was altogether distinct 
 from Westminster. Where the busy stream now passes 
 along the Strand there stood in Caxton's time, and long 
 after, stately palaces of the nobility, surrounded by 
 open country. Soon after Caxton had taken up his 
 abode near the Abbey, more than one foreign printer 
 settled in London. Of one of these, John Lettou, we 
 possess a small fragment, four leaves of Thorn. Wallensis, 
 Super Psalterium, printed " in Civitate Londoniensi " in 
 1481. Of another, Will, de Machlinia, there is one 
 work in perfect preservation, the Speculum Christiani, 
 with the Expositio Orationis Dominica. Throughout 
 this book, which is mainly in Latin, are interspersed 
 pieces of English, mostly in rhyme ; thus the first, fifth, 
 and eighth commandments run : 
 
 "Thou schalt loue god with Herte entiere 
 With alle thy soule and alle thy might, 
 Other god in no manere 
 Thou schalt not haue by daye ne nyght." 
 
 "Thi fader and thi moder thou schalt honotire 
 Nought only with reuerence,
 
 THE INCUNABULA, 43 
 
 In thair nede them thaim socoure 
 And kepe ay gode obedience." 
 
 "Be thou no theef no theuys fere 
 Ne nothyng wynne thurgh trethery, 
 Okur 1 nor symonye come thou not nere 
 But Conscience clere keep ay truely." 
 
 Of another most famous English printer, Richard 
 Pynson, we possess but one fifteenth century work, the 
 Sarum Missal of 1 500. This, though mentioned before, 
 will now claim a more detailed account. The copy in 
 the College Library was given by Sir Edward Stanhope, 
 the founder of the Librarianship (Fellow 1564), and 
 though not quite perfect, is probably the most splendid 
 copy of the work in existence. It is printed on vellum 
 (12^ inches by 8f inches), and bound in the original 
 oak boards. After the printer had done his work, 
 an immense amount of labour was expended on the 
 volume by the illuminator. This is specially con- 
 spicuous in the case of the masses for the more impor- 
 tant festivals, where the page is surrounded by an 
 elaborate border, containing a curious punning device 
 on the name of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, at whose expense the book was printed. 
 The defects of the present copy are that it wants the 
 leaf at the end of the calendar, containing on one side 
 
 1 That is, usury.
 
 44 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 the Royal Arms, and on the other those of Cardinal 
 Morton, and three leaves containing the greater part of 
 the Canon. The place of these last is supplied by five 
 leaves of MS. I refer to this MS. because on the first 
 page of it is emblazoned a coat of arms, which I am 
 unable to identify. Quarterly, I and 4, Az., a griffin 
 passant or, holding in dexter paw a branch vert, 
 flowered or ; 2 and 3, Arg., three cross-bows vert, 
 stringed and barbed gules. The imprint at the end of 
 the book in red and Pynson's device below in black 
 have been carefully erased by some previous owner. 
 
 Of Oxford fifteenth century printing, we possess 
 Joh. Lattebury's Expositio in Threnos Jeremice, printed 
 in 1482 by Theoderic Rood. This last statement is, it 
 is true, merely an inference, as no printer's name is 
 given in the imprint, but may be assumed to be a fact 
 from the identity of the type and manner of setting up 
 in the Alexander de Ales, where the printer's name is 
 given. In 1483 Theoderic Rood took an Englishman 
 named Thomas Hunt into partnership, but of the works 
 produced by this firm the sole relic in the Library is 
 a single leaf of one book, Swyneshed's Insolubilia, a 
 work of which only one perfect copy is known to exist, 
 viz. in the library of New College, Oxford, where it was 
 discovered by Mr Bradshaw. Thus, of the four places 
 where printing was practised in England during the
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 45 
 
 fifteenth century, St Albans is the only place un- 
 represented. 
 
 I pass on in the next place to books printed in 
 France. Here the towns represented are only Paris, 
 Lyons, and possibly, but doubtfully, Poitiers. Of the 
 books printed at Paris, the most noteworthy is a transla- 
 tion of some of Seneca's works into French by "Maistre 
 Laurens de Premier fait," the Latin accompanying on 
 the outside margin. This book was printed by Anthoine 
 Verard, not before i'5oo, or after Sept. 29, 1503, as it 
 was within this period that Verard occupied the premises 
 named in the imprint "en la rue sainct Jacques pres 
 petit pont." It is a folio on vellum, I2|in. by 8f in., 
 taller than the copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale, which 
 further lacks the last leaf with Verard's emblem and the 
 imprint. On the recto of the second leaf is a charming 
 miniature of the translator presenting his book to 
 Charles VI. How so striking a book got originally into 
 the College Library I am unable to say, as at a com- 
 paratively recent period it has been rebound, in which 
 process any traces there may have been of former 
 ownership were obliterated. It is mentioned, however, 
 in catalogues of the Library more than a century and 
 a half ago. 
 
 Of books printed by Thielman Kerver I will mention 
 two, one the Stultiferce Navis Additamentum de quin-
 
 46 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 que Virginibus of J. B. Ascensius, a kind of supplement 
 to the well-known Stultifera Navis of Sebastian Brant ; 
 and, secondly, a leaf, with the imprint, of a Dutch Book 
 of Hours of the Virgin, with the date 1500, which is 
 bound up with a French edition of the Hours of the 
 Virgin of later date. I mention this single leaf because 
 I find no other trace of the edition in any book of 
 reference known to me, the earliest Dutch edition of 
 Horce printed by Kerver, which is mentioned by Brunet 
 (V. 1622), being of 1509. 
 
 Two other Hor& may next be mentioned, one of the 
 Sarum use, the work of a printer whose name is un- 
 known to me save for this book, viz., John Jehannot, 
 who printed it for Nic. Lecomte, the bookseller, in 1498. 
 So far as I am aware, this copy, which is perfect save 
 for two leaves, is the only one known of this edition. 
 The other book, which. is printed on vellum, is of the 
 Roman use, but being defective at the end, the imprint 
 is wanting. It was probably, however, printed at Paris 
 about 1500. 
 
 Of the Lyons-printed books there is nothing that 
 need specially detain us, the well-known edition of 
 Will, of Ockam's works printed by John Trechsel being 
 the most prominent One book printed at Poitiers has 
 been referred to, the poem of Baptista Mantuanus, De 
 Contemnenda Morte. It is often by no means easy,
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 47 
 
 however, to tell whether an undated book is due to the 
 end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, and as the printers of the above book, Jehan 
 Bouyer and Guil. Bouchet, were practising their art both 
 before and after 1500, the matter must be considered 
 doubtful. 
 
 We will now pass from France to the Low Countries. 
 The mention of the Low Countries cannot fail to suggest 
 to the bibliographer how much more has been done of 
 late years for the history of Dutch and Belgian than of 
 English printing, whether by books that take in the 
 whole field during a certain space of time, such as the 
 great work of the late Mr Holtrop (Monuments Typo- 
 graphiques des Pays-Bas au Quinzieme Siecle), or his 
 Catalogus Librorum S&culo XV. impressorum qnotquot 
 in Bibliotheca Reg. Hagana asservantur, and the Annales 
 Typographiques of Mr Campbell ; or of special mono- 
 graphs on the printing of special towns, such as Mr 
 Vanderhaegen's Bibliographic Gantoise, or Diegerick's 
 Bibliographie Yproise, &c. What has been done for 
 English printing of the like sort since the days of 
 Dibdin ? We have, itjis true, the great work on Caxton 
 by Mr Blades, a work which reflects the highest honour 
 on English bibliography, but there is hardly anything 
 else to keep it company. Of the history of printing in 
 single towns we have Davies's Memoir of tlie York
 
 48 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 Press ; but even the history of printing at the two 
 Universities has had yet but little done to it 
 
 To return, however, to the Low Countries. I men- 
 tion a book printed at Louvain about 1483 by Joh. de 
 Westphalia, the Epistles of Gasparinus Barzizius, which 
 is noticeable because of the curious position of the 
 signatures (agreeing, however, therein with another 
 book of the same printer), which are placed immediately 
 to the right of the last line or the last two lines in the 
 page. A large number of books occur which were 
 printed at Deventer, the great centre of the school- 
 book trade, by Rich. Paffroed and Jac. de Breda. First, 
 however, may be named one which is not a school-book, 
 and the typographical history of which is rather a 
 puzzle, the Liber qui dicitur Moralium Dogma, from 
 the collection of Dr Raine. An interesting example of 
 the school-book type is Joannis Compendium totius 
 Grammatics, printed by Rich. Paffroed in 1489. I cite 
 this book because of its connexion with England, for on 
 the verso of the fiVst leaf is a Latin poem in honour of 
 " Guilielmus Episcopus Vintonie." This is 'William 
 Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester (1447-1486), who 
 founded Magdalene College School, Oxford, in 1481. 
 Of this school John Anwykyll was the first master, and 
 the author of the above work, the original edition having 
 appeared at Oxford in 1483.
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 49 
 
 Another town, which is probably here represented, 
 though this is a point on which bibliographers are even 
 yet not agreed, is Gouda, in the case of the three books 
 Marco Polo's De Consnetudinibus Orientalium Regionnm, 
 John de Mandeville's Itinerarius, and Ludolph de 
 Suchen's Libellus de Itinere ad Terram Sanctam. To 
 shew what divergence of view there is as to the place 
 where these three books were printed, I may note that 
 while Panzer thought them printed by Theod. Martin at 
 Alost, Brunet goes so far afield as to maintain that they 
 are the work of a Venetian printer. Mr Grenville and 
 Mr Bradshaw agree in the view that the type is that of 
 Gerard de Leeu, the former referring these works to the 
 time after he had settled at Antwerp, the latter to the 
 time while he was still in business at Gouda. Of Gerard 
 de Leeu's Antwerp printing an undoubted specimen 
 exists in his edition of the well-known work Historia 
 de Calumnia Novercali (1490). 
 
 The little town of Zwolle is represented by one book, 
 the Canons of Bartholomew of Cologne, printed in 1 500 
 by Peter Van Os. The manner in which this book is 
 dated has led some to think, quite wrongly, that 1501, 
 and not 1 500, was the date : 
 
 "Ante Ihesum duo cc minus uno millia quinque 
 Postque Ihesum mille quingenti praeteriere." 
 
 With the early printing of Germany the field widens 
 S. 4
 
 5O THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 considerably. Here printing was first practised, and at 
 towns like Mentz, Strasburg, and Cologne a vast 
 quantity of books was poured forth from the press. To 
 begin, then, with Mentz, the cradle of the art, the earli- 
 est document from which whose date can be declared 
 with absolute certainty is the Indulgence of 1454, 
 beyond which all is theory. The story about Gutenberg 
 is well known ; how the great inventor of printing is 
 forced, like many men of genius in after-time, to call in 
 the help of a capitalist ; how the goldsmith John Fust 
 is taken into partnership ; how the partners quarrel and 
 set up each on his own account ; and how Gutenberg 
 struggles on, with no marked amount of success, dying 
 at last heartbroken, while his wealthier rival founds a 
 prosperous and famous press. Whatever truth there 
 may be in this, I believe I am right in stating that no 
 book whatsoever is known containing the name of 
 Gutenberg in the imprint. Consequently, John Fust, 
 citizen of Mentz, is the earliest printer whose name ever 
 appears in an imprint, and the oldest printed book in 
 the Library is one due to his press the edition of the 
 De Officiis and Paradox a of Cicero, printed in 1466, a 
 second edition of what had appeared in the preceding 
 year. The copy now before me was in the Raine 
 collection. In the colophon we read, "Johannes Fust 
 Moguntinus civis manu Petri de Gernsshem." Peter
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 5 I 
 
 Schoeffer, the " puer meus," as Fust elsewhere calls him, 
 ultimately married Christina Fust, and the business long 
 prospered in his hands ; and after his death, which pro- 
 bably occurred in 1502, his son John reigned in. his 
 stead. Of Fust's printing we possess no other speci- 
 mens; but of Schoeffer's, after he became the head of the 
 house, there are two, the Opus Quarti Scripti of Thomas 
 Aquinas, and the Epistles of St Jerome, printed in 1469 
 and 1470 respectively. In the latter book is a large 
 amount of illumination by an artist who enters his 
 name, " Laszarus de Andlou, 1475." 
 
 Only a few years later than Mentz in its recognition 
 of the new art comes Strasburg, where we find John 
 Mentelin established as a printer as early as 1460. Of 
 his work the only specimen here is the Etymologies of 
 Isidore of Seville, a large thin folio. About the year 
 1472, a certain printer carried on his trade at Strasburg, 
 and issued books in a round Roman type, similar to, 
 but not identical with, those of Mentelin. Who he was, 
 is, so far as I am aware, unknown, and the peculiar 
 form of his capital letter R has suggested the name by 
 which he is generally known, "the R printer." Of his 
 printing are a sturdy pair of huge folio volumes of the 
 Latin translation of Plutarch's Lives, still in the 
 original binding ; the Epistles of Seneca, and the 
 Declaratio Valerii Maximi of Dion, de Burgo. Another 
 
 42
 
 52 THE INCUNAPULA. 
 
 early and famous Strasburg printer, Henry Eggesteyn, 
 is represented by an edition of Gratian's Decretnm, of 
 Cicero's Officia et Paradoxa, both of 1472 ; and by 
 Bede's Ecclesiastical History and Ludolph DC Terra 
 Sancta et Itinere Hierosolymitano, both undated, but of 
 about the year 1473. 
 
 A few other books printed at Strasburg by various 
 hands may also be noticed. I single out the great 
 Latin Bible, with the glosses of Walafrid Strabo and 
 Anselm Laudunensis. A curious point in connexion 
 with this Bible is, that for a long time it was referred to 
 the press of John de Amerbach at Basle, circa 1480. 
 There has come to light, however, a congratulatory Latin 
 poem, addressed to Adolph Rusch (who was son-in-law 
 of John Mentelin and himself a printer) on the publica- 
 tion of a Bible, which is certainly the present edition. 
 The poem itself and the circumstances of its discovery 
 are given in the Serapeum (Nos. 9 and 15). An edition 
 of Persius may also be named, which has neither place 
 nor date of printing nor printer's name, but which 
 appears to have been printed by Martin Flach about 
 1472. This is considered by some to be the editio prin- 
 ceps of Persius, because of the claim put forward in the 
 subscription, " Explicit ignotus per totum Persius 
 orbem," though others give the preference to the edition 
 without date printed at Rome by Udalric Hahn. Lastly
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 53 
 
 come several of the productions of Joh. Griininger's 
 press, with curious woodcuts, the Panegyrid of Locher, 
 addressed to the emperor Maximilian (1497); the works 
 of Horace, with the notes of Locher (1498); the miscel- 
 laneous poems of Sebastian Brant (1498), the author 
 of the well-known Stultifera Navis, and the comedies 
 of Terence, with interlinear and other glosses (1499). 
 Specimens of the woodcuts in the second and fourth of 
 the above-named works are given by Dibdin in his 
 BibliotJieca Spenceriana (n. 87, 426). 
 
 The town which ranks next in order of precedence 
 of printing is Cologne, where the art was practised 
 in 1466. Of its proto-typographer, Ulric Zell, the 
 Library possesses a fair number of specimens, all un- 
 dated, but to be referred to about the year 1470 ; e.g., 
 St Augustine De Disciplina Christiana, St Bernard De 
 Planctu Beatce Maries, and the letters of that new " pius 
 ^Eneas," Pope Pius II., "ad Mahumetem principem 
 Turcorum." About this time there was also carrying 
 on business at Cologne another printer, whose name is 
 unknown, the products of whose press, while in type 
 almost identical with that of Ulric Zell, present typo- 
 graphical characteristics and modes of working quite 
 distinct from his. This unknown printer I follow Mr 
 Bradshaw in calling the " printer of the Historia S. 
 Albani" that particular work being taken both as being
 
 54 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 the commonest of the products of this press and also 
 because it runs no risk of being confused with other 
 editions more or less like it. Of this printer the Library 
 possesses St Jerome's Ordo sive Regula Vivendi Deo, the 
 only other copy of which known to me is that in the 
 Bodleian ; St Augustine's Sermo super Orationem Domi- 
 nicam, &c.; and Mapheus Vegius, Dialogus inter Alithiam 
 et Philaliten. Of another printer, whose name is un- 
 known, but who may be defined as the "printer of 
 Dictys Cretensis? we possess a work of which I know 
 no copy but our own, Pope Paul II.'s Littera Apostolica 
 de Pnblicatione anni Jubilai, 1475, printed after April 19, 
 1470, the date of the letter. One more Cologne book 
 must suffice, the curious chronicles of Cologne, with 
 quaint woodcuts, printed by Joh. Koelhoff in 1499, " up 
 sent Bartholomeus avent." 
 
