Third Series, 
No. 6, Vor. II. ApRIL, IQII. 


THE LIBRARY. 


HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF 
WILLIAM TYNDALE. 


» OME of the most important books in 
the literature of the English Reforma- 
tion are said to be ‘printed by me 
Hans Luft at Marburg in the land of 
© Hesse.’ A few of them are obviously 
London reprints, but others show clear traces of 
common origin, and that not English, but con- 
tinental. The imprint first appears in 1528, when 
the newly founded University of Marburg was 
rising into prominence, and books with it continue 
to appear at intervals till 1546. British refugees 
are known to have resided at Marburg, and no 
doubt was entertained as to the genuineness of the 
imprint until it was found that Hans Luft printed 
at Wittemberg throughout the whole of his career, 
that no trace of his being conneéted with Marburg 
existed, and that the type used in these books had 
never been used either in Marburg or Wittemberg. 
From that time the true home of this press has 
been a subject of enquiry. 


II. I 

















114 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


The earliest foreign-printed Reformation books 
in English are printed in (a) italic, as ‘The Sup- 
plication of Beggars,’ (4) Roman, as ‘ The Summe 
of Scripture,’ ‘The Exposition on Matthew,’ etc., 
or (c) Schwabacher type, in which most of the 
‘Marburg’ books were printed. It is to this class 
that most of our attention must be given. The 
books in it are connected, not only by type, but 
by watermark, woodcut initials, and typographical 
peculiarities. 

The size of the type is 77.5 mm. to twenty 
lines. A Schwabacher type of this body first 
appears in the index to the ‘ Margarita philosophica,.’ 
printed by Schott during his residence in Freiburg, 
16th March, 1504-5 (Proctor 11718) ; this variety 
is not used again in any recorded book. It is next 
found in Cologne, in ‘Dat niwe testament . . . 
duir Hieronem Fuchs: Coellen: 1525,’ a Dutch 
New Testament, printed in three parts. A third 
variety appears in the famous Cologne New Testa- 
ment of Tyndale, the printing of which was 
interrupted by Hermann Rinck and Dobneck, in 
September, 1525." This book is usually attributed 
to Quentell’s press, on the ground that a woodcut, 
some initials, and (it is said) the type itself are 
found in books printed by him after this date. 
Such evidence as we have points, I believe, in the 
other way. I have not been able to see any book 
in the Testament variety with Quentell’s imprint, 
before or after 1525. His patrons were for the 
most part anti-Lutheran. When the search for 


* See ‘Records of the English Bible,’ by A. W. Pollard, 
p. 104. 

















HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 115 


Tyndale’s book was made, suspicion was aroused 
by the great amount of paper found on the printer’s 
premises; but this could not apply to Quentell, 
who printed large numbers of books. The sub- 
sequent use by him of the woodcut blocks proves 
nothing, except when a previous use is also shown. 
The only other use I know of this variety is in the 
letter of the Hanse Merchants of London to the 
magistrates of Cologne, 3rd March, 1526, describ- 
ing the search in the Steelyard for heretical books. 
This letter must have been printed at the earliest 
at the end of April, as an express took at the 
period forty-seven days to pass from London to 
Cologne. 

A fourth variety of Schwabacher type (closely 
resembling the second) is found in Strassburg in 
1527. Tyndale’s assistant, Roye, parted from him 
in Worms about May, 1526, after the first o€tavo 
New Testament without notes had been printed. 
Roye went to Strassburg, and while there translated 
the ‘ Dialogue of the Father and the Son,’ of which 
the preface is dated August, 1527; while another 
refugee, Barlow, versified the bitter attack on 
Wolsey, known as ‘ Rede me and be not wroth,’ or 
‘The Burial of the Mass.’ Allowing for the usual 
interval (a preface signed 3rd May of a book of 
this period has a colophon dated 3rd September), 
we may assume that these books were printed by 
December, 1527. The history of their purchase 
by Wolsey’s agent at Frankfort in September, 1528, 
is well known.' From this time forward Schott 
the printer uses the type frequently, as, for example, 
See ‘ Records,’ pp. 120-1. 





116 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


in the ‘ Biblisch Bettbuchlein’ of Brunfels, 1528, 
the ‘ Pandeét Buchlein’ of 1529, etc. The fifth 





¢ thorow negligence in thye lysle 

Streatife. For verely the one 

fecb/thas Ff marvayle charit 6 fo wel cen ie 

Moarcover it becomerh the boke evé fo to cos 

ge 26 6 morner andin vile apparef to wayre 

on bis mafter which (bewerh bym felfe now 

agayne notin bonoure and gloty/ ae berwene 

ofes and Bclias : butin rebuke and {hame 

66 betwene two morberare / to trye bie true 

frendes 2d to prove whether there be any faird 

on the erth, 

30 the. rleafe.d. ye ij_apanaonaa 

derb reade fewe and {eal 


t . 
real 77 laa 


The paindpaF notes of rhe boke. 


With gods word oughre a man to reboFe wes 

Ecdnee and falfe doctnne Jd nos with raylings 

simes.ig, leafe in the prologe, 

Antichrifte ts a6 mon 9 to faye / as agenfi Chit 

fe and ie norbinge bnea prcacher of falfedos 

ctrine/the.ig.in the prolege. 

Antichrifte wae ever.ifj.in she prologe. 

Aner brufte whan he ie (pied goerh out of the 

ploye and rire bum felfe and shen cometh 
ogoyne, iid. in she prologe, 








variety of this type is that used in the ‘ Marburg’ 
press from 1528 to 1535. 


This conneétion between a certain kind of type 
and a certain variety of literature is one that can 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 117 


hardly fail to arouse speculation. The varieties of 
it are marked off by quite insignificant differences. 
The ‘ upper-case’ letters are the same in all. The 
‘lower-case’ letters are the same in the main, with 
three or four differences only in each fount. The 
facsimile ot a page in the ‘ Marburg’ type (fig. 1), 
from ‘ The Parable of the Wicked Mammon,’ will 
serve to exemplify this. The principal differences 
in the N. T. variety are (1) a double letter 00, which 
is like an eight on one side, a contracted es, and 
the foreign combinations tz, etc. The marks of 
the Roye variety are two h’s (one with a loop), 
two k’s, two p’s, no loop to Il, a different con- 
traction for es, and the oo of the N. T. type. In 
the ‘ Marburg’ type there are two forms of a, l, r, 
no compound letter ch, and a looped Il. 

It seems evident then that we must seek for 
a common source for these closely allied types, and 
if there is one, that this source should be at Cologne. 
Until our friends in Germany and the Low Coun- 
tries bring their bibliographies into line with ours, 
we are to some extent working in the dark, and 
definite statements are liable to be contradi¢ted by 
new evidence; but with this reserve in mind, we 
have to explain the following facts. Fuchs is 
using a well-marked type for Testament-printing 
at Cologne. Tyndale comes to Cologne a stranger, 
and at once starts printing a Testament in a similar 
type—not used before—and abandoned, it is said, 
to the printer. Roye, Tyndale’s partner, prints 
Reformation traéts in a similar type at Strassburg — 
owes his printer money—abandons the type and 
books to him, and henceforward this fount remains 








ile 
lF 
: 
A : 
| 
if 
4 | 
| 
| 
| 
H | 
4 
i | 
4 ; 
(im 


a 





118 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


at Strassburg. Tyndale prints tra¢ts in English in 
a similar type for the next few years. When 
Tyndale arrived in Cologne in 1525 he was obvi- 
ously well supplied with money, since he was able 
to buy the paper for 3,000 copies of the Testament 
at Cologne, and, when these were seized, to pay 
for 3,000 more at Worms: so that the question of 
cost does not arise. We know that in 1529 Tyn- 
dale owned a fount of type, from Packington’s 
remark to Tunstall as to purchasing ‘the letters 
and stamps.’' Several theories can be proposed to 
link these facts together. The one I think likeliest 
is this. 

We are bound to assume either (1) a type- 
founder who kept special type for Tyndale and his 
friends, or (2) the purchase by Tyndale of (i.) 
punches, (ii.) matrices, or (iti.) type from a type- 
designer. Though we know up to the present of 
no other books of the period in this type, we can- 
not accept the first alternative on account of the 
very limited market. We assume then that Tyn- 
dale, coming to Cologne from Hamburg in 1525, 
was directed by Fuchs to a type-founder and paper- 
seller, and probably bought matrices from which 
a quantity of type was cast. These matrices come 
into the hands of Roye, and are handed over to 
Schott, whose continued use of the type shows that 
he must have had means of obtaining fresh supplies 
of it. Tyndale, when he begins printing again, in 
1528, has type only, as the progressive degradation 
of the face shows. 

The first books in the ‘Marburg’ type were 


* ¢Records,’ p. 152. 

















HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 119g 


published in 1528, on the 8th May and 2nd Oétober 
respectively. We have no evidence as to the place 
of printing of ‘The Wicked Mammon,’ and I 
reprint two initials, a G and a T, in the hope that 
some previous use of them may be identified. 
There is some reason to think that this book was 
written and printed at Antwerp, where a strong 
feeling existed against the English authorities. 
This is supported by the fact that Tyndale alludes 
in his preface to the altered ta¢tics of the English 
agent, who was accusing the reformers, not of 





heresy, but of treason. ‘ Because that his Excom- 
munycacions are come to light he maketh it trayson 
unto the Kinge/to be acointed with Christ.’ This 
change of taétics was recommended by Hackett to 
Wolsey 14th July, 1528 (B.M. Galba. B. ix. f. 146°). 
The second book, ‘The Obedience of a Christian 
Man,’ has very much more to connect it with 
Antwerp. In the first place, the engraved title- 
page is one of two used by Michael Hillenius of 
Antwerp in 1528 and 1529, copied from one used 
in 1523 at Cologne by Cervicornus. It has two 
initials, A and G, imitated from the lexicon of 
Antonius Nebrissensis 1527, an E used in Erasmus’s 














120 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


‘Enchiridion’ by Hillenius 1528. Another is 
taken from a set of Martin Keyser used in 1528. 
All these reasons are cumulative in assigning the 
book to an Antwerp press. The two books are 
connected by the paper used, the first two sheets 
of the ‘Obedience’ being on ‘Mammon’ paper, 
the other nineteen on a different sort. 

The books issued in 1529, 20th June and 12th 
July respectively, are not by Tyndale, though the 
first of them, ‘ Erasmus’s Exhortation,’ or ‘The 
Exposition of 1 Corinthians VII.,’ was known on 
its publication as ‘The Matrimony of Tyndale.’ 
The note as to translation on f. C.ij. is sufficient to 
prove this. Roye was probably the author, as he 
had by this time returned from a visit to England. 
‘The Revelation of Antichrist’ is by Frith. Tyn- 
dale was engaged on his version of the Pentateuch, 
and it was in this year that his shipwreck on the 
way to Hamburg,’ and his stay in that city, together 
with Coverdale, occurred. To this period may also 
be assigned Coverdale’s translation of ‘ The Old God 
and the New.’ Tyndale was again in Hamburg in 
January, 1530. 

These books were printed at the same press as 
the ‘Obedience.’ They have the same woodcut 
title-page, the same initials, and are on the same 
batch of paper, with the exception of the Index to 
the ‘ Exhortation.’ 

The printing of the Pentateuch seems to have 
been somewhat troubled. Only two of the five 
books, Genesis and Numbers, are in the ‘Marburg’ 
type, the other three being in Roman, supplemented 

* Records,’ p. 10. 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 121 


as usual by a w and y from a Gothic fount. They 
all have the same woodcut title-page, one used by 
Michael Hillenius of Antwerp, and copied by him 
from a compartment used by Schoeffer at Mainz 
in 1521. But Genesis (the only dated book) is 
marked off from the others in several ways. Firstly, 
there are two editions of it, the first presumably 
being toosmall. Secondly, the line is of a different 
length from that of the other four. Thirdly, it is 
printed on different paper from that on which the 
four others are printed. Fourthly, the four books 
are sometimes found as a complete work, without 
the Genesis. On the other hand, one capital from 
the ‘ Obedience’ is found in Genesis and Numbers, 
and another in Genesis only. There does not 
seem any ground for assuming that these works 
were printed at Hamburg, nor do I consider it 
likely, since we know of no press there, though 
the type and paper were portable enough. 

The disturbance, whatever it was, is reflected in 
the printing of the ‘ Praétyse of Prelates,’ dated the 
same year, 1530, which has the same compart- 
ment and one of the initials. This book is very 
irregularly printed, and introduces italic side-notes. 
This is the last of Tyndale’s books in the ‘ Marburg’ 
type. 

. = other books, one dated 1530, the ‘A BC 
to the Spiritualte’ and other tracts, the other ‘ The 
examination of Master William Thorpe,’ a Lollard 
martyr, undated, are of this period. They are 
printed on the same paper, and have the well- 
known initials. They are probably due to Roye or 
to Joye; either of them had historical sympathies, 





122 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


and wished to link the movement with the past. 
It is curious to read in Tyndale and his friends of 
Richard II. as a victim to the prelacy for his 
Lollard sympathies. A part of the ‘A B C’—‘a 
compendious olde treatyse —was subsequently re- 
printed in the same type, with the date 1530. 

The last Reformation book printed at this press 
bears a different imprint: ‘At Parishe, by me 
Peter Congeth, A.M.D.xxxv. xx. Januarij.’ It is 
written by a Scottish reformer, John Johnstone, of 
whom nothing is known, and is called ‘ An confort- 
able exhortation . . . unto the Christen bretherne 
in Scotlande . . .” The author was an eye-witness 
of the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton. The 
paper on which it is printed includes some of the 
same batch as the reprint of the ‘compendious 
olde treatyse.’ 

We have in the meantime a use of the type in 
a prognostication for the year 1534, printed at 
Antwerp for sale in England. It is not in sympathy 
with the Reformation. The type by this time had 
escaped Tyndale’s control altogether, and Roye had 
been burned in Portugal in 1531. After a time it 
seems to have fallen into the hands of a Wesel 
printer, who used it for ordinary trade purposes. 
At any rate, we find it in a popular fortune-telling 
book, ‘ Warsager Kunst,’ found by Mr. A. G. 
Murray in a binding together with other frag- 
ments of books, all printed by Dirik van der Straten 
at Wesel before 1548. 

Tyndale himself seems to have decided to get his 
printing done by an ordinary trade printer almost 
simultaneously with the issue of the ‘ Praétyse of 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 123 


Prelates.’ We have definite proof of his presence 
in Antwerp in 1531, at the period of the issue of a 
number of books printed in the type and with the 
initials of Martin Keyser. These are Tyndale’s 
‘ Prophete Jonas,’ ‘The praier . . . of the Plowe- 
man,’ Ashwell’s letters to Joye (all on the same 
batch of paper), Tyndale’s ‘Answer to Sir Thos. 
More,’ and Frith’s ‘ Disputacion of Purgatorye’ 
(both before Easter, 1531), Tyndale’s ‘ Exposition 
on the Epistle of St. John,’ Frith’s ‘ Another boke 
against Rastel,’ Barnes’s ‘Supplication,’ and the 
‘ Paternoster in English.’ . 

Leaving these aside, however, we follow the 
fortunes of our ‘Marburg’ type, and we meet with it 
again in a new body, showing that the punches have 
fallen into a printer’s hands. Twenty lines of this 
new type measure 82 mm. It seems to be con- 
nected with the famous John Bale, and used by 
him together with a larger German fount of the 
same character. The well-known comedies with 
the fanciful imprint of Nicolaus Bambergensis fall 
into this series. They are conneéted with the first 
edition of Bale’s ‘De Scriptoribus’ by the fact 
that all their initials are found in this book, and 
Theodoricus Plateanus, its printer, has just been 
shown to have also worked as Dirik van der Straten. 
Bale returned to England in 1548-9 (the date is 
uncertain), and in 1550 we find the type on the 
original body used for Coverdale’s Bible in Zurich. 
Curiously enough we meet with it again in another 
secret press, in an edition of one of Cartwright’s 
tracts in 1575. 

The provenance of the early Reformation books 








124 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


in italic and roman type is not easily arrived at. 
Perhaps if we had some of the smaller books of 
Christopher Endhoven, who printed the first re- 
prints of Tyndale’s New Testament at Antwerp in 
1526, some light might be thrown on the matter. 
I hope to return to the subject, and to show the 
connection of Tyndale’s three books, the exposition 
on Matthew, on Romans, and on St. John, with 
these. 

Weare still in the dark as to the way in which 
early sixteenth century books got printed. It seems 
probable that in many cases the person who wanted 
the book published provided the type and paper, if 
not the press, and went to a professional printer, 
just as, a generation ago, a countryman in the more 
remote distri¢ts bought the cloth and linings, etc., 
and called in an itinerant tailor to make his suit of 
clothes. One must not neglect the fact that type- 
founders were comparatively common; but on the 
other hand, the number of founts of type identical 
in every respect with the exception of one or two 
‘sorts’ has led the few persons qualified to speak 
with authority on the subject to the opinion that 
when type or matrices were bought, the seller 
introduced these variations with the special pur- 
pose of making a distinétion for each purchaser. 
The evidence given by these ‘Marburg’ books 
goes to show that in this case, at any rate, the paper, 
type, and capital letters were provided by Tyndale’s 

nancial backers, who held them at the disposal 
of others of like mind. Every reason exists for 
locating these at Antwerp in the English colony 
there, up to about 1540, when the revolt of Gheat 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 125 


brought Charles V. in person to the Netherlands, 
and probably led to the settlement at Wesel in the 
Lutheran Duchy of Cleves. 