 We now pass to Augsburg, where printing was first 
 practised in 1468 by Gunther Zainer of Reutlingen. 
 Of this printer we possess a collection of minor works 
 of St Jerome and others, beginning with the De Viris 
 Illustribus, apparently printed about 1470 ; and the 
 Etymologies and De Responsione Mundi of Isidore of 
 Seville, both printed in 1472. It is perhaps worth men- 
 tioning, as being a thing which I have not often noticed, 
 that in the case of the first of the above three works, 
 one of the two copies has a list of the various opuscula
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 55 
 
 contained in the volume on a small leaf fastened on the 
 inside of the contemporaneous binding, and printed in 
 the same type as the body of the work. A book of 
 considerable interest is the old German version of 
 the history of JosapJiat and Barlaam, the original Greek 
 text of which is often ascribed to Joh. Damascenus. 
 Of the German version there were two early editions 
 printed at Augsburg, one by Giinther Zainer about 
 1477, and a second by Ant. Sorg about 1480. The 
 latter, which is that in the Library, very closely 
 resembles the former, but has smaller woodcuts. Of 
 Ant. Sorg's press we also possess Die Hystori von dem 
 Grossen Allexander (1483, "an mitwoch nachst vor Sant 
 Anthoni"), which is a translation by Joh. Hartlieb from 
 the Latin of Julius Valerius; which, in its turn, is a 
 translation from the Greek of a certain ^Esopus, first 
 published by Muller in his edition of Arrian. There 
 are, further, a considerable number of books printed by 
 Erhard Ratdolt. This printer, a native of Augsburg, 
 had carried on his trade for some years at Venice, his 
 speciality being mainly works of an astronomical and 
 astrological character. Subsequently he returned to his 
 native place, and there printed a large number of works 
 of a similar character. 
 
 A book printed at Ulm deserves notice, the stately 
 edition of the Cosmographia of Ptolemy, printed by
 
 56 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 Leon. Hoi in 1482, containing thirty-two maps. These, 
 which were engraved by Joh. Schnitzer de Armszheim, 
 under the superintendence of Nic. Donis, are woodcuts, 
 and, with one exception, fill up each the inner side of 
 a whole sheet The little town of Miinster in Ergau, 
 otherwise known by its Latin name Berona, gives us the 
 work of Conrad Thuricensis De Cornells, printed by 
 Helyas de Louffen about 1472. 
 
 To Nuremberg, " quaint old town of art and song," 
 redolent with memories of Albert DUrer and Hans 
 Sachs, are to be referred a considerable number of our 
 early printed books. It must suffice, however, to men- 
 tion one or two. A precious book is the SchatzbeJialter, 
 oder Schrein der waren Reichtilmer des Heils, printed by 
 Ant. Koberger (a man with looser views as to the spell- 
 ing of his own name than most early printers) in 1491, 
 and containing numerous woodcuts by Michael Wohlge- 
 muth, the master of Albert DUrer. A more generally 
 known work, however, in which the same artist (aided 
 by Will. PleydenwurfQ has given us over 2,000 woodcuts, 
 is the famous Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartman Schedel, 
 printed by the same printer in 1493. Of Nuremberg 
 books I will further mention two of those printed by 
 Joh. Muller, better known as Regiomontanus, from 
 having been born near to Kb'nigsberg. This celebrated 
 astronomer had opened a printing-press in Nuremberg,
 
 THE INCUNABULA. S7 
 
 probably in 1471, and of this press we possess two 
 specimens, both thin folios, printed in Roman type, 
 without printed signatures, the Theoricce Novas Plane- 
 tarum of Geo. Purbach, the instructor of Regiomon- 
 tanus, and the Dialogus inter Viennensem et Cracoviensem. 
 The latter of these has a further interest, in that on the 
 verso of the first leaf the Greek words wpwv larrj^epivcov 
 are filled in by hand, doubtless by Regiomontanus him- 
 self. 
 
 The town of Spires contributes a book of some 
 degree of rarity, Bern, de Breydenbach's Opusctdum 
 Sanctarum Peregrinationum in Montem Syon, printed 
 by Peter Drach in 1490 ; and Laugingen a copy of its 
 one known incunabulum, Augustine De Consensu Evange- 
 listarum. The book was printed " In civitate Laugin- 
 gen," in 14/3, and the next in order of time that is 
 known is of the year 1565. It is reasonable to suppose 
 the first book to have been the work of travelling 
 printers, on their way from one town to another, with 
 all their impedimenta with them, who had utilised their 
 stay at Laugingen by printing a respectable folio of 108 
 leaves. Whether this be so or no, the name of the 
 printer is as yet altogether unknown. 
 
 At Basle printing did not begin till 1474. Of Basle 
 books two may be noted ; a Latin Bible, printed by 
 John Froben in 1491, which is worthy of remark as
 
 5 8 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 being the first which deserted the folio and quarto size, 
 and appeared as a reasonable octavo, the first Bible in 
 print that could possibly have been a pocket Bible. 
 John Froben was, as is well known, the printer of the 
 first Greek Testament which the world ever saw. The 
 other book is a work once very much in vogue, the 
 Stultifera Navis of Sebastian Brant. The object of this 
 work is to satirize the follies of every rank of life, under 
 the metaphor of a ship manned with fools. To bring 
 the satires thoroughly home, the book is freely furnished 
 with woodcuts. Of this we possess two editions, both 
 printed at Basle in 1497 by John Bergman, one an 
 octavo, issued on March i ; the other a quarto, on 
 August I. TJte Ship of Fools was translated into 
 English by Alexander Barclay, a priest of Ely, and of 
 this an edition, which, I regret to say, we do not possess, 
 was published by Richard Pynson in 1 509. 
 
 Our books from the Leipzig and Memmingen presses 
 do not call for special remark ; but I must briefly refer 
 to one which, while unfortunately lacking its imprint, 
 and therefore somewhat indeterminate, was probably 
 printed at Wiirzburg (Herbipolis). This is a Breviarium 
 Herbipolense, due, apparently, to the last decade of the 
 fifteenth century, which, so far as I know, is totally un- 
 described. The whole of the Pars Hyemalis is, unfortu- 
 nately, wanting in our copy, as well as the title, calendar,
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 59 
 
 and almanac. The book is an octavo, and should con- 
 tain 342 leaves. It once belonged to Archdeacon 
 Julius Hare. 
 
 We may next notice some books which, while 
 certainly printed in Germany, do not furnish us with 
 sufficient data to fix their place of printing more 
 definitely. Among these are an edition of Guido de 
 Columna's Historia Destructionis Troice, of which I can- 
 not trace any other copy, a folio of about the date 1475; 
 and an edition of Cyril's Speculum SapientuB, a quarto 
 of about the same date. The Cyril in question is 
 apparently the Cyril who, with his brother Methodius, 
 evangelized the Slavonians in the ninth century, and to 
 whom is due the Slavonic alphabet and the Slavonic 
 version of the Bible. I may also mention a tract, un- 
 dated, but of about the year 1490, containing Joh. de 
 Hese, Itinerarius a Jerusalem per diversas partes Mundi, 
 together with a letter of " Johannes, Presbyter Maxi- 
 mus, Indorum et Ethiopum Christianorum Imperator et 
 Patriarcha " to " Emmanuel, Rom?e Gubernator." This 
 is the famous Prester John, the hero of many an extra- 
 ordinary legend. 
 
 More valuable than any of these, however, is a book 
 of very great rarity, the Philogenia of Ugolini Pisani of 
 Parma, a prose comedy which first appeared about the 
 middle of the fifteenth century. The work is mentioned
 
 60 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 by Tiraboschi (Letteratura Italiana, VI. 868, and note, 
 ed. 1809). When and where this edition was printed 
 I am unable to say. I can hardly assent to Brunei's 
 remark (v. 101) that it belongs " au premier age de 
 1'imprimerie en Allemagne," but should be disposed to 
 fix it at about 1470, or a little later. Its size can only 
 be described properly as small quarto and large octavo 
 mixed. I use these words, of course, in their strict 
 sense, as having reference to the folding of the paper, as 
 shown by the horizontal or vertical position of the wire- 
 marks : quarto and octavo are words of very elastic 
 meaning as applied to books nowadays. A minute 
 account of the above book is given by Brunet (loc. cit.) 
 from a description furnished him by a private collector, 
 who possessed the only copy known to Brunet. The 
 description, however, swarms with numerous small errors, 
 and has been transplanted, errors and all, to the well- 
 known Trtsor of Graesse, who has not acknowledged 
 the source of his quotation, but whose faithful reproduc- 
 tion of his original has betrayed his plagiarism. This 
 practice is one against which no bibliographer can pro- 
 test too strongly, and is a great deal too common. 
 Nothing can more fatally drag back bibliography from 
 becoming the exact science it is capable of becoming 
 than this careless, easy-going system, instead of con- 
 scientiously citing facts and letting them tell their own 
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 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE INCUNABULA (CONTINUED). 
 
 THERE yet remains that country which, though not 
 the birthplace of printing, yet accorded to the new art 
 an almost warmer welcome than even Germany itself. 
 It is to the early Italian printers that we must look for 
 the highest beauty of work, and it is pre-eminently to 
 them that is due the diffusion of copies of the ancient 
 classical authors indeed in the case of Greek it is due 
 to them almost exclusively. 
 
 The first place in Italy where printing was practised 
 was at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, near 
 Rome. Here, shortly after the sack of Mentz (1462), 
 two Germans, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, 
 betook themselves, the second book issued by them 
 bearing the date October 29, 1465. Towards the end 
 of the following year they left the monastery for Rome, 
 where they took up their abode "in domo Petri de 
 Maximo." They only just secured the honour of being 
 proto-typographers of Rome as well as of Italy, for
 
 62 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 another German printer, Udalric Hahn, had settled in 
 Rome sufficiently soon to enable him to put Dec. 31, 
 1467, in the imprint of his first book. 
 
 Of the productions of the press of Sweynheym and 
 Pannartz while they continued together we possess 
 three books, (i) The cditio princeps of the well-known 
 Speculum Vita Humana, printed in 1468, the oldest 
 printed book in the Library next to Fust's edition of the 
 De Offidis. This book nearly all bibliographers will 
 persist in calling a folio it is a large quarto. (2) The 
 Epistles and Opuscula of St Cyprian, printed in 1471. 
 (3) An edition of Suetonius, printed in 1472, a reprint 
 of the earlier edition of 1470. 
 
 From the amount of competition and other causes, 
 the firm did not thrive, and their appeal to Sixtus IV. 
 being apparently resultless, Sweynheym turned to the 
 trade of a copper-plate engraver and Pannartz went on 
 alone, and probably died about the end of the year 1486. 
 Of this later period of Pannartz's career we possess three 
 books, all of the year 1475: (i) Statins, a large quarto, 
 not a folio as it is called by Dibdin and others; (2) 
 Aquinas De Veritate Catlwlicce Fidei; and (3) Josephus's 
 History of tJie Jewish War in the Latin Version. Of 
 Udalric Hahn the only work which we possess is a fine 
 copy of Servius's Commentary on Virgil, printed about 
 1470. The other fifteenth-century Roman printers of
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 63 
 
 whom there are specimens here are Geo. Laver, Adam 
 Rot, Euch. Silber, and Stephen Plannck ; but I need not 
 refer to any of these books, except the edition of Festus 
 De Interpretatione Lingiitz Latince, by the first-named 
 printer, a work of sufficient rarity to deserve this passing 
 notice. 
 
 One other book, Ang. Politian's Oratio pro Oratoribns 
 Sencnsinm, to which is appended the Oratio pro Obedi- 
 cntia Duds Mediolanensium of Jas. Mayno, may be 
 mentioned. The book bears neither place nor date of 
 printing nor printer's name, but was probably printed at 
 Rome about 1493. This copy was bought at the Libri 
 sale in 1859, an< ^ ls tne only one with which I am 
 acquainted (see Graesse's Tr&or, V. 389). 
 
 At Venice printing began to be practised in 1469, 
 and the new art took very kindly root in the great 
 merchant city. Panzer gives a list of no less than two 
 hundred printers who carried on their trade at Venice 
 during the last thirty years of the fifteenth century. Of 
 these, the first to begin was John de Spira, an adven- 
 turous German, who sought a clear field for his labours, 
 and obtained the licence to print in 1469. On his death 
 in the following year, his brother Vindelin carried on 
 the business. The earliest book from this press which 
 we possess is the editio princeps of Tacitus, printed in 
 1469 or 1470, which, on the ground of the last line of
 
 64 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 the colophon, has been variously referred to each of the 
 two brothers: 
 
 " Pressit 
 Spira premens, artis gloria prima suas." 
 
 On the whole, however, it would appear to be due to 
 Vindelin. One point for which this book is noticeable 
 is that it is apparently the earliest in which catch-words 
 occur. 
 
 I note here the other specimens we possess of Vin. 
 de Spira's press : Sallust (1470), Quintus Curtius 
 (c. 1470-71), Cicero De Natnra Deorum, &c. (1471), Val. 
 Maximus (1471), Martial (c. 1471), Boccaccio's Genealogies 
 deorum gentilinm (1472), and Strabo's Geography in the 
 Latin version by Guarino of Verona, and Gregorio of 
 Tiferno (1472). It is curious that in the Cicero, while 
 spaces were left for the Greek clauses, yet Greek type is 
 actually once used. Of the Boccaccio there were two 
 issues, the copy now before me differing somewhat from 
 that in the University Library. 
 
 Of books in the beautiful printing of Nic. Jenson, a 
 Frenchman who had settled at Venice, there are, I 
 rejoice to say, a goodly collection, most of which we 
 owe to Mr Grylls. The earliest is Eusebius' De Evan- 
 gelica Prceparatione, in the Latin translation of George of 
 Trebizond, and Justin's Epitome, both of 1470. Besides 
 these, I would specially note a copy of the edition of
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 65 
 
 Caesar's Commentaries, printed in 1471 ; the Quintilian of 
 the same year; the Macrobius of 1472, interesting as 
 giving for the first time portions of the Greek text of 
 Homer; and the beautiful edition of the Natural History 
 of Pliny (1472), of which we are fortunate enough to 
 possess two copies. Side by side with one of these 
 stands a copy of the Italian version of Pliny by Chris- 
 topher Landino, printed by Jenson in 1476, and dedi- 
 cated to Ferdinand, king of Naples. An edition may 
 also be noticed of the Epistles of the younger Pliny, 
 printed in 1471, which, though no place of printing or 
 printer's name is given, is generally referred to the press 
 of Christopher Valdarfer, before he left Venice for Milan. 
 At any rate, this edition was supervised by Lud. Carbo, 
 who is known to have been at that time Valdarfer's 
 corrector for the press. 
 
 One early Venetian printer, Adam of Ambergau, is 
 represented by one book, of some degree of rarity, an 
 edition of Cicero's Orations, printed in 1472. Of Franc. 
 Renner's press, I shall only refer to one book, an edition 
 of the Vulgate, printed in 1476. I mention this partly 
 because of the great beauty of the miniature and illumi- 
 nated capitals in it, and also because of the MS. notes 
 in it, which shew the history of the copy. From one 
 note, consisting of six lines in Latin hexameters, 
 we find it was given by a nobleman, "Michael Casalis 
 s. 5
 
 66 THE INCUNABULA, 
 
 dictus ab arce," to his sisters Julia, Theodora, and 
 Constance : 
 
 "Et quas claustrum continet almum 
 
 Septum Bononias celsis ab moenibus, in quo 
 Patris Dominici subeunt vestigia vitae." 
 
 The gap, both here and in the following note, is due to 
 careful erasure of the name, which I have altogether 
 failed to decipher, after spending a considerable amount 
 of time over it. The other notice was, "La M'. S. Nicola 
 Priora del M [evidently monasterio, as in the entry in 
 the other volume the word is convento\...\$2%, ha con- 
 cesso questa biblia a consolatione del predicto M in- 
 tendendo che persona alcuna in casa ne fora del casa se 
 laproprii." Thus the three sisters were nuns in Bologna, 
 but of what convent, and whether one afterwards became 
 the prioress, and under what circumstances her strict 
 charge was set at nought, must remain unknown. How 
 little the poor lady dreamt that her, treasure (now, I 
 regret to say, in modern binding) would be after long 
 years the valued possession of a library so far away ! 
 I have failed hitherto to identify the donor, Michael, 
 and should be glad to hear of anything that may be 
 known of him from the above few data. 
 
 Of the press of Jac. Rubeus (Jacomo de Rossi) may 
 be mentioned a copy of Laur. Valla's translation of 
 Herodotus (1474) which formerly belonged to Person,
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 67 
 
 and has some notes in his neat writing. When speaking 
 of books printed at Augsburg, I referred to Erhard 
 Ratdolt, a native of that place. He practised his trade 
 first at Venice and then at his native place. The earliest 
 work of his in the Library is the Kalendarium of Regio- 
 montanus, of which two editions, Latin and Italian, 
 were printed in 1476. These contain two leaves of 
 cardboard; on one of these is "Lo instrumento de le 
 hore inaequale" and "Lo instrumento del vero moto 
 de la luna," illustrated by moveable circular discs of 
 card; on the other is "El quadrante del horologio 
 horizontale," and "El quadrato generale de le hore," 
 furnished with a moveable brass pointer. As has been 
 already said, Erhard Ratdolt generally printed astro- 
 nomical and astrological works. Thus we have of his 
 printing the editio prince'ps of Euclid of 1482 (i.e. in the 
 Latin, the Greek was not printed till 1533), the Tabula 
 of Alfonso, the learned king of Castile (1483), and the 
 Astronomicon of Hyginus (1485). Besides these I will 
 specially note a book of considerable rarity an early 
 work on arithmetic Piero Borgi's La Nobel Opera de 
 Arithmetica (1484). It may be mentioned that Brunet 
 (whom Graesse copies as usual) speaks of this book as 
 containing 112 leaves; it really contains 118. Of works 
 of a different description proceeding from Erhard 
 Ratdolt's press I will cite Appian, in the Latin version 
 
 52
 
 68 THE INCUNABULA, 
 
 of Candidas (1477), an< ^ Jerome's Latin version of the 
 CJironicon of Eusebius (1483). 
 
 The later Venetian printers of our period must be 
 dismissed with few words. I may mention the edition of 
 Silius Italicus, with notes of Pet. Marsi, printed by Bapt. 
 de Tortis in 1483; the Triumphi, Sonetti, and Canzoni 
 of Petrarch, from the press of Bernardino da Novara 
 (1488); and a fragment of the Sarum Missal of 1494, 
 printed by John Hertzog for Frederic Egmont. I will 
 also refer to a book by the last-named printer Regio- 
 montanus's Epitoma in Almagestum Ptolomcei to shew 
 how loose are the notions of some bibliographers as 
 to what a conscientious description of a book means. 
 Graesse (IV. 588) speaks of this book as having 167 
 leaves; it really has no. The 167 is obviously due to 
 following Hain, where, however, it is a mere misprint 
 for 107, as may be seen by reading the article. Hain 
 simply took no account of the last blank leaf, and his 
 copy apparently wanted two unsigned leaves at the be- 
 ginning, which contained a prefatory letter, and which 
 may have been meant to have been inserted between 
 ff. i and 2. The edition of Livy printed by Phil. Pincio 
 in 1495 is worthy of notice. Like several preceding 
 editions, it follows the text of John Andreas, bishop 
 of Aleria, and is enriched with 174 woodcuts, believed 
 to be due to Mantegna.
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 69 
 
 Of Aldines, the College possesses a very rich collec- 
 tion. Thus, the well-known work of Renouard (Annales 
 de VImprimerie des Aide ; Paris, 1834) contains (if we 
 include the books printed for the Accademia Veneziana, 
 but not the Lyons and other counterfeits, or the books 
 published for Turrisanus at Paris) 1169 entries; and 
 some of these are certainly of imaginary editions. The 
 Library possesses 630' Aldines, exclusive of duplicates, 
 and of these not less than seventeen are of the fifteenth 
 century, including the very rare Greek Horcs of 1497. 
 In this reckoning I treat the five volumes of Aristotle 
 as one work. 
 
 Of printers who commenced their art at Venice after 
 Aldus may be mentioned Barth. Justinopolitanus and his 
 colleagues, of whom we have, in Greek, the Epistles of 
 Phalaris, &c. (1498), and the Fables of ^Esop, with the life 
 by Max. Planudes. To Nic. Blastus and his partners we 
 owe other Greek works, the Etymologicum Magnum of 
 1499, the Simplicius of 1499, and the Ammonius of 1500. 
 With one other book our remarks on Venetian printers 
 may close the Isolario of Barth. Zamberto da li 
 Soneti. This book, which has neither place nor date 
 
 1 It may be worth noting that two of these are not given in Renouard 
 at all : Jo. Bapt. Folengii, Commentaria in primam D. Joannis Episto- 
 lam, 1559. Ascanio Persio, La corona a" Arrigo III. Re di Francia e di 
 Polonia, 1574. The latter does not bear the name of Aldus, but has the 
 well-known woodcut of Roma and the wolf used by the younger Aldus.
 
 70 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 of printing, nor yet printer's name, but which was 
 certainly printed at Venice about 1480, contains forty- 
 nine woodcut maps of the islands of the ^Egean Sea. 
 The date of the book can be approximated to from 
 the fact that it is dedicated to John Mocenigo, who 
 was Doge from 1478-1485. The present copy once 
 belonged to the Doge Foscarini. 
 
 The year 1471 was an eventful one in the history 
 of Italian printing. It saw presses introduced into 
 Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan, Naples, Pavia, and 
 Treviso. Of Bolognese books our chief treasures are 
 Ovid's Fasti (1471), and the Libra de la Divina Provi- 
 dentia of St Catharine of Siena (1472?), printed by 
 Balth. Azoguidi, the proto-typographer of Bologna ; and 
 the Astronomicon of Manilius, printed by Ugo Rugerius 
 and his partner. I may also refer to two editions of 
 works of that "admirable Crichton" of his day Joh. 
 Picus Mirandola the Disputationes adversus Astro- 
 logiam Divinatricem, and his Commentationes. Of these, 
 editions were printed by Bened. Hectoris in 1495 and 
 1496 respectively. Besides these, there is also before 
 me an edition of the above, bearing the same printer's 
 name and the same date as regards the latter work 
 March 20, 1496 the other work being undated. This 
 latter edition is generally assumed to be a counterfeit 
 or pirated edition, printed from the foregoing, from
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 71 
 
 which it differs in many points of detail, though pre- 
 senting a general resemblance. The counterfeit is a 
 folio of 236 leaves. I will further note a Latin version 
 of sundry Greek opuscula, the Tabula of Cebes, the 
 Dial, de Virtute of Lucian, &c., printed by Bened. 
 Hectoris in 1497, and Angelo Politian's Latin version 
 of Herodtan, printed by Plato de Benedictis in 1493. 
 The last two books are described in the Bibliotheca 
 Spenceriana (ll. 38; III. 250). Finally, there may be 
 mentioned a curious little comedy, the Scornetta of 
 Herm. Knuyt de Slyterhoven, printed by Hier. de 
 Benedictis in 1497. This is often wrongly cited as 
 Scorretta, through a mistake of Molini (p. 112). 
 
 Of early Ferrara books there are but few. It will 
 suffice to mention the Astronomicon of Hyginus, printed 
 by Aug. Carnerius in 1475, and the Life and Epistles of 
 St Jerome, in the Italian version of Matheo da Ferrara. 
 This was printed by Lor. de Rossi in 1497. It is perhaps 
 worth noting that there must have been several slightly 
 varying impressions of this edition, for some copies are 
 said to be dedicated to the Doge of Venice, Ag. 
 Barbadico, and others to Eleonora d' Este, Duchess of 
 Ferrara. In the copy now before me, however, there 
 is, on the page cited as containing the dedication (the 
 verso of fol. 5), a full-page woodcut of St Jerome. In 
 a large woodcut border on the recto of fol. 6, and again
 
 72 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 near the end of the book, is the date 1493, presumably 
 that of the engraving, but I can find no trace of the date 
 1494, spoken of by Graesse (III. 275). 
 
 Of early Florentine printing there is here much of 
 interest. Of the proto-typographer, Bern. Cennini, I 
 can produce nothing; and of the next in order, John 
 of Maintz (Joh. Petri de Maganza), but one book of 
 late date, an edition of the Imitatio Christi (1497), here 
 attributed to John Gerson. From the press, however, 
 of Nicolas of Breslau (Nic. Laurentii, Nicolo Tedescho) 
 several of interest may be cited: (i) Celsus, edited by 
 Earth. Fontius (1478); (2) Berlinghieri's Geographia in 
 Terza Rima, with its thirty-one maps engraved on 
 copper, a large folio, undated, but printed about 1480; 
 (3) the Dante of 1481. This edition, a large folio, is 
 the earliest published with Landino's commentary, and 
 contains copper-plate engravings by Baccio Baldini, 
 from the designs of Sandro Botticelli. Of these the 
 number varies in different copies, the two in the 
 College Library containing only the two that are gene- 
 rally found at the beginning of the first and second 
 cantos of the Inferno. In the copy in the Grylls col- 
 lection there are also twenty-one small coloured illus- 
 trations, cut from a MS. and pasted on to the margin. 
 Our two copies, though bearing the same date (August 
 30, 1481), do not agree absolutely. Of the beautiful
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 73 
 
 editio princeps of Homer, printed in 1488 at the ex- 
 pense of the brothers Nerli, two copies are in the 
 Library, one in the Raine and the other in the Grylls 
 collection. The latter of these contains so large an 
 amount of capitals and borders, richly illuminated in 
 gold, that it must have been a presentation copy to 
 some person of rank, possibly to Lorenzo de' Medici 
 himself. The modern binding, however, has taken 
 away any possible clue. A passing notice may suf- 
 fice for the Italian version of the Jewish War of 
 Josephus, printed by Bartholomeo P(resbitero) in 1497 ; 
 and I would next refer to a printer whose works are 
 always eagerly sought after, Laur. Francisci de Alopa. 
 Of his printing we are fortunate in possessing the Greek 
 AntJwlogyrf Planudes, Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachus, 
 Euripides, and the Greek Gnomce and Musseus. As is 
 well known, the Greek text of these books is printed in 
 capital letters throughout, the scholia being in smaller 
 letters. Copies of the first of the above-named books 
 are very generally found with one quire wanting, con- 
 taining the dedicatory letter. This in perfect copies is 
 ordinarily found at the end, but in that one of our 
 copies which is complete it comes at the beginning. 
 The reason why this quire is so frequently wanting is 
 believed to be that the dedication, dated August, 1494, 
 is addressed to Pietro de' Medici, who in the September
 
 74 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 of that year was driven from Florence by the French 
 under Charles VIII. Thus, naturally, only the copies 
 sold before the expulsion would contain the dedica- 
 tion. 
 
 To another of our copies of the above a very special 
 interest attaches, from the mass of MS. notes it contains 
 in the handwriting of the elder Aldus and his brother- 
 in-law Francis d' Asola, and it is certainly the copy 
 from which was printed the Aldine AntJwlogy of 1503. 
 The last sixteen leaves are wanting, and Renouard, to 
 whom this copy once belonged, and who has described 
 it in his Annales de VImprimerie des Aide (p. 42), sug- 
 gests that they may have been lost during the progress 
 of printing. These are replaced by thirty-three pages 
 of MS., entirely in the writing of Aldus, and are fol- 
 lowed by twelve pages containing the fresh matter 
 given in the edition of 1503. On the first blank page 
 of the book has been written rov Kvpiov a\8ov rov 
 pavovrlov, below which is the familiar anchor and 
 dolphin. 
 
 I will next mention a book printed by Piero Pacini 
 in 1496, the Compendia di Revelatione dello inutile servo 
 di Jesu Christi Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara (Savona- 
 rola). This scarce edition is a small quarto of forty- 
 eight leaves, with six curious woodcuts. The reference 
 in Brunet is to the present copy. Two Greek books
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 75 
 
 belong to this part of our subject the Orphic hymns, 
 &c., printed by Phil. Junta in 1500, and the Lucian of 
 1496, bearing no printer's name. The Greek type of 
 this latter work is apparently the same with that in 
 which the scholia to the Apollonius Rhodius and Calli- 
 machus of Laur. Francisci de Alopa were printed. The 
 title-page of this book is generally believed to be a later 
 addition. It mentions Philostratus as well as Lucian, and 
 it is supposed that Junta published some copies of his 
 edition of Philostratus of 1517 with this earlier edition 
 of Lucian prefixed, and had title-pages for each of the 
 two cases. The original first leaf of the Lucian is un- 
 known. 
 
 The last Florentine book I shall mention is one of 
 which the present copy is apparently the only one 
 known the Credo cJie Dante fece quando fu accusato per 
 tieretico allo Inquisitore a Ravenna. It bears no place or 
 date of printing or printer's name, but was evidently 
 printed at Florence, and probably about 1490. It is a 
 small quarto of four leaves, in Gothic letters, bearing 
 on the title-page a woodcut of Dante and of Florence. 
 The reference in the supplementary volume of Brunet 
 (p. 346) is undoubtedly to this copy. 
 
 Unlike those of Rome or Venice, the earliest printers 
 at Milan were Italians, Phil, de Lavagnia of Milan and 
 Ant. Zarotto of Parma; the former, however, probably
 
 76 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 being in the first instance the patron of the latter rather 
 than the actual proto-typographer. Two books bearing 
 Phil, de Lavagnia's name in the imprint are in the 
 Library, Lucan's Pharsalia and Vergerius" De Ingenuis 
 Moribus^ both printed in 1477. Of Ant. Zarotto's press 
 there are a considerable number, the earliest being an 
 edition of the Letters of Pius II. during his episcopate, 
 printed in 1473 a large quarto, though generally called 
 a folio. I may also mention the edition of ^Esop's 
 Fables, in the Latin version of Rimicius (1476), and that 
 of Livy, from the text of Joh. Andreas, bishop of Aleria 
 (1480), Simoneta's Commentaria Rerum Gestarum Fran. 
 SphorticB (circa 1480), and the Quintus Curtius (1481). 
 The ^Esop and Livy are from the Libri sale of 1859, 
 and the latter is richly adorned with illuminated initials. 
 Not long subsequent to these printers came a 
 German of Ratisbon, Christopher Valdarfer, who moved 
 from Venice to Milan in 1474, and who is well known 
 as the printer of the famous edition of Boccaccio. The 
 only work from his press in the Library is the Interroga- 
 torium of Barth. de Chaimis (1474). Of the numerous 
 products of the press of Ulderic Sinczenzeler in this 
 Library I will mention but one, which is not often met 
 with, the Loica Vulgare in Dialogo of Jac. Camphara 
 
 (1497)- 
 
 Of more general interest, however, will be the early
 
 THE INCUNABULA. ^^ 
 
 specimens of Greek printing which we owe to Milan, 
 such as the first edition of the Greek text of ./Esop (with 
 an accompanying Latin version), in the recension of 
 Buono Accorso. This edition has the signatures in the 
 Greek part in the extreme lower margin of the page. 
 It was published about the year 1480. I may name 
 also the Greco-Latin Psalter of 1481, the first edition 
 of any part of Holy Scripture in Greek, thus being 
 subsequent to the Hebrew (of which the first printed 
 Psalter appeared in 1477), and, of course, long subse- 
 quent to the Latin. We also have the editio princeps 
 of Isocrates (printed in 1493 by Henricus Germanus, 
 whom some have identified with Ulderic Sinczenzeler), 
 and the editio princeps of the Lexicon of Suidas, printed 
 by Demetrius Chalcondylas and his partners in 1499. 
 