We will now summarise the evidence conne¢ting 
these books as to type, woodcut initials, and paper : 


The ‘Mammon’ uses, besides the ‘ Marburg’ 
type, a fount of Black letter, measuring 93mm. 
This is also found in the ‘ Corinthians’ and 
the ‘ Antichrist.’ 


The title-page fount is found in every one of the 
series except the ‘ Mammon.’ 


Woopcut Borpers.—The ‘ Obedience,’ ‘ Corin- 
thians,’ and ‘Antichrist’ are identical. The 
*Praétyse of Prelates,’ ‘Genesis,’ ‘ Exodus,’ 
‘Leviticus’ (2), ‘Numbers’ (2), and ‘ Deu- 
teronomy ’ use another. 


Woopcvt IniTIALs.—The ‘Mammon’ and ‘ Anti- 
christ’ use the same G. 


The ‘Obedience’ uses the same A as ‘ Anti- 
christ,’ ‘ Genesis,’ and ‘ Numbers’; the same 
W as ‘ Antichrist,’ ‘ Genesis,’ Practyse of Pre- 
lates, ‘A B C’; the same I as ‘ Genesis’; the 
same G‘as ‘Thorpe,’ ‘2nd Compendious 
Treatise’; the same H as ‘ Exhortation’; the 
same L as ‘ Corinthians.’ 


The ‘Corinthians’ uses the same T as 
‘Genesis,’ ‘ Thorpe,’ ‘ Exhortation.’ 


The ‘A B C’ uses the same F as the ‘ 2nd 
Compendious Treatise.’ 











126 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


Paper.—The ‘Mammon’ watermark cannot be 
seen in the copy consulted. 


The ‘ Obedience,’ ‘Corinthians,’ ‘ Anti- 
christ,’ and ‘ Numbers’ are on the same paper, 
a diadem with cross and star. 


The ‘ Genesis’ is on a different paper. 


The ‘ Exodus,’ ‘ Leviticus,’ and ‘ Deutero- 
nomy’ (the Roman part of the Pentateuch) 
are on a different diadem paper, nearly 4957 
Briquet. 


The ‘Thorpe’ and ‘A BC’ are on the 
same paper, 4968 Briquet nearly. 


The ‘ 2nd Compendious Treatise ’ is on the 
same paper as part of the ‘ Exhortation,’ 
nearly 10906 Briquet. 


We are thus enabled to date the ‘ Examination 
of Thorpe’ for the first time with some approach 
to accuracy. The evidence up to the present goes 
to show that all these books were printed at the 
same press, with type that derived from Cologne, 
but with capitals and compartments derived from 
Antwerp. It was at Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom 
that the great markets for books sent to England 
were held at the time, and it was at Antwerp that 
Tyndale was likely to find the continued pecuniary 
support of which he was in need. I hope the fac- 
simile in this article may lead to the discovery of 
earlier uses of these letters, either in Antwerp or 
Cologne. 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. _ 127 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


1. Ai. [Begins] ‘That fayth the mother of all good 
. walke in them.’ Aij. “William Tyndale other- 
wise called hychins to the reader’... Av. verso, 
©q@ The parable of the wicked mammon.’ 
A-I,. I, blank (?) missing. folios v not numbered + Ixiij + iv 
not numbered. 
The B.M. copy has each leaf mounted on guards, 


2. *‘ The obedience of a Christen man and how Christen 
rulers ought to governe/where in also (yf thou ma-rke 
diligently) th-ou shalt fynde eyes to pe-rceave the crafty 
conveyaunce of all iugglers.’ 

A-X,. folios clx + viij not numbered. 


3. “An Exhortation to the diligent studye of scripture/ 
made by Erasmus Roterodamus. And translated into 
inglish. An exposition into the seventh chaptre of the 
first pistle to the Corinthians.’ Colophon. ‘At Mal- 
borow in the londe of Hesse. M. D. xxix. xx daye Junij. 
By my Hans Luft.’ 


A-K, compartment. 9 sheets of paper of No. 2 with the index 
sheet of another paper. 

Quoted on its publication as ‘The Matrimony of Tyndall.’ 
ae work is not by Tyndale. See the note as to translation on 

1). 

4. *4 A pistle to the Christen reader. The Revela- 
tion of Antichrist.  Antithesis/wherein are compared 
togeder Christes actes and oure holye father the Popes.’ 
‘[At Marl]borow in the land of Hes[se the] .xij day of 
Julye/An no M.CCCCC, xxix. [by me] Hans juft. 


A-N, compartment. 13 sheets of paper of No. 2. 


44. A work of which no copy seems to be preserved 
in England. It is no. 27 in Dr. Dommer’s ‘ Die aeltesten 











128 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


Drucke aus Marburg’: the Marburg Articles in Nether- 
landish speech. 4 sheets. (After October, 1529.) A 
copy is noted in Cassel. Hass. h. eccl. 12°. 1. 


5. (Compartment fig. 23) ‘(A prologe into the fourth 
boke of Moses/called Numeri.’ (B. 1, compartment 
fig. 23) ‘The fourthe boke of Moses called Numeri.’ 


Sheets A-I,, K,. No colophon. 


6. ‘The fyrst boke of Moses called Genesis «.*’ (com- 
partment fig. 23). Colophon. ‘Emprented at Malborow in 
the lande of Hesse /by me Hans Luft /the yere of oure 
Lorde. M. CCCCC. xxx. the .xvij. dayes of Januarij.’ 

Sheets A-L,. 
Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy are in Roman type. They 


have the same compartment and an initial, which also occurs in 
Sayle 6095 the B.L., ‘Summe of Holy Scripture’ (1529). 


7. ‘The examination of Master William Thorpe preste 
accused of heresye before Thomas Arundel/Archebishop 
of Canturbury/the yere of ower Lorde. M.CCCC. and 
seven. @ The examinacion of the honorable knight syr 
Jhonn Oldcastell Lorde Cobham/burnt bi the said Arch- 
bisshop /in the fyrste yere of Kynge Henry the fyfth. 
q Be no more ashamed to heare it/than ye were and be/ 
to do it.’ 

Sheets A-H,, I,. Watermark (Briquet, 4968), a German paper. 


8. ‘A proper dyaloge / betwene a Gentillman and a 
husbandman /eche complaynge to other their miserable 
calamite/through the ambicion of theclergye. GAnA.B.C. 
to the spiritualte. with A compendious olde treatyse / 
shewynge / howe that we ought to haue the scripture in 
Englysshe.’ Colophon. ‘4 Emprented at Marborow in 
the lande of Hessen/by me Hans Luft/in the yere of 
oure lorde. M.CCCCC. and .XXX. 


Sheets A-D,. Paper and watermark of No. 7. 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 129 


The next seems to have been from a different work- 
man. It has side-notes in italic: 


g. ‘The practyse of Prelates. Whether the Kinges 
grace maye be separated from his quene/because she 
was his brothers wyfe. marborch In the yere of oure 


Lorde. M.CCCCC. &. XXX.’ 


A-I,, K,,. The paper is different from the others. Watermarks 
resemble Briquet 10723 and 6409. 


10. No. 10 is a reprint of no. 8. ‘A compendious 
olde itreatyse /shewynge/howe that we ought to haue y* 
scripture in Englysshe/’ Coo/phon. ‘ Emprented at Marl- 
borow in the lande of Hessen / be my Hans Luft/in the 
yere of owre lord M.CCCCC. and. XXX. 

Ag. 
I am inclined to place it later, but in the absence of definite proof 
it must come here. .The watermark of the paper cannot be identified: 


it has an open crown with (probably) a hand (?) of northern French 
origin. 


The type now passes into other hands. 


11. A fragment of a prognostication for the year 
1534. It is printed in Antwerp. 


12. ‘An confortable exhortation: of oure mooste holy 
Christen faith/and her frutes Written (vnto the Christen 
bretherne in Scotlande) after the poore worde of God. 
* At Parishe M.d.xxxv.’ Colophon. ‘{ At Parishe/by me 
Peter congeth A. M.D.xxxv. xx. Januarij.’ 

Sheets A-F, (wanting B,-C,). 


In the same type, circ. 1546: 


‘Warsager kunst Vth den vij. Planeten vnd XII. 
teken des Himmels / dardorch men die Complesie / natur 
vnde egenschop eines ydern minschen erfaren mach / ock 
syne gebort /stunde vnde teken /dardorch em all synge- 
lucke vnde vngefal/so em yn der tidt synes leeuendes 


II, K 

















130 HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 


beyegen wert/geopent mach werden /vnde solckes alle 
lichtlick dorch des Minschen Namen vth tho reken.’ 
(Woodcut.) 