 The only other Milanese book I shall mention is the 
 Sanctuarium of Mombritius, a prototype of the great 
 Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists. This book, though 
 having neither place nor date of printing, was certainly 
 printed at Milan, and that not later than 1479; the 
 evidence as to the date being derived from the fact that 
 the book is dedicated to Cicho Simoneta, who was im- 
 prisoned in 1479, and executed in 1480. 
 
 Although printing was practised at Naples in 1471, 
 and several printers carried on their trade there, we un- 
 fortunately possess only three works of Neapolitan
 
 78 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 printing, and those all from the same press, that of 
 Sextus Riessinger, whose name, however, does not actu- 
 ally occur in any of them. They are also all undated, 
 but 1472 may be given as the approximate date of all 
 three. They are the Epistles and Tractates of St 
 Jerome, from the recension of Theod. Lelius, Pliny De 
 Viris Illustribus, and Franc. Aretino's Latin version of 
 the Epistles of Phalaris. 
 
 Passing over Pavia, from the presses of which there 
 is nothing of special interest in our possession, I come to 
 Treviso, where printing was first practised in 1471. Of 
 the proto-typographer, Gerard de Lisa (Van de Leye), a 
 Fleming, we possess two works, the first edition of a 
 book otherwise known as the Poemander, Mercurius 
 Trismegistus de Potestate et Sapientia Dei, in the Latin 
 version of Marsilius Ficinus, printed in 1471 ; and the 
 Epistoke Magni Turd, printed about 1472. Of the 
 works of later Trevisan printers, I may cite the edition 
 of Seneca's Moralia, printed by Bern, de Colonia in 
 1478, and the Latin translation of Dionysius of Hali- 
 carnassus, by Lappus Biragus, printed by Bernardinus 
 de Lucre in 1480. 
 
 Only one year later in their recognition of the new 
 art than the towns we have now been considering come 
 Cremona, Mantua, Padua, and Parma, of all of which 
 representatives are here. Of the first, however, there
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 79 
 
 is nothing which need detain us, and of Mantua I will 
 only mention an edition of a once well-used book, the 
 Expositio Problematum Aristotelis of Pet. de Abano (of 
 this there is an edition printed in 1475 by Paul Joh. de 
 Puzpach, probably the real proto-typographer) ; and 
 also our one specimen of fifteenth-century Hebrew 
 printing, the commentary of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom 
 (Ralbag) on the Pentateuch, printed by Abraham 
 Conath about 1476. 
 
 Of Paduan books may be noted Aurispa's Latin 
 version of the commentary of Hierocles, In Aureos 
 Versus PytJiagora, printed by the proto-typographer, 
 Earth, de Valdezoccho, in 1474. The signatures to this 
 book are placed in the bottom right-hand corner of the 
 leaf. Of Parma there are here the Solinus, printed by 
 And. Portilia, the proto-typographer, in 1480 ; and the 
 Bucolica of Calphurnius and Nemesianus, printed by 
 Aug. Ugoleto about 1490. It may be mentioned that 
 Brunet is in error in saying that the first leaf of the 
 latter work is blank; it contains the title Bucolica Cal- 
 phurnii et Nemesiani, 
 
 Of works from the presses of Brescia, where printing 
 was first practised in 1473, there are here a considerable 
 number. I shall only mention, however, the Commen- 
 taria Grammatica of Laur. Valla, printed by Eustacius 
 Gallus in 1475; and two works from the press of Bo-
 
 80 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 ninus de Boninis, the Saturnalia, &c., of Macrobius, and 
 the poems of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, printed 
 in 1485 and 1486 respectively. From the press of Jac. 
 Britannicus we have an edition, printed in 1485, of the 
 Imitatio Christi, which is ascribed to St Bernard, though 
 the claim of Joh. Gerson is also referred to. 
 
 The Vicenza books are of some interest. They in- 
 clude the Dita Mundi of Fazio degli Uberti, printed 
 by Leonardus Achates of Basle, the proto-typographer 
 of Vicenza, in 14/4, the year after he had set up his 
 press in Vicenza. The present copy was doubtless in- 
 tended for presentation to some great personage, for 
 the title is printed in gold. Another product of this 
 printer's press is one which has given rise to a good deal 
 of discussion, an edition of Petrarch's Sonetti, Canzoni e 
 Trionfi, dated 1474. It bears the printer's name (Leo- 
 nardus Achates Basiliensis), but not the place of 
 printing. Several bibliographers, Dibdin and others, 
 have been misled by the reference to Basle, which is 
 merely given as the birthplace of the printer. Others 
 again have suggested Venice, because of the mention of 
 the name of the reigning Doge in the imprint ; but there 
 is no evidence of our printer having ever exercised his 
 art at Venice, and there cannot really be much doubt 
 that the book was printed at Vicenza or at Sant 1 Ursino, 
 in its immediate neighbourhood, this being Venetian
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 8 1 
 
 territory, so that the mention of the Doge's name is 
 natural enough. This book is generally spoken of as 
 being without signatures; it has them, but they were 
 placed below a very deep margin, and so would gene- 
 rally be cut off in the binding. There are also copies 
 of the edition of Orosius by yEneas Vulpes printed 
 about 1475, and of that of Ovid from the text of Buono 
 Accorso, printed in 1480, both from the press of Her- 
 mann Lichtenstein of Cologne. 
 
 Of books printed at Modena in the fifteenth century 
 there is here but one, the Poems of Bapt. Guarini, printed 
 in 1496 by Dominic Rocociola; and there is also one 
 from the little town of Colle, near Florence (" in Colle 
 oppido municipio Florentine"), the editio princeps of the 
 Halieutica of Oppian in the Latin version of Laur. 
 Lippus of Colle, printed by Bonus Gallus in 1478, the 
 year of the introduction of printing into Colle ; being, 
 indeed, the second book printed there. Of books 
 printed at Rhegium I may note an edition of Tibullus, 
 Catullus, and Propertius, printed by Prosper Odoardus 
 and Alb. de Mazalis, both natives of Rhegium, in 1481. 
 There is also an edition of part of the works of Appian, 
 in the Latin translation of Pet. Candidus, printed by 
 Franc, de Mazalibus in 1494. 
 
 The last Italian town I shall name here is Scan- 
 diano, to which printing did not penetrate till 1495, and 
 S. 6
 
 82 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 of which we have one fifteenth century book, an edition 
 of the works of Appian, not included in the last-men- 
 tioned edition, and therefore forming a second part to it. 
 It was printed in 1495 by the proto-typographer Peregr. 
 Pasquali. The date is expressed in a curious way, 
 MCCCCLCXV: we cannot doubt, however, that it should 
 mean 1495, from the occurrence of the words " Camillo 
 Boiardo Comite " in the imprint. It would seem that 
 the only count of that name was the son of the famous 
 author of the Orlando, who succeeded his father in 1494 
 and died in 1499. 
 
 There are in the Library about a score of fifteenth 
 century books of whose Italian origin we can have no 
 doubt, or but little doubt, while yet it is impossible to 
 feel any certainty as to the particular press. A few of 
 these may be mentioned: (i) An edition not described 
 by Hain, or so far as I know, by any bibliographer, of 
 the Somnium de Fortuna of ./Eneas Silvius, apparently 
 printed about 1470. A point of peculiarity in the type 
 in which the book is printed is that the i is undotted. 
 (2) An edition of Albertus Magnus, De Secretis Natures, 
 probably printed about 1490, is also apparently not 
 described in Hain. (3) A copy of an edition of Thomas 
 Aquinas, Qucestiones de Potentia Dei, &c. (printed about 
 1490), once belonging to the monastery of St Mary at 
 Cupar, for which it was purchased by its abbot, John
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 83 
 
 Schanwell [1480 1507]. (4) Bonacioli's Enneas Mii- 
 liebris, though reckoned among incunabula by Hain 
 and Panzer, is apparently an early sixteenth century 
 work, for it is dedicated to Lucretia Borgia as Duchess 
 of Ferrara, whereas she did not obtain her title till 
 1502. (5) An edition of the work Fiore de Virtude, 
 whose authorship is quite unknown, though referred to 
 Tomaso Leoni, Franc. Sacchetti, and others. The 
 present edition was apparently printed about 1477. On 
 the last page of the copy before me is written, in a 
 contemporaneous hand, "Si pater est Adam et mater 
 omnibus Eva, Cur non sunt omnes nobilitate pares." 
 
 (6) Bernardo de Granollachs, El Summario de la Luna, 
 dated 1489, but with no place of printing or printer's 
 name. Our copy of this work is, so far as I am aware, 
 unique, and was bought in the Libri sale of 1857, having 
 previously formed part of the Boutourlin collection. 
 The work is of an astrological character, and for this 
 purpose gives the various details as to the moon's age, 
 &c., through each month, and for a series of years, 
 beginning from 1489. The author describes himself as 
 "maistro in arte ed in medicina della inclyta citta de 
 Barcelona," for which city the results would be pre- 
 sumably calculated in the first instance, and on the last 
 leaf is a table to adapt them to various Italian towns. 
 
 (7) The Macharonea of Tiphis Odaxius printed about 
 
 \ 6 2
 
 84 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 1490. All bibliographers, deriving, apparently, their 
 knowledge from the Pinelli catalogue, have spoken of 
 this book as without signatures ; whereas it has them 
 on a level with, and to the right of, the last line in the 
 page. Brunet and Graesse also speak of the title Ma- 
 charonea as fictitious, whereas it is present on the first 
 page in Roman capitals. (8) An edition of Plautus, 
 edited by Ducius and Galbiatus, printed about 1500; 
 this edition is described in the BibL Spenc., II. 250. (9) 
 An edition of Luca Pulci's Driadeo d 1 Amore in Gothic 
 type, printed about 1490. 
 
 The only other country at all represented in the 
 college list of incunabula is Spain, which is represented 
 by a single book printed at Salamanca. Printing found 
 its way into Spain in 1475, and to Salamanca in 1485 ; 
 our present book, however, is only just within our limit, 
 bearing the date March 17, 1500. The book is the 
 Speculum Ecclesia of Hugo de S. Charo, the good 
 cardinal to whom we owe the chapters of our Bibles. 
 No printer's name is given, and I have not yet suc- 
 ceeded in finding anything to help me to determine who 
 he was. 
 
 The last book I shall mention in the present list is 
 one which has long been a puzzle to me an edition of 
 Cato with the exposition of Remigius. The general 
 character of the printing and the absence of signatures
 
 THE INCUNABULA. 
 
 would dispose me to assign it a comparatively early 
 date, say 1470-75. Beyond that I should not wish to 
 speak positively, even as to the country. The type, 
 which is a curious and very thick Roman letter, is quite 
 different from anything I have ever seen elsewhere. 
 
 With this, my survey of the incunabula of the Library, 
 already extended, I fear, to too great a length, must 
 come to an end, and we must now pass on to consider 
 some of the rarer and less known of the early English 
 books in the Library.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 " 
 
 I SHALL now proceed to notice briefly some of the 
 
 more interesting specimens of early English printing, or 
 of books in some sense connected with England, other 
 than incunabula. And first as to translations of the 
 Bible or part thereof into English. Here the first place 
 must be taken by a copy of Tindale's New Testament, 
 of the edition of November, 1534, printed at Antwerp 
 by "Marten Emperowr." This is No. 4 in Mr Lea 
 Wilson's catalogue. Another edition of the New Testa- 
 ment of some value is one with the English and Latin 
 in parallel columns, printed at Southwark in 1538 by 
 James Nicolson. The translation in this case is Cover- 
 dale's, and, the present is a copy of the second of the 
 two editions printed by Nicolson in 1538. It has 
 usually been stated that a sufficient test to distinguish 
 the two editions is that the title to the first is printed in 
 black and red, and Coverdale is named as the translator ; 
 while in the second the title is wholly in black, and
 
 EARL Y ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 87 
 
 bears the name of John Hollybush as the translator. 
 There is no doubt, however, that this is a mistake, and 
 that both editions alike had the title in black and red, 
 and bore the name of Coverdale. In some copies this 
 title was cancelled, and a fresh one printed entirely in 
 black and bearing the name of Hollybush was substi- 
 tuted. In the present copy, the first leaf is on quite 
 different paper from the rest of the quire. 
 
 A curious edition of the Bible is one of Cranmer's 
 version, or the Great Bible (the version whence our 
 Prayer-Book Psalter is taken), printed in 1553 in ex- 
 ceedingly small Gothic type by Richard Grafton, for 
 which in some copies are the names of Whitchurch and 
 Grafton conjointly in the imprint. The daily lessons to 
 be read in churches are indicated in the margin. Of 
 Matthew's version there are two editions, both folios 
 printed in the same year, 1 549, one by Day and Seres, 
 bearing the date August 17, and the other by Thomas 
 Raynalde and William Hyll, dated October 31. The 
 former of these was edited by Edmund Becke. There 
 is also an edition of what claims on the title-page to be 
 Matthew's version printed by John Day, with the date 
 May 23, 1551, which is really, as Mr Lea Wilson (No. 
 20) points out, of Taverner's in the Old Testament (save 
 from Deut. xxxi. to Josh, xxiii. and in the Psalms). 
 The New Testament is Tindale's.
 
 88 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 An edition of the Bishops' Bible printed by Jugge 
 in 1572 may be mentioned, containing copper-plate 
 portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Leicester and Lord 
 Burleigh, as well as a copper-plate map of Canaan and 
 Egypt engraved by Humfray Cole. It is unnecessary 
 to refer to later editions of the Bible, such as those of 
 the Genevan version, which are of comparatively com- 
 mon occurrence, save an edition of Tomson's revision 
 of 1599. Mr Lea Wilson calls attention to no less than 
 six different impressions of this version of 1599, all 
 quarto and in Roman letter (Nos. 79-84), but the copy 
 now before me is different from all of them. 
 
 I now pass on to speak of Service Books of the pre- 
 Reformation and Reformation period. Although we 
 cannot boast even a fragment of any service book of the 
 rarer uses of York and Hereford, yet Sarum is not 
 badly represented. To begin with Missals: the earliest 
 which we can cite is unfortunately but a fragment, be- 
 longing to the octavo edition printed at Venice in 1494 
 by John Hertzog for Frederick Egmont. The next in 
 order of time is Pynson's magnificent folio edition of 
 1500, printed on vellum, which has been already de- 
 scribed. The only other edition of the Sarum Missal 
 in the Library is a folio, printed at Paris in 1519 by 
 Pierre Olivier for Jacques Cousin. In this copy the 
 two leaves of sig. q are printed on vellum ; the canon
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 89 
 
 beginning on the recto of q 2, while a full-page woodcut 
 of the Crucifixion occupies the preceding page. 
 