? Sheets A-C,. 


BALE PRESS. 


. ‘The true hystorie of the Christen departynge of 
ee ‘reuerende man, D. Martyne Luther, colleéted by 
Justus Jonas, Michael Celius, and Joannes Aurifaber 
whych were present therat, & translated into _— by 
Johan Bale. Arma Ducis Saxonie (woodcut) . 

[1546] 
Sheets A-D,. Initials I and O of ‘ Scriptores.’ 


2. ©The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, lately 
martyred in Smythfelde, by the Romysh popes vpholders, 
with the Elucydacyon of Johan Bale (woodcut) .. . 
Colophon. Thus endeth the first examynacyon of Anne 
Askewe, . . . Imprented at Marpurg in the lande of 
Hessen, in Nouembre, Anno 1546.’ (Printer’s mark.) 

*."s *, A-F, (F, missing). Initials A, O, H, and F of ‘ Scrip- 
tores,” Crown paper. (Block of Von Kempen of Cologne.) 

3. ‘The lattre examinacyon of Anne Askewe, lately 
martyred in Smythfelde, by the wycked Synagoge ot 
Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon of Johan Bale. (wood- 
cut.) . . . Colophon. God saue the kynge. Thus endeth 
the lattre conflict of Anne Askewe . . . Imprented at 
Marpurg in the lande of Hessen, 16 die Januarij, Anno 
1.5 0407~ 

A-I, (I, missing). Initials I and C of ‘Scriptores.’ Paper of 2. 

4. ‘A Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of nature 
Moses, & Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharycees 
and Papystes. Compyled by Johan Bale. Anno M.D. 
XXXVIII.’ (In a compartment showing the creation of 
Eve, the Fall, the Expulsion, and Labour after the Fall.) 


A-F,,G,. Written after 1547, June. Initials I, I, V, Q, and B 
of ¢ Scriptores.’ Watermark A as 2; B-F as 1. 





HANS LUFT OF MARBURG. 131 


5. ‘A Tragedye or enterlude manyfestyng the chefe 
promyses of God vnto man by all ages in the olde lawe, 
from the fall of Adam to the incarnacyon of the lorde 
Jesus Christ. Compyled by Johan Bale. Anno Domini 
M.D. XXXVIII.’ (Woodcut, St. John) . . . 


A-E,. Initial I of ‘Scriptores.’” Watermark as 1. (Block of 
Evangelist from some unidentified New Testament.) 


6. “A brefe Comedy or Enterlude concernynge the 
temptacyon of our lord and sauer Jesus Christ, by 
Sathan in the desart. Compyled by Johan Bale, Anno 
M. D. XXXVIII. (Woodcut, St. Matthew)... .’ 


C, only, D, E,. Initials A and I of ¢ Scriptores.’ 


” * 


7. ‘A Godly Medytacyon of the christen sowle con- 
cerninge a loue towardes God and hys Christe, compyled 
in frenche by lady Margarete quene of Nauer, and aptly 
translated into Englyssh by the ryght vertuouse lady 
Elyzabeth doughter to our late souerayne Kynge Henri 
the viij.” (woodcut.) . . . Colophon. ‘Imprented in the 
yeare of our lord 1548, in Apryll.’ 

A-F,. Initials D, I, W, C, and F of ‘Scriptores,’ Paper of 2. 


7a. ‘De Scriptoribus,’ Aug. 1548—not in the type. 


Watermark as 2. 


8. ‘A treatyse made by: Johan Lambert vnto kynge 
Henry the .vitj. concernynge hys opynyon in the sacra- 
ment of the aultre as they call it, or supper of the lorde 
as the scripture nameth it. Anno do. 1538 (woodcut 
fides)... . 

Sheets A-D,. Initials A and A of ‘Scriptores.” Watermark as 2. 
8 varieties of type used. Probably later than the ‘ Scriptores,’ as 


not mentioned in it. Cut of ‘Salvator mundi’ on f. 5 is in 
* Scriptores,’ f. 11. 


R. STEExLE. 




















JOHN LELAND AND KING HENRY 
VIII. 


(ae) N a striking paper, read before the 

«3 Library Association many years ago, 

on ‘ Librarianship in the Seventeenth 

5) Century,’ the late Dr. Garnett admitted 

ss that the craft was then still in its 

inkancy, and that in John Dury it had a representa- 

tive rs in advance of his time." The age of 
librarianship was dark then; but the epoch to 
which I propose to go back, of which the follow- 
ing remarks are a brief survey, is a darker one still. 
The work of John Leland as a general antiquary 

is outside our province; any necessary allusion that 

I may make to it will be of an incidental nature. 

The recently issued edition of his ‘ Itinerary’ has 
doubtless re-awakened the interest of topographers 
who are also antiquarians, and the volumes, which 
are published in a handy form, will supply much 
useful material to coming historians of the period 
and writers of romance.* For although literary 
style is not the strong point of the ‘Itinerary,’ 
English prose writing being then more or less in 
* Garnett, R., ‘Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography’ 


(‘ Librarianship i in the Seventeenth Century ’), 1899, pp. 175-90. 
* Leland, John, ‘Itinerary.” Edited by L. Toulmin-Smith, 


3 vols., 1906- 8. 





JOHN LELAND. 133 


its infancy, Leland’s descriptions of all that he saw 
in town and country are faithful and minute. 

The principal facts relating to his comparatively 
short life (1506?-52) are to be found in most 
biographical diétionaries and introduétions to his 
works. They are most succinétly recorded by 
Mr. Sidney Lee in the ‘Dictionary of National 
Biography,’' by Dr. Copinger,? by Miss Toulmin- 
Smith in her introduétion to the new edition of 
the ‘Itinerary,’ and also by Leland’s admirer and 
fellow-worker—though of a later age—Thomas 
Hearne.3 

Although they formed but a comparatively small 
portion out of the total of his! labours, Leland’s 
visits to monastic libraries, and his records of 
manuscripts and printed books then in existence, 
are not the least of his work. It is the objeét of 
this paper to estimate-very briefly the extent of 
their value, to reconcile, if possible, one or two 
opposite statements that have been made in this 
connection, and to endeavour to arrive at some 
solution of the much-vexed question—the sincerity 
of King Henry VIII.’s attitude towards the New 
Learning, and his conception of the only means by 


* €Leland, John, Life of,’ Di&. Nat. Biogr., 1893, xxxiii., 
. 113. 

PS Leland, John, ‘New Yeares Gifte.’ Reprinted, ‘ Biblio- 
graphiana,’ No, 1, edited by W. A. Copinger. Privately printed 
at the Priory Press, Manchester. 1895. 

3 Leland, John. ‘The Itinerary of John Leland, the An- 
tiquary.” Published by Thomas Hearne, M.A. 3rd edit., 9 vols. 
in 5, 8vo. Oxon., 1769-70. 

Leland, John. ‘ De rebus Britannicis colleCtanea, cum Thomae 
Hearne praefatione. Edit. altera,’ 6 vols., 1774. 




















134 JOHN LELAND AND 


which it could be locally advanced, namely, the 
preservation of manuscripts and printed books. 
Leland seems to have been drawn into Court 
life early in his career, as he was appointed royal 
chaplain and became library keeper before 1530. 
The ‘latter, and secular, office, although a definite 
one, was no more engrossing, probably a good deal 
less so, than it was in John Dury’s day, more than a 
hundred years later; but it may be concluded that 
it was in the discharge of his keeper’s duties, such 
as they were, that Leland’s enthusiastic love of 
books and manuscripts, both for their own sake and 
as objects of antiquity, was fostered and magnified. 
In 1530 he was presented to the living of 
Pepeling or Poppeling, in the marches of Calais— 
then English territory. In company with Nicholas 
Uvedale (or Udall), the author of ‘ Ralph Roister 
Doister, he wrote verses, which were recited at 
the coronation of Anne Boleyn. In the same year 
he was appointed to an office which had ‘ neither 
predecessor nor successor,’ namely that of ‘ King’s 
antiquary.’' It is evident that Leland’s sojourn at 
Pepeling was but fugitive, as he was returned as an 
absentee from his living in 1532. He received 
later on a special licence to keep a curate there 
during the time that he was on his travels. As to 
the exact date when these commenced authorities 
do not seem to be agreed; but it is definitely 
known that 1533 (the twenty-fifth of the king’s 
reign) was the year of his receipt of the famous 
commission from his sovereign, by virtue of 


* Morley, H., ‘ First Sketch of English Literature,’ 1892, p. 756, 
and Diét. Nat. Biogr., 1893, xxxiii., p. 14. 