 Of the Sarum Breviary there are two editions here, 
 both printed at Paris, one the gigantic folio printed for 
 Claude Chevallon and Francois Regnault in 1531, which 
 is taken as the basis of the recently published edition 
 by Messrs Procter and Wordsworth. The other is an 
 octavo printed by Jean le Blanc for Guillaume Merlin in 
 
 I557- 
 
 Next to these may be mentioned a book of extreme 
 rarity, the Sarum Antiphonary, printed in Paris in 1519 
 by Wolfgang Hopyl for Francis Byrckman of London. 
 Our copy is unfortunately most imperfect, consisting of 
 the Pars Hyemalis only, and much of this, including the 
 whole of the Proprium de Sanctis, is wanting. The 
 history of the volume is curious. About thirty years 
 ago a number of books in one of the less-used parts of 
 the Library were noticed to be furnished with fly-leaves, 
 which evidently had formed part of some church service 
 book. These were recognized by Mr Bradshaw as be- 
 longing to the very rare Sarum Antiphonary, and the 
 leaves were taken out and arranged for binding. The 
 volume of the Pars Hyemalis in the British Museum 
 formerly belonged to St Cuthbert's College, at Ushaw. 
 This, too, is not quite perfect, but, of course, far more so 
 than the present copy; though some of the missing
 
 90 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 leaves in the Museum copy are among those existing in 
 the Trinity copy. The only other copy known is in the 
 library of Christ Church, Oxford; and the Museum 
 possesses the only copy as yet known of the Pars 
 Estivalis. 
 
 We possess one Manual of the Sarum Use, printed 
 at Rouen, that great mart for service books, for Robert 
 Valentin, in 1554. This was recently given to the 
 Library by Mr S. Sandars. 
 
 Of Horae there are two to mention, both of Sarum. 
 One, apparently unique, is of the year 1498, and was 
 printed at Paris by J. Jehannot for Nic. Lecomte. This 
 forms part of a volume, bound about the middle of the 
 sixteenth century, containing also the unique "Godly 
 Psalme of Marye Queene," by Richard Beeard (1553), 
 with its quaint and sweet musical setting, and an 
 edition of the Epistles and Gospels, to which I shall 
 again refer. The other Horae is one printed by Ger. 
 Hardouyn, without date, but presumably in 1528, as the 
 almanac is for the fourteen years 1528-1542. This 
 volume, which is printed on vellum and richly illumi- 
 nated, containing no less than twelve large and eighteen 
 small miniatures, must at one time have been a very 
 charming possession. The binding is edged with broad 
 ornamental borders of silver, which were originally gilt. 
 To these were attached two silver clasps, only one of
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 9 1 
 
 which now remains, set with a jacinth; and in the 
 middle of each side is a silver boss set with the same 
 stone. The book was the gift of Dame Anne Sadleir, 
 the daughter of Sir Edward Coke, to whom reference 
 was made in an earlier chapter. 
 
 A place may be claimed by a copy of the Expositio 
 Sequentiarum, according to the Use of Sarum ; the com- 
 panion Expositio Hymnarum is unfortunately wanting. 
 The edition is that printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 
 1514. Of the Liber Festivalis, with its accompanying 
 Quatuor- Sermones, are two editions, both by the above- 
 named printer; the former printed in 1493 "in West- 
 monesterio," while De Worde was yet living in Caxton's 
 house, and not long after Caxton's death. The other 
 bears the date 1532, only a few years before De Worde's 
 death, and was printed "in Fletestrete at the sygne of 
 the Sonne." 
 
 No service book is more interesting than the Primer, 
 from the wider and more popular nature of its use. 
 The earliest of these in the Library is one of the Sarum 
 use, printed at Paris, without printer's name, in 1538. 
 To this Primer, which is in English and Latin, are ap- 
 pended, as usual, Hierom of Ferrara's (Savonarola) " Ex- 
 position of the Fifty-first Psalm," &c., and the " Pystles 
 and Gospels." Although later in point of time than the 
 succeeding, yet the Marian primers, as representing the
 
 92 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 older type, should naturally precede those due to the 
 close of the reign of Henry VIII. Of the two Marian 
 Primers in the Library, both of which are in Latin and 
 English, one was printed by John Wayland in 1555, "in 
 Fletestrete at the sygne of the Sunne." It is issued 
 under the authority of Cardinal Pole, "to be only used 
 of al the kyng and Quenes maiesties lovinge subiectes." 
 The present copy presumably once belonged to Queen 
 Mary herself; it is bound in leather, which once was 
 white or cream coloured, with gauffred gilt edges. On 
 each side, on which was once a rich gilt pattern, thickly 
 sown with fleurs-de-lis, are the royal arms of England 
 with "M. R." There is no clue as to how the book 
 came into the College Library, but it is found entered 
 in our oldest catalogue. The other edition of the 
 Marian Primer is one printed at Rouen in 1555 by 
 Jean le Prest for Robert Valentin. 
 
 A Primer of a very different description is that 
 issued from Whitchurch's press in 1545, under the 
 authority of Henry VIII. In this book is contained 
 the earliest English form of our present Litany, with its 
 petition against the "tyranny of the Bishop of Rome 
 and all his detestable enormities." There are also the 
 services of Matins and Evensong, from which our 
 present services are developed. The Epistles and Gos- 
 pels appended to this volume are from the press of John
 
 EARL Y ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 93 
 
 Herforde. In conclusion may be cited an imperfect 
 Primer, indeed one from which nearly the whole of the 
 Primer proper is missing, but containing the Epistles and 
 Gospels. This defect may perhaps be explained by the 
 fact that bound up with this volume is the Sarum Horae 
 of 1498, which would thus take the place of the Primer. 
 The present work was printed by William Bonham, " in 
 Paules churche yarde," without date, but presumably 
 about 1545. 
 
 Having thus briefly glanced at the various service 
 books, a few remarks on one or two books of a devo- 
 tional character may fitly follow. The Speculum Christi- 
 ani of John Watton has already been referred to among 
 the incunabula. A rare work of considerable interest is 
 the Pilgrimage of Perfection, printed in 1526 by Pyn- 
 son "in Fletestrete, besyde saynt Dunstans churche." 
 Several short treatises being inserted in this (the Starre 
 of Grace, the Tre of Vyce, &c.), the collation of the work 
 is rather intricate. This book affords an illustration of 
 a practice uncommon among early printers, and by no 
 means universally followed now, namely the use of what 
 may for convenience be called a signature-title, that is 
 an abbreviated form of the title printed in the lower 
 margin on the recto or rectos at the beginning of a quire 
 under much the same kind of condition as the sig- 
 natures. The woodcuts in this volume, though quaint,
 
 94 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 shew considerable force; for example, one of the Saviour 
 bound seated on a rock in front of the cross. Bound up 
 with this work as a companion volume is the Rosary of 
 our Saviour, by the same printer. Another work of the 
 same class is the well-known Scala Perfectionis, by 
 Walter Hylton. The edition before me is that printed 
 by Wynkyn de Worde in 1533. There is a woodcut on 
 the title-page of the Saviour standing by the cross with 
 a monk kneeling. Below are the words, forming part 
 of the woodcut and not printed with type, " The greatest 
 comfort in al temptacyon, Is the remebraunce of Crystes 
 passyon." The book is bound up with two similar works, 
 and this grouping has perhaps led to an erroneous con- 
 clusion. The three works which make up the volume 
 are by three different printers. Now, in some of our 
 early catalogues, the composite character of the book 
 not having been observed, it is entered with the title 
 belonging to the first of the three combined with the 
 date and printer's name from the imprint of the last 
 (Henry Pepwell, 1521), the book in the middle being 
 ignored. Now, the books of reference (e.g. Herbert, p. 
 316) cite an edition of the Scala Perfectionis as printed 
 by Pepwell in 1521; but I have so far not found any- 
 one referring to a definite copy. While, of course, I do 
 not deny the possibility of there being such an edition, 
 it also seems quite possible, considering how much in-
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 95 
 
 formation Herbert received from Cambridge, that this 
 notice rests on the mistake I have already mentioned. 
 While on this subject of books referred to the wrong 
 printer, I will venture to digress a moment to notice a 
 case which puzzled me for a long time. The translation 
 of Thucydides (or rather of the French version of it) by 
 Thomas Nicolls has been assigned from the time of 
 Ames downwards to the press of John Wayland, and 
 the grounds of this assignment seemed very unaccount- 
 able; and Herbert (p. 560) enters it, under protest, as it 
 were, simply on Ames's authority. There is nothing in 
 the book which in any way connects it with Wayland. 
 A little time ago I came upon what is evidently the 
 true solution of the matter. In Mr Hazlitt's second 
 series of Bibliographical Collections and Notes (p. 598) is 
 a notice of this work, where after a transcript of the 
 title-page follows a colophon including John Wayland's 
 name. Possessing, as I do, a copy of the work, and 
 knowing that on the verso of the last leaf but one a 
 colophon occurred with no printer's name, I supposed 
 for the moment that there must have been two different 
 (at any rate in this respect) editions of the work in 1550. 
 On reading on, however, I found that Mr Hazlitt's 
 colophon was "taken from the title-page preserved in 
 Harl. MS. 5919 [one of John Bagford's volumes]. It is 
 there pasted on to the foot of the leaf \ti\e italics are mine],
 
 96 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 and is in the same type as the rest. Herbert places the 
 book under Wayland [Herbert's manner of citing the 
 book I have already given]. It seems to have been 
 Bagford's practice, in many cases, to annex the colophon 
 in this way." The evidence thus reduces itself to this : 
 Bagford, a man who well deserved the pillory who 
 tore titles and colophons wholesale from rare books in 
 various libraries has happened to paste together a 
 certain title-page and colophon, through a mistake that 
 might easily arise as he sorted his ill-gotten gains, while 
 he had not the book itself at hand to guide him. The 
 colophon Mr Hazlitt quotes has nothing, and can have 
 nothing, to do with the book unless we suppose two 
 different issues, of which there is no trace, though the 
 book is fairly common. To one with a perfect copy of 
 the book before him the alleged identity of type (a very 
 ordinary everyday sort of a large black-letter, which it 
 would be dangerous to argue from) is altogether irrele- 
 vant as to the connexion of the stolen colophon with the 
 present book. 
 
 To return to the volume containing the Scala Per- 
 fectionis and its two companions. The second and 
 middle work is one of which I can find no copy beside 
 the present It is a tract of four leaves, printed in a 
 rather rude black-letter, entitled A devout Intercescion 
 [sic] and praier to our Saviour Jesu Christ. It was
 
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 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 97 
 
 printed " in Durham rentes by Richard Fawkes," and is 
 without a date, but was presumably printed about 1525 
 -30. On the title-page is a woodcut of our Lord, 
 standing arrayed in a cope, giving the blessing with His 
 right hand, and with the orb in His left. In the upper 
 corners of the cut are God the Father and the Dove. The 
 remaining work in the volume is, I fancy, exceedingly 
 rare. It is entitled " A veray deuoute treaty se (named 
 Benyamyn)...by a noble and famous doctoure... named 
 Rycharde of Saynt Vyctor," but contains other treatises 
 not mentioned on the title-page, as " Dyvers doctrynes 
 taken out of the lyfe of... Saynt Katheryn of Scenes," 
 " A shorte treatyse of a devoute ancres called Margerye 
 Kempe of Lynne," "A deuoute treatyse compyled by 
 mayster Walter Hylton of the songe of aungelles," &c. 
 The volume contains several curious woodcuts, e.g. one 
 on the title-page of the Saviour standing by the cross 
 with the various emblems of the Passion ; also one of 
 Saint Katherine of Siena kneeling at her desk. 
 
 The last work of this kind I shall mention is the 
 curious Tree and xii fruytes of tlie Jwly Goost, printed by 
 Robert Copland in 1534-5. It is worthy of remark 
 that the second part of this work (" the xii fruytes ") has 
 on its imprint, " Enprynted by Robert Copland and 
 Myghell Fawkes." The latter printer's name I have 
 never come across elsewhere. 
 
 S. 7
 
 98 EARL Y ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 When one reflects on the subject of rare English 
 books, and remembers that every old library in the 
 country of any size is sure to have books in it not to be 
 found elsewhere, one cannot help wondering at the 
 hurry sometimes shewn to get a complete catalogue of 
 English literature made all at once, with the chief point 
 to be settled being to what date the catalogue shall be 
 brought, 1600, 1603, 1640, &c. I venture to think that, 
 on the " first catch your hare " principle, there is an im- 
 perative necessity to do something more than has yet 
 been done to know what we have got before we begin 
 to catalogue. Three things strike one as desirable : i. 
 Careful essays on individual printers, following the line 
 so admirably set in Mr Blades's Caxton. When such 
 books exist as Renouard's on the Aldi and Stephens, 
 and Pieters's and Willems's on the Elzevirs, why cannot 
 some Englishman do the like for Wynkyn de Worde or 
 Pynson ? It is only by thus carefully directing the at- 
 tention on a limited field that thoroughness can be got. 
 The contrast between Mr Blades's and (say) Dibdin's 
 treatment of Caxton's works teaches us that. 2. The 
 growth of printing in various towns should be specially 
 treated. Such works, by opening up different lines of 
 information, may well run part passu with the former. 
 Such a work as Davies's Memoir of the York Press sets 
 a very good example for local bibliographers to follow.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOK'S. 99 
 
 3. Too little is known in detail of the rarer treasures of 
 most of our older libraries. If the librarians would 
 even note down such English works and editions as are 
 not given by the ordinary books of reference, such as 
 Herbert and Lowndes, they would earn the gratitude of 
 all working bibliographers. Perhaps some day Herbert's 
 Ames may be re-edited, and rather more scientifically 
 than it was by Dibdin ; and we may get a new edition 
 of Lowndes, a thing much to be wished for. To make 
 either of such things what it ought to be, a good deal of 
 such preliminary working as I have hinted at will have 
 to be done 1 . 
 
 Some works of a polemic character may next be 
 mentioned. First among these may be named the once 
 famous Assertio septem Sacramentorum adversus Mar- 
 tinum Lutherum, which won for Henry VIII. the title of 
 "Fidei Defensor" from Pope Leo X. Of this work there 
 are several editions here; the first edition from the press 
 of Pynson, "4 id. Jul.," 1521. A copy of this was 
 presented to the Pope on September 21 of that year, 
 by John Clerk, who acted as the king's orator at Rome 
 on that occasion ; and to some copies of this first edition 
 
 1 Since the above words were originally written, the reproach has been 
 partly wiped away by the appearance of a work, to which all bibliographers 
 must feel very honest gratitude, the Annals of Scottish Printing, by Dr R. 
 Dickson and Mr J. P. Edmond, a work reflecting the highest honour on its 
 compilers. 
 
 72
 
 100 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 of the Assertio is prefixed some additional matter, as the 
 Pope's bull, and the promise of the indulgence to the 
 readers of the book. (I note here in passing that John 
 Clerk was a Cambridge man, B.A. 1499; but I learn 
 from Dr Luard that the entry in the registry does not 
 specify the college.) There is also a copy of an edition 
 printed by Pynson, "17 kal. Feb." 1522, which, however, 
 is partly made up of sheets struck off for the first edition. 
 This is shewn by the fact that in many of the sheets the 
 very obvious misprints of the first issue are left uncor- 
 rected, and also by defects in printing occurring in both 
 copies alike. Some sheets, however, have clearly been 
 set up anew. Besides these two is also a copy of the 
 edition printed at Rome in 1521, under the special 
 authority of the Pope. '-" ^ 
 
 Another work, bearing the name of Henry VIII., 
 which may fairly be mentioned in this connexion, is 
 an edition of the letters addressed by him to Martin 
 Luther, with Luther's own letter. This was printed by 
 Pynson in 1527. 
 
 The mention of Henry VIII. and of the religious 
 feuds of his reign, reminds one of the name of good 
 Sir Thomas More, one or two of whose books may here 
 be specified. One, of some degree of rarity, is his Epistola 
 ad Germanum Brixium (Pynson, 1520), a reply to the 
 attacks which his epigrams on Germain de Brie had
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. IOI 
 
 brought upon him. Of a different character from this is 
 the "Supplycacyon of soulys, agaynst the supplycacyon 
 of beggars" (Rastell, probably 1529), made while More 
 was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Bound up 
 in the same volume with this is his dialogue (in the 
 edition of 1531), "wheryn be treatyd dyvers maters, as 
 of the veneracyon and worshyp of ymagys and relyques, 
 &c." The same volume also contains More's "Confu- 
 tacyon of Tindale's answere" (Rastell, 1532). Strange 
 that these two men, both so noble and good, should 
 have suffered death, and on grounds of religion, by the 
 order of the same tyrant. 
 