KING HENRY VIII. 135 


which he was appointed to ‘search after England’s 
antiquities, and peruse the libraries of all cathedrals, 
abbies, priories, colleges, etc., and also all places 
wherein records, writings, and secrets of antiquity 
were reposited.’* It is also known that the years 
1536-42 were entirely occupied by Leland on his 
various journeys; but some assign to these the 
slightly wider margin of from 1534 to 1543, while 
Leland himself, in the ‘ New Yeares Gifte’ (1546), 
speaks of his travels as having been made ‘ by the 
space of these six years past’ (1539-45). 

Leland was one of the few who were fortunate 
enough to keep on good terms with their royal 
employer, which in those days meant a good deal 
in the way of security both of life and property. 
But there is nothing surprising in this, as he 
appears to have been a man of pliant will, save in 
the pertinacity he showed in the pursuit of his 
researches. He was evidently what would now be 
termed a ‘safe’ man as regards subscription to the 
Aét of Supremacy; and his theological leanings, 
though distinétly on the side of the Reformers, 
were not sufficiently aggressive to arouse the royal 
disfavour. It is stated by Isaac Disraeli, in his 
‘Calamities and Quarrels of Authors,’ that he had 
delighted the ear of the king with his ‘Cygnea 
Cantio’ (Song of the Swan)—‘a beautiful effusion of 
fancy and antiquarianism.’ The same author men- 
tions that Leland was always alive to the “kindness 
of his royal patron, and that among his numerous 
literary projects was one of writing a history of all 


1 Warton and Huddesford, ‘ Lives of John Leland; Thomas 
Hearne and Anthony 4 Wood,’ 1772, i., pp. 9, 10. 





136 JOHN LELAND AND 


the palaces of Henry, in imitation of Procopius, 
who described those of the Emperor Justinian.' 

It is at this point that some divergence in the 
views of writers comes in. Did Henry VIII., 
contemplating his intention to dismantle and 
appropriate the revenues and personal effects of the 
monasteries and suppress them, send Leland forth 
on his travels with a view to ascertaining the 
literary contents of those institutions, and of effect- 
ing their ultimate preservation? Mr. J. P. Gilson, 
in his monograph on ‘The Library of Henry 
Savile, of Banke,’ published in the Bibliographical 
Society’s Transaétions, inclines to this view. He 
says that Henry was one of our few literary 
monarchs, which is undoubtedly true, and this 
statement is supported by authorities whose estimate 
of the king’s character is widely divergent. Hume, 
who is unsparing in his denunciation of Henry’s 
later aétions, states that his father, ‘in order to 
remove him from the knowledge of public business, 
had hitherto occupied him entirely in the pursuit 
of literature, and the proficiency which he made 
gave no bad prognostic of his parts and capacity.’? 
Froude, whose one-sided panegyric is too well 
known to need comment, says that ‘his reading 
was vast, especially in theology.’3 Mr. Gilson 
supports his argument as follows: ‘ The measures 


t Disraeli, Isaac, ‘Calamities and Quarrels of Authors,’ new 
edit., 1881, p. 173. 

* Hume, D., ‘ History of England from the Invasion of Julius 
Caesar to the Revolution in 1688,’ reprint of edit. of 1786, ii., 
Pp. 59, 160, 174. 

3 Froude, J. A., ‘ History of England,’ 1872, i., p. 174. 





KING HENRY VIII. 137 


which he (Henry) took to secure the preservation 
of the best part of the monastic libraries are a 
rather remarkable piece of forethought. The 
itineration undertaken at his command by John 
Leland was the forerunner of our Historical MSS. 
Commission; but it was something more. The 
MS. lists which Leland drew up, or at any rate 
those parts of them which are in the British 
Museum, are noted with certain signs in the 
margin, indicating that the king had laid hands 
upon the books for his own collection, and the 
result is apparent in an inventory of Henry VIII.’s 
library made in 1542, and now in the Public 
Record Office among the Augmentation Office 
Papers. The nine hundred and odd volumes in 
this list are not all MSS., perhaps not half of them 
MSS ; it is difficult to say, as there is not any 
clear distinétion in the list between MSS. and 
printed books; but, on the other hand, it is not a 
complete list of all the king’s books. . . . Such as 
it is, however, it includes at a low estimate two or 
three hundred manuscript volumes of great import- 
ance, mainly from the spoils of the religious houses. 
These two or three hundred constitute the nucleus 
of the old Royal Colleétion now in the British 
Museum, and it is well to observe that there are 
very few libraries now in Europe possessing even 
two or three hundred books which have been kept 
together since 1542.’' 


* Gilson, J. P., ‘The Library of Henry Savile, of Banke.’ 
Trans. Bibliog. Soc., 1906-8, ix., pp. 127-210. (See especially 
p- 129.) 








138 JOHN LELAND AND 


I have quoted this passage almost in entirety 
because it has an important bearing on the views 
of other writers, to which I shall shortly allude. 
It is perfectly true that the authority Leland 
received from the king was a command; but it is 
open to question whether Henry took the initiative 
in the matter. Judging by Leland’s enthusiasm, 
we may at least assume that the proposal was a 
joint one, if it did not emanate from Leland him- 
self. In considering the whole question, what we 
have to estimate are not merely the gains that 
accrued from Leland’s visitation, but the immense 
losses, both of manuscripts and printed books, that 
resulted from the suppression of the monastic 
institutions. 

When Henry first conceived the idea of suppress- 
ing the monasteries is not stated by authorities to 
which I have had access. They were subjected to 
his visitation and government alone for the first time 
in 1534, and it became known between then and 
1536, when the first Act for the extinétion of the 
smaller establishments was passed, that the king was 
about to resort to extreme measures. At this time 
Thomas Cromwell was at the height of his power, 
and took an active part in carrying out his royal 
master’s instructions in this matter. Of these smaller 
institutions no fewer than 375 were suppressed, 
and their revenues, amounting to £32,000, were 
granted to the king, besides their goods, chattels 
and plate, computed to be worth £100,000 more. 
In 1538 there was a new visitation ; a second Act 
was passed, dismantling and abolishing the larger 
buildings. In many instances their occupants, 





) 
) 
I 
$ 
p 


“= —w 


KING HENRY VIII. 139 


thinking it to be the wiser course, made a voluntary 
surrender. The total income thus derived from 
property that found its way into the Royal Treasury 
amounted to upwards of £140,000, a sum worth 
probably six times that amount at the present 
day... That Christ Church, Oxford, benefited 
thereby, and that Trinity College, Cambridge, was 
practically founded out of these funds is a poor 
set-off to Henry’s rapacity, to which his love of 
learning was in inverse proportion. It is well 
known that his prodigality in the early years of 
his reign had reduced his exchequer, and that the 
grasping character that he had inherited from his 
father, latent in early days, but developed in middle 
life, impelled him to seek this means among 
others of re-establishing himself in the wealth and 
splendour of the opening years of his reign. 

What made the losses of books and manuscripts 
all the more terrible, and the salvage, such as it 
was, at least something for scholars and biblio- 
graphers to be thankful for, is the faét that the 
conservation of books and manuscripts was largely 
in the hands of monastic libraries. Of course it is 
not suggested that they were the sole repositories: 
the bibliophile has always been with us; indeed, 
the principal actor in this tragedy, namely, the 
king, was himself a bibliophile, or reputed to be. 
But private owners were then a negligible factor 
in the world of letters: the days of Cotton were 
yet to come. In his introduction to the reprint 
of the ‘New Yeares Gift,’ the late Dr. Copinger 


* Monachism, Article on. Encycl. Britannica, 1883, xvi., 
p. 712. 








140 JOHN LELAND AND 


wrote as follows: ‘The monasteries were the 
public libraries of the Middle Ages: they were 
the main repository of knowledge for those whose 
poverty prevented them from acquiring libraries of 
their own. They were regarded to some extent in 
the light of a public trust, and students were not 
only permitted to consult the books in the libraries, 
but, under certain safeguards, were allowed to study 
them in theirown homes. So important was this 
privilege that, when some abbots had discontinued 
the practice in consequence of the injury which 
the books occasionally sustained, the Council of 
Paris, in 1212, ordered the immediate resumption 
of the ancient system, declaring that the lending of 
the books might justly be reckoned amongst the 
most eminent works of mercy.’' 

It need not be said that if this was the case in 


the days before the era of printing, the use to which 
monastic libraries must have been put after its 
invention was enormously increased.” 

The conclusions arrived at by Edwards in his 


‘Memoirs of Libraries’3 differ from those of Mr. 
Gilson. He agrees that the losses would have 
been far greater had it not been for Leland’s 
mission, and that his appointment to the office or 
‘ King’s antiquary’ dated two years (or rather three) 
from the time of the first dissolution. But he 


* Leland, John, ‘New Yeares Gifte.? Reprinted, ‘ Biblio- 
graphiana,’ No. 1, edited by W. A. Copinger, 1895, p. xxviii. 

2 The above statements as to monastic libraries being open to 
the public are confirmed in the late Mr. J. Willis Clark’s Rede 
Lecture (1894) on ‘Libraries in the Middle and Renaissance 
Periods.’ (See pp. 46, 54.) 

3 Edwards, E., ‘ Memoirs of Libraries,’ 1859, i., p. 363. 





KING HENRY VIII. 141 


claims that ‘there is no evidence that his mission 
had for its direét objeét the preservation of the 
monastic archives, or that Leland visited any con- 
siderable number of monasteries before their sup- 
pression. In that New Year’s Gift which was 
written in 1546 he speaks of his travels as having 
been made “‘ by the space of these six years past,” 
1539-45. The notices of libraries throughout the 
“ Collectanea” show in almost every instance that 
they were written subsequently to the suppression, 
and even in the case of the great and not very 
remote monastery of Bury St. Edmund’s it is 
evident from the recommendatory letter printed by 
Hearne that his visit occurred after the community 
had ceased to exist. There is slender ground for 
attributing to Henry any praiseworthy evidence 
for the interest of learning.’ 

Dr. Copinger also considers that the mainspring 
of the action of Henry and his advisers was the 
desire to secure possession of the wealth of the 
monasteries. If any confirmation were needed of 
the views put forward by Edwards and Copinger 
it is to be found in the wholesale destruction of 
books and manuscripts that really took place. The 
‘New Yeares Gifte,’ as no doubt most readers are 
aware, is mainly a kind of dialogue or double 
address: first there is a long preface written by 
John Bale, the friend of Leland; then Leland 
speaks and addresses the king; he is followed by 
Bale, who supports him, extols his labours and 
deplores the losses to learning occasioned by the 
suppression of religious houses; the two worthies 
in turn take up the burden of their song, like the 








142 JOHN LELAND AND 


two sides of a choir chanting alternately in a 
cathedral. In the preface Bale speaks very plainly, 
as follows: ‘ But thys is highly to be lamented... 
that in turnynge over the superstyciouse monas- 
teries so lyttle respecte was had to theyr libraryes 
for the sauegarde of those noble and precyouse 
monumentes.’ After condemning the unworthy 
lives of the monks, canons, and friars, and declaring 
that they roundly deserved their fate, he goes on 
to say that he would have wished ‘ that the profyt- 
able corne had not so vnaduysedly and vngodly 
peryshed with the ivnprofytable chaffe nor the 
wholsome herbes with the vnwholsome wedes.’ 
. He then continues as follows: ‘ Auaryce 
was the other dyspatcherj whych hath made an 
ende both of our libraryes and bokes wythout 
respecte lyk as of moste honeste commodyties, to 
no small decaye of the common welthe.’ After 
citing the support of writers in the Apocrypha for 
the preservation of books (Esdras, vi., Maccabees, 
ii.), he continues: ‘never had we bene offended 
for the losse of our libraryes beynge so many in 
number and in so desolate places for the more parte, 
f the chief monumentes and most notable workes 
of our excellente wryters had bene reserved. Yf 
there had bene in every shyre of Englande but one 
solemyne librarye to the preservacyon of those 
noble workes and preferrement of good lernynge 
in posteryte it had been yet sumwhat.’ Some 
who purchased the monasteries only reserved the 
books ‘some to scour theyr candelstyckes and some 
to rub theyr bootes. Some they solde to the 
grossers and sope sellers and some they sent over 





KING HENRY VIII. 143 


see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but 
in shyppesfull to the wonderynge of the foren 
nacyons.’ * 

There is even a worse tale recorded in the 
‘Renascence and Reformation’ volume (vol. iii.) 
of the ‘Cambridge History of English Literature,’ 
as follows: ‘ Maskell calculates the loss of liturgical 
books to have alone approached the total of a 
quarter of a million. An eye-witness describes the 
leaves of Duns Scotus as blown about by the wind 
in the courts of Oxford and their use for sporting 
and other purposes. Libraries that had been col- 
leéted through centuries, such as those of Christ 
Church and St. Albans, vanished in a moment.’ 

This shows how little, comparatively speaking, 
Leland had been able to effect in the way of 
preservation of the contents of libraries. He 
had evidently not been content with the powers 
granted to him under the king’s commission, for 
in the year 1536 we find him entreating Cromwell 
to extend the powers of that commission so as to 
enable him to collet the manuscripts for the 
king’s library. ‘It would be a great profit to 
students and honour to this realm,’ he wrote; 
‘whereas now the Germans, perceiving our desidi- 
ousness and negligence do daily send young scholars 
hither that spoileth them and cutteth them out of 


‘ Leland, ‘New Yeares Gifte’ (Bale’s preface), reprinted in 
Warton and Huddesford, ‘ Lives of John Leland, Thomas Hearne, 
and Anthony 4 Wood,’ and by Dr. Copinger in ‘ Bibliographiana,’ 
No. 1, 1895, already quoted. 

* Ward, A. W., and Waller, A. R., ‘Cambridge History of 
English Literature’ (vol. iii., ‘Renascence and Reformation’), 


1909, pp. 48, 328-30. 


‘ 














144 JOHN LELAND AND 


libraries, returning home and putting them abroad 
as monuments of their own country.’ 

His request was only partly gratified, but he was 
enabled to despatch some valuable manuscripts to 
London, principally from St. Augustine’s Abbey, 
Canterbury. In 1538 Leland was again at Canter- 
bury, but this time his visit was to the monastery 
of Christ Church, attached to the cathedral. The 
library was at that time located in the prior’s 
quarters. The commissioner who had been sent 
down to investigate the affairs of the monastery 
was then on a visit ‘to Christ Church, when 
according to Leland his servants got drunk, the 
fire occurred, the Prior’s quarters were partially 
burnt out and (Prior) Selling’s valuable collection 
of books which was stored there was destroyed.’ 
The foregoing information is given by Mr. Beazeley, 
Hon. Librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Canter- 
bury, in his monograph on the library in the Biblio- 
graphical Society’s Transactions." Mr. Beazeley 
also states that Leland gave a list of twenty-four 
volumes which he saw at that time in the refectory. 
The fire extended to the adjoining library, and was 
considered by John Twyne (‘ De Rebus Albionicis, 
Britannicis atque Anglicis,’ Lond., 1590, pp. 113-4), 
quoted by Mr. Beazeley, a worse disaster than 
the sack of the Danes in 1o11. No further dis- 
turbance, however, seems to have overtaken the 
remainder of the books as a result of the com- 
missioner’s visit. The history of the library is 


t Beazeley, M., ‘ History of the Chapter Library of Canterbury 
Cathedral,’ Trans. Bibliog. Soc. (1904-6), 1907, viii., pp. 113-85. 
(See especially pp. 144-7.) 





KING HENRY VIII. 145 


continuous to the present day. It is worth men- 
tioning, however, that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, 
Mr. Beazeley states, it suffered depredations, not at 
the hands of its foes, but at those of its should-be 
friends, since Archbishops Parker and Whitgift 
pillaged it for their own private purposes. 

Leland’s visit to Glastonbury Abbey library 
appears to have excited his greatest interest: ‘ He 
was struck with devotion and astonishment at the 
very sight of so many sacred remains of antiquity,’ 
Hearne tells us,’ so much so, that ‘he spent some 
days in most nicely examining the shelves and in 
turning over the wonderful peeces*he there met 
with; . . . in ramaging he had found among 
other books a broken peece of history written by 
Melchinus an Avalonian, about the year of our 
redemption, 560.’ This last sentence entitles Leland 
to the claim of being called the father of local 
history and bibliography. 

As has been already stated his visit of inspeétion 
to Bury St. Edmunds took place after the suppres- 
sion of the monastery there—in the words of the 
recommendatory letter, requesting that he be given 
every facility for research on the king’s behalf: 
‘And where as Master Leylande cummith to Byri 
to see what bookes be lefte yn the Library there 
or translated thens into any other corner of the 
late monastery, I shaul desier you upon just con- 
sideration to forder his cause and to permytte — 
to have the use of such as may forder hym 
setting forth such matiers as he writeth fer the the 


' Hearne, T., ‘History of the Antiquities of Glastonbury,’ 
Oxford, 1722, p. 67. 