 A printer whose productions are not very commonly 
 met with is John Skot, who began to print in 1521. 
 Skot used the device of Denis Roce, the Parisian printer, 
 but with his own name below, and his monogram on the 
 shield. Two little books printed by him, without date, 
 shew the intensity and bitterness of religious party 
 feeling by the middle of the reign of Henry VIII. The 
 former of these is Jasper Fyloll's invective "Agaynst the 
 possessyons of the Clergye." The other, yet more bitter, 
 is the "Enormytees usyd by the Clergy, and by some 
 wryters theyr adherentis," how they "causeles have 
 sklanderously spoken agayns this noble realme of 
 Englande, and agayns dyvers of the Kynges lay sub- 
 jectes."
 
 102 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOORS. 
 
 The question of the king's divorce produced a large 
 mass of misapplied learning. Among this may be 
 mentioned the Kotser Codicis of Robert Wakfeld, the 
 famous Oriental scholar; and "the determinations of the 
 moste famous... universities of Italy and Fraunce, that it 
 is so unlefull for a man to marie his brothers wyfe, that 
 the pope hath no power to dispence therwith," printed 
 by Berthelet in 1531. Herbert (p. 418) gives the date 
 Nov. 7, 1530, but the copy now before me is dated 
 Nov. 7, 1531 ; and from the identity in the day and 
 month, Herbert is probably in error. Curiously enough, 
 the Grenville copy is dated Nov. 7, but with no year. 
 
 Passing to the next generation, I will single out a 
 curious collection of tracts by Thomas Norton, printed 
 by John Day in or about 1569. This Norton, M.P. for 
 the City of London, and the first to hold the office of 
 Remembrancer, was one of those concerned in the 
 atrocious cruelties inflicted on various unfortunate Roman 
 Catholics in the Tower. It was not a very satisfactory 
 answer to the charge against him that he had boasted 
 that he had stretched a priest, named Alexander Briant, 
 a foot longer than God had made him, to maintain that 
 he had merely threatened that if Briant would not tell 
 the truth, "he should be made a foot longer than God 
 made him." The volume of tracts to which I have 
 referred was evidently put together and bound in the
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 1 03 
 
 latter part of the sixteenth century, in what was once 
 an exceedingly rich and handsome binding. In the 
 midst of the tooling on the sides are the initials "E. A.," 
 which I regret to be unable to identify. The book is 
 one of those bequeathed to the Library by John Laugh ton 
 (Librarian of Trinity College, 1669-73). Of the tracts 
 in question two refer to the rising of the Earls of 
 Northumberland and Westmoreland in 1569; one the 
 address "To the Quenes Majesties poore deceived sub- 
 jectes of the North Countrey" (Binneman, 1569); and the 
 other "A warning agaynst the dangerous practises of 
 Papistes, and specially the parteners of the late Re- 
 bellion" (J. Day, s.a., but 1569). Of this latter there 
 were two distinct issues from Day's press; the most 
 noticeable variation being that on the verso of the title- 
 page, which in the earlier edition is blank, we find in 
 the second, "The summe of all this Booke. We can not 
 well spare our Queene Elizabeth." Besides these are 
 three short tracts on the publication of the Pope's bull 
 at that time: (i) "A Bull graunted by the Pope to 
 Doctor Harding and other"; (2) "A disclosing of the 
 great Bull and certain calves that he hath gotten, and 
 specially the Monster Bull that roared at my Lord 
 Byshops gate"; (3) "An addition declaratorie to the 
 Bulles, with a searching of the Maze." Of this last there 
 were two issues, different from one another in numerous
 
 104 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 small points of detail. The remaining contents of the 
 volume are three tracts in connexion with Mary, Queen 
 of Scots: (i) Buchanan's "Ane Detectioun of the duinges 
 of Marie Quene of Scottes, touchand the murder of hir 
 husband"; (2) "The copie of a letter written by one in 
 London to his frend concernyng the credit of the late 
 published detection of the doynges of the Ladie Marie 
 of Scotland"; (3) "A discourse touching the pretended 
 match betwene the Duke of Norfolke and the Quene of 
 Scottes." 
 
 A writer who did a great deal towards increasing the 
 polemic literature of the sixteenth century was John 
 Bale, "foul-mouthed Bale" as he has often, and with 
 only too much justice, been called. Bale was one of 
 those with whom his adversary was necessarily a person 
 to be vilified. His life was a troublous one. During 
 the last years of Henry VIII. he settled in the Nether- 
 lands, and returned to England on the accession of 
 Edward VI., who in 1552 appointed him Bishop of 
 Ossory. The accession of Mary, however, again drove 
 him abroad, until her death enabled him once more to 
 return to England. I shall now refer to some of his 
 works in the College Library. One of these, though not 
 in form polemic, contains a plentiful infusion of the 
 polemic spirit, his Illustrium Majoris Britannia Scrip- 
 torum>..Summarium. This, though often spoken of as
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 printed at Ipswich, by John Overton, in 1548-9, was 
 really, it cannot be doubted, printed at Wesel (a town 
 north of Dusseldorf and close to the confluence of the 
 Rhine and the Lippe), copies being brought over to 
 England with Overton's name in the imprint at the end 
 ("excusum fuit Gippeswici in Anglia per Jo. Overton"), 
 though he was merely the bookseller. It may be noted 
 that in the copy described by Herbert (p. 1456), the 
 imprint below the woodcut on the title-page ran 
 "excudebatur prsesens opus Wesaliae per Theodoricum 
 Plateanum," but in the copy now before me the names 
 are suppressed and instead is a lengthening of the state- 
 ment as to the date "anno a nativitate unicae illius pro 
 peccatis victimae..." 
 
 A book which no lover of the Reformation can read 
 without shame and disgust is the " Actes of Englysh 
 votaryes, comprehendynge theyr unchast practyses and 
 examples by all ages, from the worldes begynnynge to 
 thys present yeare, collected out of their owne legendes 
 and Chronycles." This, unfortunately, was greedily read, 
 and thus was several times reprinted. Of this we possess 
 a copy of the original edition, printed at Wesel in 1 546. 
 Of this there are also two reprints ; one is that printed 
 by Thomas Raynalde in 1548, our copy of which has 
 been bound up with the introduction to the first part 
 and the whole of the second part of the " Actes " of the
 
 106 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 edition printed for Abraham Vele in 1551, the other (of 
 both parts) is that printed by John Tysdale in 1560. 
 
 "A brefe Chronycle concernynge the Examinacyon 
 and death of the blessed martyr of Christ syr Johan 
 Oldcastell the lorde Cobham," in an edition of the 
 year 1544, without place of printing (though not im- 
 probably this was Marburg) or printer's name, is of 
 considerable rarity; the later editions seem more com- 
 mon. Another curious book of Bale's is his "Apo- 
 logy agaynste a ranke Papyst, aunswering both hym 
 and hys doctours, that neyther their vowes nor yet their 
 priesthode are of the Gospell, but of Antichrist," printed 
 by Day (without a date, but not before 1 5 50), and to be 
 sold " at his shop by the lytle Conduit in Chepesyde." 
 A curious little point about this book is that on the 
 verso of the last leaf (the imprint having been on the 
 recto) there comes abruptly, as though a fresh title, " A 
 dyspatche of vowes and presthode, by the wurd of God. 
 Compyled by Johan Bale." This has led sometimes to 
 the mistaken notion that this is a promise of something 
 forthcoming (see, e.g. t Catalogue of the Huth Library, vol. 
 I. p. 82, " but no such treatise follows, the heading being 
 all that seems to have been set up "). While, however, 
 the verso of the last leaf is a curious place to put the 
 notice, the reference is simply to the foregoing treatise 
 (see fol. 148, verso).
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 Other works of Bale of some rarity are the follow- 
 ing : (i) "A dialoge or Communycacyon to be had at 
 a Table betwene two chyldren, gathered out of the holy 
 scriptures by Johan Bale, for his two yonge sonnes 
 Johan and Paule," printed in 1549 for Richard Foster in 
 " Fletestrete at the signe of the Croune, next vnto the 
 Whyte Fryres gate." (2) " The Ymage of both Churches 
 after the Revelacion of Saincte John the Evangelyst," 
 printed by John Wyer in 1550. (3) " The vocacyon of 
 Johan Bale to the bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande, his 
 persecucions in the same, and finall delyveraunce." The 
 imprint of this volume declares it to have been printed 
 " in Rome, before the castell of S. Angell, at y" signe of 
 S. Peter, in Decembre Anno D. 1553." It was, however, 
 it would seem, printed by Hugh Singleton. (4) The 
 only other work of Bale which I need mention here is 
 " The laboryouse Journey and serche of Johan Leylande 
 [Leland] for Englandes Antiquitees, geven of hym as a 
 newe yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the viij," printed in 
 
 1549. 
 
 Another set of polemical works, to which a curious 
 interest attaches, and of which a fair number are here, 
 are the tracts of the Marprelate controversy. As original 
 copies of these tracts are not commonly met with, I 
 annex a list of those in the College Library : 
 
 (i) (John Udall.) "A Demonstration of the trueth 

 
 108 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 of that Discipline which Christe hath prescribed in his 
 vvorde for the gouernement of his Church." Secretly 
 printed at East Molesey in July, 1588. 
 
 (2) " Oh read ouer D. John Bridges, for it is a 
 worthy worke... Printed oversea, in Europe, within two 
 furlongs of a Bounsing Priest [The Epistle]." Secretly 
 printed at East Molesey in October, 1588. 
 
 (3) "-Oh read ouer D. John Bridges, for it is worthy 
 worke ;... Printed on the other hand of some of the Priests 
 [The Epitome]." Secretly printed at Fawsley in North- 
 amptonshire in November or December, 1588. 
 
 (4) John Penry, " A viewe of some part of such pub- 
 like wants and disorders as are in the seruice of God, 
 
 within her Maiesties countrie of Wales." Secretly 
 
 printed at Coventry before March 9, 1589. 
 
 (5) "Hay any worke for Cooper ;... Printed in 
 Europe not farre from some of the Bounsing Priestes." 
 Published about March 23, 1589. This was designed to 
 answer Bishop Cooper's " Admonition to the People of 
 England." 
 
 (6) "Theses Martinianae." Secretly printed at 
 Wolston near Coventry and published about July 22, 
 1589. 
 
 (7) "The iust censure and reproofe of Martin 
 Junior"; secretly printed at Wolston near Coventry, 
 and published about July 29, 1589.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 1 09 
 
 Besides these are several of the answers which these 
 calumnious tracts called forth, whether of grave sort, as 
 the " Admonition " mentioned above and the " Anti- 
 martinus, sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adoles- 
 centes utriusque Academiae " (Bishop and Newbery, 
 1 589), or of the same style as the tracts they answered: 
 
 (1) "Martin's Months minde...," 1589. 
 
 (2) " Pappe with an hatchet" About September, 
 1589. 
 
 (3) " The Returne of the renowned Cavaliero Pas- 
 quill of England, from the other side the Seas," 1589. 
 
 (4) " The Firste parte of Pasquil's Apologie," 1 590. 
 The question of the authorship of the Marprelate 
 
 Tracts must still be considered to remain doubtful. 
 Professor Arber maintains the real Martinists to have 
 been John Penry and Job Throckmorton, while Dr 
 Dexter urges the claims of Henry Barrow. The under- 
 lying basis of the Epistle is confessedly Udall's. The 
 tracts written on the other side are generally attributed 
 to the caustic pen of Thomas Nash, of St John's College, 
 Cambridge. 
 
 A very few examples more must suffice. 
 
 Here is a little volume, which save for a rather 
 larger number of fly-leaves than usual, consists of three 
 torn leaves only, yet this tiny fragment, discovered 
 about thirty years ago, is not only, so far as is yet
 
 IIO EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 known, unique, but (save for some other torn fragments, 
 since discovered in a private collection) is absolutely the 
 only direct evidence that the work of which it forms a 
 part was ever printed. The work in question is an old 
 English poem, Generydes, which has been edited by 
 Mr Aldis Wright for the Early English Text Society 
 from a Gale MS. (unique as to its particular form of the 
 text) in the Library. 
 
 The printed fragments originally served as fly-leaves 
 to a book which once belonged to Edmund Castell, the 
 Oriental scholar, Mich. Menoti Sermones Quadragesi- 
 males (Paris, 1525). The approximate date of the frag- 
 ments may be given as about 1520-5. This will follow 
 from the fact that they were clearly used as fly-leaves 
 when the book from which they were taken was ori- 
 ginally bound. Besides the date of printing of that 
 book, it may be added that on the sides of the binding 
 are stamped the Royal Arms of England, surrounded 
 by the garter and Honi soit... On one side are the 
 rose and fleur-de-lis, and on the other, the castle and 
 pomegranate, for Castile and Granada. The whole is 
 surrounded by the legend, " Deus det nobis suam pacem, 
 et post mortem vitam aeternam. Amen." This device 
 was commonly used in English binding while Catherine 
 of Arragon was queen. 
 
 In Professor Arber's Transcript of tlie Register of the
 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. Ill 
 
 Company of Stationers (l. 179), we find among the li- 
 cences for 1 568-9, " Recevyd of thomas purfoote for his 
 lycense for pryntinge of a boke intituled Generydes, iiijW." 
 This, however, is far too late a date for our fragments ; 
 and Purfoot's edition, if it were actually published, has 
 totally disappeared. 
 
 Another work, which has already been referred to in 
 passing, and of which I know of no other copy save our 
 own, is the "Godly Psalme of Marye Queene," by Richard 
 Beeard. This hymn, which consists of forty-four four- 
 line stanzas, with accompanying music in four parts, is 
 a very fervent expression of rejoicing at the accession of 
 Mary. The first verse runs : 
 
 "Al England now bee glad at ones, 
 
 With one heart, mynde, and voyce : 
 For now have wee y e greatest cause 
 To syng and eke rejoyce." 
 
 Beeard's hymn is followed by "a godly Psalme in 
 meetre," by T. B. (Thomas Bownell), consisting of a 
 metrical version of Psalms cxlv., cxlvi., and cxlviii. The 
 book was printed in 1553 by Wylliam Griffith, "in Fleete- 
 strete, at the sygne of the Faucon against saint Donstons 
 Church." I notice that Lowndes (p. 145, ed. Bohn) gives 
 1557 as the date of this book. Unless there was a re- 
 print, which is not very probable, this date is an error. 
 Here is a volume by no means commonly met with,
 
 112 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 the quarto edition of some of the works of Sir David 
 Lyndsay, Lyon King of Arms, printed "at the command 
 and expenses of Maister Samuel Jascuy" at Paris in 
 1558. The volume contains " Ane Dialog betuix Ex- 
 perience and ane Courteour," " The Testament and com- 
 playnt of our souverane lordis papyngo, Kyng James 
 the Fyft," " The Dreme," and " The Tragedie of the 
 unqhyle Maister Reverende Fader David, be the mercy 
 of God, Cardinal and Archibyschope of Sanctandrous." 
 The second of these does not seem to be absolutely the 
 same with that described in the Huth catalogue, p. 884. 
 
 A much more general interest, however, will doubt- 
 less be felt in this tiny volume, a i6mo edition of Bacon's 
 Essays, printed in 1597. This is quite different from 
 what is ordinarily spoken of as the first edition of the 
 Essays, a small octavo published in the same year. I do 
 not venture to say which is the earlier of the two ; there 
 are errors of the press which occur in one but not in the 
 other, and there are others which are found in both. 
 It is by no means impossible that the two may have 
 been " set up " at the same time by two compositors 
 working independently. 
 
 In conclusion, a couple of books may be mentioned 
 which have respectively a Welsh and a Scotch interest. 
 