II. L 








146 JOHN LELAND AND 


King’s Majeste.’* Here was the monastery evi- 
dently now dereli¢t. The books or manuscripts 
might or might not have been preserved, as the 
words ‘ what bookes be lefte’ imply. All Leland 
had to do was to inspect them, take their titles, 
and reserve for the king’s library such as he 
considered of value. The terms of the original 
mandate from Henry, ‘to enter and search the 
libraries of all cathedrals, abbies, priories etc., as 
likewise all other wherein records, writings and 
whatever else were lodg’d that related to antiquity,’ 
apparently did not extend to the general preserva- 
tion of what were then modern printed books, but 
which rank with us among the valuable relics of 
the past. 

In 1542 Leland was presented by the king, 
through Cranmer’s influence, to the rectory of 
Haseley, in Oxfordshire, and in 1543 he became 
Canon of King’s College and Prebendary of Salis- 
bury. But his latest years were spent first in his 
own house in the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, 
east of St. Paul’s, in the City of London, and, 
lastly, in the house of his publisher, Reginald, or 
Reyner, Wolfe, in the same parish. So far as we 
can gather, his duties as a priest never seem to 
have been so congenial to him as his pursuit as an 
antiquary. 

The melancholy tale of his closing days, of his 
inability to arrange and digest his documents, of 
his appeal in Latin verse to Cranmer to procure 
him an assistant, of his illness, attack of insanity, 


* Warton and Huddesford, ‘Lives of John Leland, Thomas 
Hearne, and Anthony 4 Wood, 1772, i., p. 15. 





KING HENRY VIII. 147 


and death are told elsewhere. Nearly all his 
writings were published posthumously, and the 
somewhat complicated history of the fate of his 
manuscripts is given in his ‘ Life’ in the Di¢ctionary 
of National Biography, and in other accounts. 
The following is a brief outline. Leland’s MS. 
collections were made over, after his death, by 
Edward VI. to Sir John Cheke, tutor to the young 
king. When Cheke left England the ‘Colleétanea’ 
(containing amongst other things the accounts of 
visits to monasteries) passed into the hands of 
Humphrey Purefoy, whose son presented them to 
William Burton, historian of Leicestershire, and 
brother of the author of the ‘ Anatomy of Melan- 
choly.’ The original MS. of the ‘ Itinerary’ passed 
to William, Lord Cecil, and afterwards to Sir 
William Cecil, and they, too, subsequently became 
Burton’s property. In 1632 Burton gave the five 
volumes of the ‘ Colleétanea’ and seven out of the 
eight volumes of the ‘Itinerary’ to the Bodleian. 
The eighth volume he inadvertently lost; but it 
was afterwards found, and reached the same destina- 
tion in 1677. In the course of their wanderings 
the manuscripts were liberally used by Stow, 
Camden, Dugdale, and by Burton himself. Bale, 
who was in close literary companionship with 
Leland during much of his life, drew largely upon 
the ‘ Colleétanea’ to write his history of English 
literature’ (‘ Illustrium majoris Britanniae Script- 
orum Summarium in quinque centurias divisum,’ 
1548). Ator about this date of the publication of 
Bale’s work, Leland was either in the house of 


t *Bale, John, Life of,’ Diet. Nat. Biogr., 1885, iii., p. 42. 








148 JOHN LELAND AND 


Reginald Wolfe, with whom, as already stated, he 
spent his closing years, or else he was in close 
communication with him. It was about 1548 
that Wolfe designed a universal history and cosmo- 
graphy, and this coincides with the date at which 
Leland’s health began to fail. It is stated that he 
‘inherited Leland’s notes,’ but if the manuscripts 
passed into the hands of Cheke some time during 
the reign of Edward VI., it is difficult to see how 
Wolfe’s possession of them could be more than 
temporary. It is to be assumed, therefore, that a 
copy was made of such portions as would be found 
useful in the design. Wolfe and Holinshed' worked 
up the ‘ Chronicles,’ afterwards published under the 
authorship of Holinshed, Wolfe having died in 
1573. The ‘Chronicles’ before publication passed 
into the hands of the publishers George Bishop 
and John and Luke Harrison. They were, how- 
ever, printed by Henry Bynneman in 1577, accord- 
ing to Mr. Plomer.? 

The conclusions to be drawn from this brief 
study are the following : 

(1) No exaggerated estimate can be made of 
Leland’s work either as a cataloguer or as a col- 
lector of books and manuscripts. It is evident that 
he was much hampered by opposition from the 
agents directly concerned in the suppression of the 
monasteries, and by the half-heartedness of his 
royal employer, whose love of learning was over- 
whelmed by his cupidity. 


* ¢Holinshed, R., Life of,’ Diét. Nat. Biogr., 1891, xxvii., p. 131. 
2 Plomer, H. R., ‘ Henry Bynneman, Printer,’ Liprary, 1908, 
N.S., ix., p. 242. 





KING HENRY VIII. 149 


(2) As regards the question of Leland’s personal 
enthusiasm in the work of rescuing manuscripts 
and books there.can be no two opinions. Had he 
lived in a later age the result might have been very 
different. It is clear, too, that the name of John 
Bale, sometime Bishop of Ossory, must be honour- 
ably coupled with that of Leland in the good work 
—such as it was. 

(3) That Henry VIII. was profoundly interested 
in the rescue of the literary treasures of the religious 
houses is a wrong assumption. Had it been so 
Leland would in the first instance have been in- 
structed to seize and take possession of all documents 
and books he could lay hands upon. As we have 
already seen he had to apply to Thomas Cromwell 
for additional powers, and these were only partly 
granted. Of course taste for learning, whether 
hereditary or acquired, is never wholly lost. The 
affairs of state have never been able to extinguish 
it in some of our greatest politicians. Even with 
Henry the canker of rapacity did not eat out his 
love of letters, and this showed itself in his being 
very glad to take for his library such acquisitions 
as Leland was successful in making. 

(4) And lastly, from the point of view of national 
history the suppression of the monasteries has 
been differently regarded—some considering it an 
unmixed blessing, some a necessary evil, and others 
a disaster. But from the standpoint of learning, 
literature, and bibliography, the circumstances 
attendant on the act are such as can only be looked 
back upon with sorrow and regret. 

ARCHIBALD L. CLARKE. 








RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


tp) LARGE number of new books, 


ogc English, French, and German, pass 


e- through my hands in the course of 

\\@ the year. I have lately found myself 

we S wondering whether the ‘literature of 
power, as De Quincey called it, is dying out, and 
as Time progresses only the ‘literature of know- 
ledge’ (books which give information) will survive. 
For very few of the books I see come under the head 
of belles lettres. Of poetry, drama, or criticism 
there is little, and although of fiction there is much, 
most of it is singularly lacking in interest or fine 
workmanship. But of history, politics, economics, 
philosophy, sociology, there are many volumes in 
all tongues, and they reach a high standard of 
excellence. In the same way, purely literary 
matters seldom now form the subject of conversa- 
tion except within a very limited circle. But 
everywhere I hear questions of politics, economics, 
sociology, and applied science eagerly debated. 
I foresee a future Hazlitt writing a book entitled 
‘The Newest Spirit of the Age,’ which shall deal 
solely with motor-cars and aeroplanes. We who 
are humble critics of literature, in so far as we 
try to guide readers to the best, cannot amend or 





RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 151 


prevent the Zeifgeist, and I only offer these remarks 
as an apology for the barrenness of the land I have 
to explore. 

Chaucer would seem to be the English poet most 
likely to interest the French, and it is strange that 
no complete translation of the ‘Canterbury Tales’ 
was made before 1908, and that only lately has any 
book on ‘ Geoffroy Chaucer ’ appeared by a French 
critic of literature. M. Legouis’ ‘ Chaucer’ 
scarcely reaches the high level of his ‘ Jeunesse de 
Wordsworth,’ but it offers an excellent account of 
the poet’s life and work to those unacquainted with 
them; and scattered throughout are passages of 
criticism which should prove illuminating for the 
English student of the poet. 

Legouis pays a high tribute to the dramatic side 
of Chaucer’s genius. He declares that it is in the 
‘Canterbury Tales’ that the modern play and the 


modern novel give the first sign of their existence. 
Chaucer shows the way to Moliere and Fielding. 
Legouis sees clearly, too, the historian in Chaucer, 
who 


‘devient aussi véritablement le chroniqueur social de 
Angleterre de la fin du quatorzi¢me siécle que Froissart 
est le chroniqueur politique et militaire de la méme époque. 
Il le devient d’autant mieux qu’il prétend moins a faire 
tache historique, qu’il ne vise pas a noter les événements 
contemporains, ni 4 juger, nia tirer une morale. Ce qu'il 
fait, c’est une transcription direcéte de la vie commune 
saisie dans quelques journées qui n’ont rien de mémorable, 
prise sur le fait dans ses actes familiers. Chaucer est le 
plus précieux document pour qui essaie d’évoquer la vie 
d’alors, justement parce qu'il n’a aucune soumission 4 la 
hiérarchie consacrée des événements et des hommes, qu’il 











152 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


va droit aux plus ordinaires, choisis tels 4 dessein comme 
étant le plus largement représentatifs.’ 