 The former is a copy of what is, so far as I am aware, 
 the first Welsh grammar ever printed, and a book of
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 1 13 
 
 extreme rarity, the Gramadeg Cymraeg of Griffith Ro- 
 berts, printed in 1567. It is customary to ascribe it to a 
 Milan press; William Maurice, the Welsh antiquary, 
 having noted in his copy of the book, which was after- 
 wards at Wynnstay, " printed at Milan." This, however, 
 must be considered as by no means certain. It is inter- 
 esting to note that in Munday's English Romayne Life, 
 printed in 1 590, the narrator, being on a journey to Rome, 
 states that he was entertained at Milan by Dr Robert 
 Griffin (sic), confessor to Cardinal Frederick Borromeo. 
 There are some curious differences in the spelling of 
 this book from what we are accustomed to in more mo- 
 dern Welsh ; for example, for the familiar dd, II and w 
 we find here d, I, and u, with a dot placed below. 
 
 If the Welsh book were nearly unique, we come in 
 the case of the Scotch one to what is absolutely unique, 
 so far as is yet known. We have here a volume of tracts 
 on Scotch subjects collected by Dr Duport, once Fellow 
 of the College and afterwards Master of Magdalene 
 College and Dean of Peterborough, and by him given 
 to the Library. Among these are two of which no 
 other copy is known to exist, both of which issued from 
 the press of Robert Lekprevik in Edinburgh in 1565. 
 
 One of these is an edition of a work of Lelio Capilupi 
 of Mantua, which has been several times printed, his 
 Cento ex Vergilio de Vita MonacJwrum. This is a collec- 
 S. 8
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PRINTED BOOKS. 
 
 tion of fragments of Virgil worked up to form a con- 
 tinuous poem on a subject of which Virgil himself 
 assuredly never dreamed. The other tract is a collec- 
 tion of pasquils collected from different authors. One 
 cannot but confess to a feeling of decided regret that 
 unique books are so often of so little intrinsic import- 
 ance. 
 
 The rare early English books which form the Capell 
 collection are of such great interest and value that they 
 must be treated of in a separate chapter.
 
 Ik' <<U o >U* /* >4x 
 
 ' 
 
 Uta 
 TO. trXtiu, UMUUU- <uG a f-k* , ft u 
 
 f u, 
 TI 
 fc It. lau> H 
 
 Uo it 
 
 O. duk \ 44\Pi 
 
 . IlcVUxno Hut, 
 4 Wu*< 
 ^ ICT 
 ttu I^Wc , 
 
 <Lr4-*tui, J*6LavtlumZ 
 UurtW*oi /d 
 -ju << 
 
 Unu HM tauH WW <dXu tlu, 
 
 4'ku(ua. (**&&. <u**tA 
 d*4^^ Atui 
 
 4 0*^> ** *, Ut Mi4, ^u 
 
 Unit *tc >, ^dTzt*. a /tatu^ otu, 
 ttt luCvt ik Law. J*>y k<*X''t<+. \ALutuxt, tu UM<* luaw)^ 1W* i fe 
 
 
 <ul U4, Ita*w 'WfUm Ju*l f W UfUu - fn 
 U W *M,fc tUwiU* - ftc4ML Wlli lu* U
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE CAPELL COLLECTION. 
 
 No account of Trinity Library would be at all 
 complete which did not contain some description of 
 the large and precious collection of early editions of 
 Shakspeare and of other early English plays and poems 
 given to the College by Mr Edward Capell in 1779. 
 
 We must first refer in the briefest possible terms to 
 the donor himself. He was the son of a Suffolk clergy- 
 man, and was born near Bury St Edmunds in 1713. 
 He was educated at the Grammar School in that town 
 and afterwards at Catharine Hall, Cambridge. 
 
 All through his life his interests were bound up with 
 things Shakspearian, and he gradually amassed a collec- 
 tion of Shakspeare quartos, and of rare works of the 
 Elizabethan and immediately succeeding period, such 
 as in the present day would be practically impossible to 
 the longest purse and the keenest hunter. 
 
 He brought out in 1768 an edition of Shakspeare's 
 works in ten volumes, and is said to have transcribed 
 the whole ten times. In 1779, two years before his 
 
 82
 
 Il6 THE CAPELL COLLECTION. 
 
 death, he gave, as I have already said, his unrivalled 
 collection of books to the Library of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, and determined that no precaution should 
 be neglected for its safe preservation. 
 
 The outcome of this is seen in the following order of 
 the Master and Seniors, dated June 26th, 1779: 
 
 " Ordered at the same time, agreeably to the express desire of 
 Mr Capel (sic), that the whole collection given by him be kept 
 together in the same class, and that no manuscript^or book belong- 
 ing to it be taken out of the Library on any pretence whatever." 
 
 J. PETERBOROUGH, M. C. 1 
 
 The Capell Collection includes 256 volumes, in very 
 many cases several distinct works being bound together 
 in a volume. Judging of Mr Capell's literary views in 
 the light of his collection, one must credit him with a 
 definiteness, I could almost say, narrowness of view, that 
 might have won the approval of the Caliph Omar him- 
 self. Apparently books might be divided into editions 
 of Shakspeare, books illustrative of Shakspeare, and 
 others, which last might be disregarded. Accordingly, 
 we find the startling phenomenon of such books as 
 Chaucer's Works, or Spenser's Faerie Queene, or Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher's Plays, or Milton's Paradise Lost, or 
 Hakluyt's Voyages, all lettered "Shakesperiana." Clearly 
 
 1 This is Dr John Hinchcliffe, Master of Trinity College, 1768-89 ; 
 and Bishop of Peterborough 1 769-94.
 
 THE C A PELL COLLECTION. l\7 
 
 they had no literary interest for their possessor save 
 in so far as they were illustrative of the one great 
 dramatist. 
 
 We must pass on now to speak in some little detail 
 of the contents of this rich collection. 
 
 Of the four folio editions of Shakspeare (1623, 1632, 
 1664, 1685) we are the fortunate possessors of two com- 
 plete sets, due to Mr Capell and Mr Grylls respectively. 
 The third edition, as is well known, came out originally 
 in 1663 without the seven spurious plays, which were 
 added in 1664, a fresh title-page being furnished which 
 enumerated the plays in question. Both the copies in 
 the Library are of the issue containing the seven plays. 
 I may here correct an error in Bohn's Lowndes (p. 2258, 
 col. 2), where it is stated that the Capell copy has both 
 title-pages. It has that of 1664 only, with the portrait, 
 but immediately before sig. b is the leaf with Ben 
 Jonson's verses in large type on the verso. 
 
 It is to the quartos, however, that both the student 
 and the collector will turn with especial interest. As 
 the number of these in the Library is considerable, and 
 a detailed account would be unsuitable in the case of 
 books so minutely described elsewhere, I have thought 
 it best merely to give a list of such quartos as are here 
 of dates prior to the issue of the first folio edition of 
 1623.
 
 Il8 THE CAPELL COLLECTION, 
 
 The plays are arranged in alphabetical order: 
 
 Hamlet, 1605, 1611 (title wanting). 
 
 Henry IV. (First Part), 1598, 1599, 1604 (imperfect), 
 1613, 1622. 
 
 Henry IV. (Second Part), 1600. This is a copy of 
 the issue in which sig. E has four leaves. 
 
 Henry V., 1600, 1602, 1608. Here may be men- 
 tioned, though it has no real connexion with the play of 
 Shakspeare, a play which runs in a similar groove, " The 
 Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. Containing the 
 
 Honorable Battell of Agin-Court Imprinted by 
 
 Barnard Alsop, dwelling in Garter Place in Barbican. 
 1617." 
 
 Henry VI. (Second Part). This play first appeared 
 in an authentic form in the folio edition of 1623, but of 
 the play on which it was founded there were several 
 earlier editions. We have here the edition of 1600 of 
 Tlie First Part of tfie Contention betwixt the two Famous 
 Houses of Yorke and Lancaster. The edition of 1619 in- 
 cludes also what, in its authentic form, is known as the 
 Third Part of Henry VI. Here we have T/ie Whole 
 Contention betweene the two Famous Houses, Lancaster 
 and Yorke, with tlte Tragicall End of tlie Good Duke 
 Humfrey, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie tlie 
 Sixt. This edition of the play is not dated, but we are 
 able to fix the date by the fact that it merely forms part
 
 THE CAPELL COLLECTION. 
 
 of a book, sig. A Q 4, and with sig. R begins Pericles, 
 without a title-page, which has the date 1619 at the end. 
 With regard to the edition of 1600 I will take this 
 opportunity to correct an error in Lowndes (p. 2281, col. 
 2): the Capell copy is that printed "by Valentine 
 Simmes for Thomas Millington," not that printed "by 
 W. W. for Thomas Millington." It seems, indeed, to be 
 uncertain whether such an edition as the latter really 
 exists. At any rate, there is no edition here save that 
 of Valentine Simmes ; and the case as to a copy in the 
 Bodleian falls to the ground when it appears that the 
 title is in MS., and that it presents the same typo- 
 graphical peculiarities as the edition by Valentine 
 Simmes. 
 
 King John. Of this play there was no edition till 
 that in the folio of 1623. A play, however, which Shak- 
 speare drew upon for the plot and characters is The 
 Troublesome Raigne of lohn, King of England, with the 
 Discouerie of King Richard Cordelions. Of this we 
 possess editions of 1591, 1611, 1622. On the title-page 
 of the first no author's name is given, in the second it 
 is given as W. Sh., and in the third as W. Shakespeare. 
 
 King Lear, 1608. Of this play there are two 
 different editions, both bearing the above date, and both 
 "printed for Nathaniel Butter." The author's name is 
 given as Shak-speare and Shake-speare respectively;
 
 120 THE CAPELL COLLECTION. 
 
 and while the latter merely gives the publisher's name, 
 the former notes that copies are to be sold " at his shop 
 in Paul's Churchyard, at the signe of the Pide Bull." 
 Remarks on the numerous differences in the various 
 existing copies of the first-named issue will be found 
 in the introduction to the play in the Cambridge Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Love's Labours Lost, 1598. 
 
 MercJiant of Venice, 1600. There are two editions of 
 the play of this date, printed "by J. Roberts" and "by 
 I. R. for Thomas Heyes " respectively. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602, 1619. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 1600. There are two 
 editions of the play of this date, one "printed by James 
 
 Roberts," and the other "Imprinted for Thomas 
 
 Fisher." The latter is probably the first edition, as it 
 contains errors which have been corrected in the other. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing, 1600. 
 
 OtMlo, 1622. 
 
 Pericles, 1609, 1619. 
 
 Richard II., 1597, 1598, 1615. 
 
 Richard III., 1598, 1602, 1612, 1622. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 1597, 1609. The foundation of 
 this play is a poem, copies of which are of extreme 
 rarity: " TJie Tragicall Historye of Romeus and luliet, 
 written first in Italian by Bandell and now in Englishe
 
 THE C A PELL COLLECTION. 121 
 
 by Ar\thur\ Br\pke\r The first edition of this was 
 printed by Richard Tottell in 1562. Our copy of this 
 unfortunately wants the first three leaves ; perfect copies 
 are in the Bodleian and in the Huth collection. 
 
 Titus A ndronicus, 1 6 1 1 . 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, 1609. 
 
 Besides these quarto editions of the genuine, or at 
 any rate of the generally recognized, plays of Shak- 
 speare, we have a series of doubtful or spurious plays, a 
 list of which I subjoin, omitting any edition later than 
 1623: 
 
 A rraignment of Paris, 1 5 84. 
 
 Edward III., 1596, 1599. 
 
 Locrine, 1595. 
 
 TJie London Prodigal, 1605. 
 
 L ord Cromwell, 1613. 
 
 Tlie Merry Devill of Edmonton, 1608, 1617. 
 
 Mucedorus, 1610. 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, The First Part of, &c., 1600. 
 
 The Pnritaine; or, tJie Widdow of W ailing Street, 
 1607. 
 
 Yorkshire Tragedie, 1619. 
 
 Finally, a few rare editions of the Shakspearian 
 poems may be mentioned. Of the Venus and Adonis 
 the only edition here is that of 1620, of which, so far as 
 I am aware, the Bodleian copy is the only other one
 
 122 THE C A PELL COLLECTION. 
 
 known. Of Lucrece we possess editions of 1598 and 
 1607, the former being as yet the only copy known. 
 Of the Sonnets is a copy (unfortunately imperfect) of 
 the edition of 1609. Of tne Passionate Pilgrim is a 
 copy of the first edition of 1 599, which was believed to 
 be unique until the discovery in 1867 of a second copy 
 at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, the seat of Sir 
 Charles Isham. The poem, except in the case of the 
 last three leaves, is printed on one side only of the leaf. 
 
 When it is remembered that the number of copies 
 known of the least rare of the above books may, as a 
 rule, be counted on one's fingers, and that some are of 
 extreme rarity, a concise list as given above of one 
 particular set of our treasures may, I trust, not be con- 
 sidered out of place. 
 
 Spenser is well represented. Of the Faerie Queene 
 is the first edition of both parts in two volumes, 1590- 
 1596, and the second edition of the whole work, 1596. 
 The SJtepJteardes Calendar occurs in the editions of 
 !579> 1581, 1586, 1591, the first of which is of the 
 greatest rarity. The Complaints (1591), Prosopopoia 
 (1591), Colin Clout (1595), and Amoretti (1595) may 
 also be mentioned, all published by William Ponsonby. 
 
 A very few more examples must suffice. Of none of 
 the following books is there, so far as I am aware, any 
 other copy known than that now before me. Here is
 
 THE C A PELL COLLECTION. 12$ 
 
 Thomas Howell's Newe Sonets and pretie Pamphlets, 
 printed by Thomas Colwell in Fleet Street, at the sign 
 of St John the Evangelist. The book is undated, but it 
 cannot have been printed before 1567-8, in which year 
 it was licensed to Thomas Colwell, as we see from the 
 Register of the Company of Stationers (Arber's Tran- 
 script, i. 358). 
 
 Unique too are Ulpian Fulwell's First part of the 
 eight liberall science, printed by William Hoskins in 
 1576; and Tlie Mirrour of Mirth and Pleasant Conceits, 
 Englished from the original French of Bonadventure de 
 Periers by a translator who only gives his initials R. D., 
 and printed by Roger Warde in 1583. 
 
 Much more generally interesting than these, how- 
 ever, is TJie Hystorie of Hamblet, printed by Richard 
 Bradocke in 1608; the story on which Shakspeare's 
 tragedy, and perhaps an earlier play, is founded. See- 
 ing, however, that there is an edition of the play as 
 early as 1603, it is clear that at least one earlier edition 
 of the prose romance, perhaps several, must have 
 perished. 
 
 The only other book to which I shall refer is the 
 unique copy of what is undoubtedly the first edition of a 
 book which once had a very wide-spread popularity in 
 England, Euphues, tJie Anatomy of Wit, by John Lylly; 
 and that in spite of what Sir Walter Scott calls "the
 
 124 THE CAPELL COLLECTION, 
 
 most unnatural affectation that ever disgraced a printed 
 page." Who does not recall Sir Piercie Shafton and his 
 lament " Ah, that I had with me my Anatomy of Wit 
 that all-to-be-unparalleled volume that quintessence 
 of human wit that treasury of quaint invention that 
 exquisitely-pleasant-to-read, and inevitably-necessary- 
 to-be-remembered manual, of all that is worthy to be 
 known." 
 
 This book was licensed to Gabriel Cawood on Dec. 
 2, 1578, and no less than three editions of it appeared 
 in the course of 1579. The Capell copy, however, is 
 certainly of the first edition, as is shewn by the fact that 
 on the title-page of one of the others, in the Malone 
 Collection in the Bodleian, appear the words " corrected 
 and augmented"; and though of the remaining edition 
 there is, I believe, only one copy lacking its title-page, 
 yet a collation of it with our edition shews a large 
 number of augmentations, some of them considerable, 
 occurring in the former.
 
 THORWALDSEN'S STATUE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 To face p. 125.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 To many visitors Thorwaldsen's statue of Lord 
 Byron at the end of the Library is an object of interest, 
 which vies even with the choicest of our literary treasures. 
 Indeed, I once took into the Library two American 
 ladies, who assured me that they had come from London 
 to Cambridge for no other purpose than to see the 
 statue: they certainly paid not the least attention to 
 anything else in the Library. 
 
 Some years ago, the kindness of Mr C. De la Pryme, 
 of Trinity College, put in my hands some interesting cor- 
 respondence with reference to the statue, together with 
 a short running narrative to connect the letters together. 
 The keen interest yet felt in Byron, the exceeding 
 beauty of the statue, and the curious fortune which led 
 to its finding its present home, will, I think, justify the 
 reproduction of the correspondence in extenso. 
 
 I have added nothing to Mr De la Pryme's narrative, 
 but have condensed slightly here and there.
 
 126 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 In May, 1829, a meeting was held of the subscribers 
 to the fund raised for the purpose of erecting a statue to 
 Lord Byron. The chairman, Sir John Cam Hobhouse, 
 M.P. (afterwards Lord Broughton; M.A., of Trinity 
 College), was commissioned to write to Baron Thor- 
 waldsen, requesting him to undertake the work. The 
 two following letters were consequently addressed to the 
 sculptor : 
 
 Sir John Cam Hobhouse to Baron Thorwaldsen. 
 
 Londres, ce 22 Mai, 1829. 
 
 MONSIEUR, Comme president du comite" des souscripteurs 
 pour le monument de Lord Byron, je prends la libertd de vous 
 demander si nous pouvons nous flatter de 1'espdrance d'avoir un 
 ouvrage de votre fag. on. 
 
 Vous avez bien connu Lord Byron, et le buste, maintenant chez 
 moi, ressemble parfaitement a la figure de ce grand poete. 
 
 Le comite" a determine* que le monument consistera d'une seule 
 statue de la grandeur ordinaire, c'est a dire, de huit pieds environ, 
 placde sur un pie"destal assez simple dans I'e'glise metropolitaine de 
 Londres, ou dans 1'Abbaye de Westminster. Nos fonds ne sont 
 pas encore considerables, et ce que j'ose vous demander, c'est, si 
 mille livres sterling (icoo/.) seront suffisantes pour la de*pense d'un 
 tel ouvrage. 
 
 Je parle de la statue seule, car les frais de port, de la douane, 
 du pie*destal, &c., monteront a joo/. davantage. 
 
 II y a peu de mois que j'dtois a Rome, quand j'ai laissd ma 
 carte de visite a votre porte, mais je n'ai pas eu la bonheur de 
 vous voir. J'espere, Monsieur, que vous me ferez 1'honneur d'une 
 re*ponse a cette lettre, et je suis, avec la consideration la plus 
 
 parfaite, 
 
 Votre serviteur tres-humble, 
 
 JOHN C. HOBHOUSE.
 
 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 Sir John Cam Hobhouse to Baron Thorwaldsen. 
 
 Londres, ce 24 Nov., 1829. 
 
 M. LE CHEVALIER, La premiere stance du contrite" des sou- 
 scripteurs a la statue monumentale de Lord Byron a eu lieu le 
 vendredi passe". Je leur ai lu votre lettre, et ils m'ont charge" de 
 vous faire part de leurs sentiments tres profonds de reconnaissance 
 pour la sympathie ge'ne'reuse et la rare libe'ralite' qui ont dicte" votre 
 offre de nous donner la statue et meme d'y ajouter un bas-relief, 
 pour les mille livres sterling somme, a la ve'rite', pas proportionne'e 
 au travail propose". 
 
 Nous avons appris, avec un plaisir infini, votre intention de 
 vous mettre au plus vite a un ouvrage digne, comme il sera, du 
 plus grand poete et du premier sculpteur du siecle. Peut-etre, 
 Monsieur, quand vous en aurez determine" le modele, vous aurez la 
 bontd, si cela n'est pas hors d'usage, de nous le communiquer, afin 
 que nous puissions de*montrer aux souscripteurs et au public, que 
 nous avons fait notre devoir. La statue sera place*e on dans 
 1'Abbaye de Westminster, ou dans la grande Cathe'drale de St 
 Paul, ou au Muse'e Britannique, ou a la Galerie Nationale. 
 
 Vous verrez parmi les membres du comite" les noms les plus 
 distingue's de 1'Angleterre. Mr Louis Chiaveri en a la liste. 
 Comme amis de leur patrie, du poete et de 1'art, ils vous seront k 
 jamais redevables pour le noble deVouement avec lequel vous avez 
 bien voulu vous preter a leur digne projet. 
 
 Je ne sais pas s'il sera ne"cessaire de vous avertir que le pied 
 droit de Byron dtait un peu contrefait. Du reste ses proportions 
 e'taient belles et grandes, surtout la poitrine et les e"paules, comme 
 vous aurez, sans doute, remarque". 
 
 Son portrait, graces a vos soins, est mieux connu que tout autre 
 au monde. J'en ai 1'original de votre main. Les copistes y ont 
 ajoute" quelque chose, qui ne me plait du tout Je parle de la 
 chevelure trop haute et boucle"e, qui lui donne un air de petit-maitre 
 et gate la simplicity de votre buste. Pardonnez, je vous prie, cette
 
 128 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 observation, et agrdez, Monsieur, Passurance de la haute considera- 
 tion avec laquelle je me soussigne 
 
 Votre serviteur tres-humble, 
 
 JOHN C. HOBHOUSE. 
 
 Baron Thorwaldsen accepted the offer for the statue, 
 and on its completion it was sent over to England and 
 offered to the authorities of Westminster Abbey. The 
 then Dean, however, Dr Ireland, refused admission to 
 the statue, and it consequently lay for many years in the 
 Custom House vaults. Shortly before Dean Ireland's 
 death it occurred to Mr De la Pryme that a place might 
 be found for the statue in Trinity College, and he ac- 
 cordingly wrote to this effect to Dr Peacock (the senior 
 tutor of the College, and afterwards Dean of Ely). This 
 produced the following letter: 
 
 Trinity College, 17 March, 1840. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I should much rejoice to see the statue of 
 Lord Byron placed in our Museum or in Trinity College, but I 
 hardly know in what manner I can forward any application : I 
 should be afraid to propose it to our Master, who has no sympathy 
 with such schemes of doing honour to the great. I have little 
 doubt, however, that if any person would interest himself about it, 
 and make an offer of the statue, either to one body or the other, 
 that it would be accepted with gratitude. To whom should the 
 application be made, and who has the power of deciding upon it ? 
 Without a knowledge of these particulars it would be impossible 
 for any person here to act.
 
 THE BYRON STATUE. I2Q 
 
 I shall be very happy to hear further on this subject from you, 
 and most anxious to forward the adoption of your suggestion by 
 any means in my power. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 GEORGE PEACOCK. 
 To C. De la Pryme, Esq. 
 
 In consequence of this letter the matter rested for a 
 time, but in 1842 Dean Ireland was succeeded by Dr 
 Turton, afterwards Bishop of Ely, and the statue was 
 a second time refused admittance into the Abbey. In 
 April, 1843, Mr De la Pryme heard from Mr Crabb 
 Robinson that there would be a meeting of the sub- 
 scribers in London on the subject, and at once wrote to 
 Dr Whewell, who had succeeded Dr Wordsworth as 
 Master of Trinity. To this Dr Whewell replied as 
 follows : 
 
 Trinity Lodge, 12 April, 1843. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I conceive that Cambridge is much obliged to 
 you for wishing that we should possess the statue you speak of; 
 but I fear there are great difficulties. To purchase it from the 
 University chest is not to be thought of. We are too poor, to say 
 nothing of other difficulties. The Fitzwilliam Fund could not be 
 so applied, at any rate till the building is finished, a period not 
 very near at hand. The only chance is that some person or set of 
 persons should purchase the work and give it to the University. 
 If you think a subscription to this effect could be got up, I should 
 be glad to do all in my power to facilitate the reception of the gift, 
 which would certainly be a noble ornament to the University. 
 For this purpose I should suppose your first step must be to 
 
 s. 9
 
 13 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 ascertain what sum would be required. But this I must leave to 
 your consideration. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 C. De la Pryme, Esq. W. WHEWELL. 
 
 As Dr Whewell was clearly under the impression 
 that the proposal was to purchase the statue, an ex- 
 planation was sent of the circumstances, and the follow- 
 ing letter received in reply: 
 
 Trinity Lodge, 14 April, 1843. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, Upon the terms you mention, it would be very 
 desirable indeed to have the statue obtained for Cambridge if 
 possible. I should be very glad to make application on the part of 
 the Fitzwilliam Museum, but I think I must also put in a petition 
 on behalf of Lord Byron's College, and leave the subscribers, or 
 their committee, to decide between the two applicants. 
 
 I enclose, along with this, a petition on the part of the College, 
 and shall be much obliged if you will present it in the proper 
 quarter without delay. 
 
 I cannot make application on the part of the Fitzwilliam 
 Museum without calling the syndicate together; which I will do as 
 soon as I can. When I have done this, I will state their claims to 
 the subscribers, if I am authorised to do so, as fairly as I can : at 
 the same time it must not be forgotten that, at any rate, it will be 
 several years before the statue can be placed in the Fitzwilliam 
 Museum. The interior work is not yet begun. 
 
 I shall be much obliged if you will let me know what is the size 
 of the statue ; and also who are the committee for disposing of it, 
 and of this committee who are the most active members. 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 C. De la Pryme, Esq. W. WHEWELL.
 
 THE B YRON STA TUE. 1 3 1 
 
 Accompanying this letter was a memorial for presen- 
 tation to the subscribers. Accordingly, Mr De la Pryme 
 and his father (formerly Professor of Political Economy 
 in the University, and M.P. for the town of Cambridge) 
 saw Lord Broughton (an old Parliamentary friend of the 
 latter), and secured his good wishes and co-operation as 
 chairman; and a vote of presentation of the statue to 
 Trinity College was passed by the subscribers. 
 
 Some years ago Mr De la Pryme wrote to the late 
 Dean Stanley, to ask if he could throw any further light 
 upon the subject of the refusal, and received a reply 
 which is interesting even in its negative information as 
 to the Archives of the Dean and Chapter, and has a 
 further interest as being one of the last letters written 
 by the late Dean in his official capacity. 
 
 Deanery, Westminster, March i, 1881. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, All the information I have about Byron is con- 
 tained in p. 301 of my book on Westminster Abbey, Edition 4. 
 
 Dean Ireland refused the interment. I do not know who re- 
 fused the statue, as I have not got the date of the debate in the 
 House of Lords referred to. There are no minutes or letters on 
 the subject. Many thanks for the enclosure. 
 
 I am faithfully yours, 
 
 A. P. STANLEY. 
 C. De la Pryme, Esq. 
 
 To this correspondence Mr De la Pryme has sub- 
 joined the following particulars as to the statue itself,
 
 132 THE BYRON STATUE. 
 
 which was modelled at Rome in 1831, taken from the 
 Life of TJiorwaldsen : 
 
 "The Poet, in modern costume, is seated upon the ruins of 
 some Greek columns. His head is uncovered. He holds in his 
 hand his poem Childe Harold, and raises towards his chin his left 
 hand, holding a pen. On one side of the Greek fragment is 
 A9HNH with the owl ; on the other, Apollo's lyre and a gryphon. 
 A Death's head is upon the broken column. The bas-relief repre- 
 sents the Genius of Poetry, who tunes his lyre, and rests his foot 
 upon the prow of a skiff." 
 
 In accordance with the wishes of the Committee, 
 Byron was represented in a sitting posture. In addition 
 to a small sketch of the statue, there are two plaster 
 models in the Thorwaldsen Museum at Copenhagen. 
 The attitude of the first, which was not executed, is 
 somewhat different. The plaster, and a repetition in 
 marble of the bas-relief, are also in the Museum. 
 
 One might linger indefinitely over the precious con- 
 tents of any great library. MSS. of classical authors or 
 of Holy Scripture, illuminated mediaeval MSS,, testify- 
 ing to the pious zeal of our forefathers all these, 
 while appealing specially to different groups of experts, 
 awaken intelligent interest in all educated people. No
 
 CONCLUSION. 133 
 
 less interesting, too, in its way, is the study of incuna- 
 bula, with the light they throw on the social history of 
 each country, to say nothing of that most thorny 
 question, the history of the invention of printing; 
 though, after Mr Hessels's exhaustive essay on Guten- 
 berg, we may as well adopt Mr Blades's humorous sug- 
 gestion, and say, "Printing never was invented"; it was 
 like Topsy, " it grow'd." Later still we reach the fully 
 developed printed literature, in editions valued for their 
 varied excellence, though I confess to no sympathy with 
 the collector to whom an extra tenth of an inch of 
 height is a fact of supreme importance. Dibdin is very 
 tedious with his talk of margins and large-paper copies. 
 Still, while the most varied interest is roused by any 
 great collection of books, the associations which cling 
 round an ancient library increase this charm tenfold. 
 To handle books which have been in the hands not of a 
 series of collectors, changing owners from time to time, 
 as the fate of the auction-room willed, but of long 
 generations of scholars of the same ancient house, who 
 constantly enriched the stores of the Library with their 
 own most precious books this lends an additional 
 charm to so old a library as that which I have now 
 spoken of at such length. One takes into one's hands 
 books doubtless used by good Bishop Fisher, or on 
 which Francis Bacon began his course of omnivorous
 
 134 CONCLUSION. 
 
 reading. Here are books which influenced the poetry 
 of gentle George Herbert and of Dryden; and the 
 latter's own copy of Spenser, with the MS. notes of the 
 later poet, now lies before me. 
 
 Before Dryden died the present building had re- 
 ceived the old collection, and in this stately room we 
 know that Newton and Cotes, Bentley and Porson, 
 Thirlwall and Hare, Whewell and Sedgwick mighty 
 names among the mighty dead made constant and 
 abundant use of the Library. 
 
 Passing away, too, from associations such as these to 
 the living present, pleasant it is, leaving the broad stair- 
 case, to cross the cloisters and the green lawn beyond, 
 where, and especially in the springtime, the ancient 
 chestnuts, and the lime avenue, and the river flowing 
 idly by, form as fair a setting as any student's home 
 need desire. 
 
 THE END.
 
 LIBRARIANS OF TRINITY COLLEGE ON SIR 
 EDWARD STANHOPE'S FOUNDATION: 
 
 1609. William Hickes. 
 
 1611. Nicholas Parker. 
 
 1625. Peter Hersent. 
 
 1631. William Clutterbooke. 
 
 1641. Thomas Griffith. 
 
 1673. James Manfield 1 . 
 
 1679. John Laughton 2 . 
 
 1682. Thomas'Rotheram. 
 
 1695. James Banks. 
 
 1706. Nicholas Clagett 3 . 
 
 1716. William Chichley 4 . 
 
 1716. Edward Peach. 
 
 1717. Samuel Doody. 
 1721. Thomas Bentley. 
 1729. William Gossip. 
 1729. Sandys Hutchinson 8 . 
 
 1 University Librarian, 1684-86. 
 
 2 University Librarian, 1686-1712. 
 
 3 Bishop of St David's, 1732-42; of Exeter, 1742-46. 
 
 4 Appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 5 Appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and subsequently by the 
 Master and Seniors. See Monk's Life of Bentley, Vol. n. p. 278, ed. 1.
 
 136 
 
 LIBRARIANS. 
 
 1740. Timothy Lee. 
 
 1742. Thomas White. 
 
 1763. Thomas Green 1 . 
 
 1788. John Clarke. 
 
 1803. Charles Hoyle. 
 
 1804. Aldous Edward Henshaw. 
 1837. Charles Warren. 
 
 1840. James Jnd Smith. 
 
 1845. George Brimley. 
 
 1857. Howard Warburton Elphinstone. 
 
 1858. John Glover. 
 
 1863. William Aldis Wright. 
 
 1870. Sedley Taylor. 
 
 1871. Robert Sinker. 
 
 1 Professor of Geology, 1778-88. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BV c. j. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 - 
 
 T77
 
 " " "'mill III II Hill 11(11 III II (III I]