In his humour Chaucer at times is akin to 
La Fontaine: he calls up the French writer’s 
‘ gaillardise mince, élégante, aux levres un peu 
pincees.” At other times he appears as ‘le rival 
nullement inférieur de Rabelais.’ But, as Legouis 
points out, Chaucer never allows his humour to 
overwhelm him. One of the great attractions of 
the ‘Canterbury Tales’ is the easy and frequent 
passage from grave to gay, from lively to severe. 
He has, too, always preserved the gift of loving 
and admiring: ‘jamais la moquerie, discrete ou 
bouffonne, n’a flétri en lui la poésie.’ 

Chaucer’s power of pathos is, his French critic 
declares, ‘ exquis.’ 


‘II n’est aucun poete, méme parmi les plus grands, qui 
le dépasse pour la pure et juste expression des sentiments 
tendres. On le proclamerait sans aucune outrance d’éloge 
Virgilien ou Racinien, si sa voix n’était aussi distinéte. 
Comme Racine et Virgil, il mérite de fournir un adjectif 
qui désigne une nuance particuliére d’émotion suave et 
pénétrante.’ 


Chaucer made effective use of the three centuries 
of French literature that he found to his hand; 
and he offers perhaps the only example of the 
combination of ‘ une littérature automnale avec un 
langage printanier. Chaucer tres jeune et tres 
mir, allie le charme de ce qui débute a l’expérience 
de ce qui a beaucoup vécu.’ Threads of many 
different colours are woven in his work. He found 
some of them more beautiful than others, but it is 





rn 


Des « 68hPlUlUes wet 


RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 153 


on the contrast of all that he based his philosophy 
of life and the laws of his art. 

Two books concerned with the history of French 
poetry call for notice. The first volume of the 
‘Histoire de la Poésie Frangaise au XVI* siecle,’ 
by Henry Guy, deals with ‘L’école des rhetori- 
queurs.” The ‘rhétoriqueurs’ of whom Pierre 
Gringoire is perhaps now the best remembered, 
were composers of rhetorical allegories, and flour- 
ished between Villon and Marot. Marot, indeed, 
was much influenced by them, and M. Guy declares 
that Marot’s works cannot be properly understood, 
and that the ‘ Deffense’ of Du Bellay loses half its 
meaning, if the tastes and methods prevailing at 
the end of the middle age are ignored. These 
‘rhétoriqueurs’ are the earliest workmen of the 
Renaissance, and prepared the way for it by their 
passionate love of antiquity. In their eyes every 
Greek and Latin book was a sort of Bible, and to 
this was mainly due the rising of the seven stars of 
the ‘ Pleiade.’ 

H. J. Molinier’s ‘ Essai biographique et littéraire 
sur Oétovien de Saint-Gelays, Evéque d’Angouléme 
(1468-1502) ’ is an interesting piece of biography 
and criticism concerning one who was both ‘ poete 
courtisane’ and a high ecclesiastic, but more the 
former than the latter; he was a ‘jeune poete des 
mieux doués, instruit, fin, délicat, quelque peu 
ambitieux, courtesan fort habile, quoique grand 
seigneur, passionné pour les lettres.’ A work of 
greater importance by the same author is ‘ Mellin 
de Saint-Gelays (1490?-1558): Etude sur sa vie et 
sur ses ceuvres.’ Molinier gives here an admirable 








154 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


picture of the social and literary conditions in 
which Saint-Gelays’ work was produced. He de- 
scribes and explains the peculiar society that 
gathered round Francis I. and Henri II. And, 
perhaps, we value Saint-Gelays the most for the 
crowd of details he gives—details not to be found in 
the memoirs of the time—concerning the manners, 
customs, and events of ‘la haute société’ in France 
in the sixteenth century. It has been said that the 
works of writers who have frequented ‘society’ 
and taken pleasure in it ‘ respirent un parfum spécial, 
un charme subtil qui est au génie ce que la grace 
est a la beauteé.’ Certainly no poet of that epoch 
‘ne laisse percer dans ses ouvrages un tel amour 
des plaisirs mondains.’ 

As a poet Saint-Gelays belongs both to the 
Middle Age and the Renaissance, and occupies a 
place between Marot and Ronsard, although he 
forms a strong contrast between ‘le bonhomme’ 
Marot and ‘le hault visant’ Ronsard. Above all 
he was, as the French term it, ‘italianisant.’ He 
introduced the madrigal into France, and, Mr. 
Sidney Lee tells us, ‘seems responsible for the 
earliest French experiment in Italian sonneteering.’ 
Mr. Lee further points out that Wyatt evidently 
knew Saint-Gelays’ poems in that form, and based 
one or two of hisownon them. Molinier declares 
that if Saint-Gelays is not the father of the French 
sonnet, he is at least its godfather, ‘il I’a pousse 
dans le monde et produit a la Cour.’ 

The French are fond of marking a distinétion 
between the writings of men and of women. In 
his volume entitled ‘ Les femmes auteurs,’ Vicomte 





RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 155 


de Broc takes for his text the following passage by 
Legouve : 

‘Il est quatre genres secondaires qui leur [i.e. les 
femmes] promettent des succés éclatants. C’est la poésie 
élégiaque, le roman, le style épistolaire et la causerie. 
La toutes leurs qualités sont de mise, leurs défauts de- 
viennent des qualitéa. Les femmes sont nos maitres et 
doivent l’étre dans la causerie et le style épistolaire. Que 
nous représentent, en effet, les lettres et les entretiens? 
Une improvisation, improvisation de sentiments aussi bien 
que de paroles.’ 


It will be remembered that George Eliot thought 
that women should make distin¢tively feminine 
contributions to the intelle¢tual pursuits in which 
they engaged. Vicomte de Broc’s book is of the 
slightest. When he has stated that women succeed 
in poetry and in the novel by the gift of imagina- 
tion inherent in their sex, in memoirs by the 
vivacity of their impressions, and in letter writing 
by their naturalness because ‘le genre épistolaire ’ is 
only pleasing so long as it is not an art, he has little 
besides to say that is in any way illuminating. 

Ernest Tissot, in ‘ Nouvelles Princesses de Lettres,’ 
takes a different position. He declares that ‘la 
femme ne deviendra géniale qu’a la condition 
d’oublier qu’elle est femme. Elle ne sera pas un 
homme intelleétuellement parlant, comme des 
facheux linsinuent, mais elle sera une _ torche 
comme Héléne Vacaresco, une lumiere comme 
Ellen Key, l’étoile comme Ste-Térése.’ He gives 
a penetrating study among others of the work and 
temperaments of Mme. Daudet, of Marcelle Tinayre, 
whom he characterises as a new George Sand, and 











156 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


of Mathilde Serao, but the criticism leans too greatly 
to the intimately personal to help much towards an 
esthetic appreciation of their writings. He notes 
that when a woman has once gained a public by 
the portrayal of some one emotion, she repeats it 
to satiety. This is by no means a faét peculiar 
to women writers, but belongs to the prolific 
second-rate novelists and dramatists of both sexes. 

We are so accustomed to class Swiss authors 
either as French or German that it is somewhat 
surprising to find on our table a volume entitled 
‘ Histoire de la littérature Suisse des origines a nos 
jours.” The authors, Virgile Rossel and Henri 
Ernest Jeuny, include among the writers of Switzer- 
land Calvin, Haller, Rousseau, Vinet, Mme. de Staél, 
Benjamin Constant, Gotthelf, Gottfried Keller, 
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Eugene Rambert, and 
Edouard Rod. Literally speaking they are correét, 
but distinétly French or German influences and 
conditions went to the forming of the genius of 
these men, and it will require some adjustment of 
our mental position to think of them as Swiss. 
The book is well written and arranged, and should 
be of use to the student of literature. 

The first volume of Philipp Witkop’s ‘ Neuere 
deutsche Lyrik,’ dealing with the period from Fried- 
rich von Spree to Hélderlin, is just issued. The 
second volume will deal with German lyric poetry 
after Hélderlin down to the present time. The 
introductory chapter on ‘Lyrik und Lyriker’ is 
extremely interesting and helpful. It is shown 
how the epic poet and the dramatic poet are bound 
to the world of objects, while the lyric poet raises 





RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 157 


himself above the more or less scattered interests of 
objects and facts to an inner unity, to a personal 
entirety, and thus, as Novalis said, creates heroes 
and unites the finite with the infinite. 

The new German plays and novels are not very 
inspiring. Gerhart Hauptmann in, ‘ Die Ratten,’ 
takes Berlin low life and its borderland as his sub- 
ject. The chief character is Frau John, a mason’s 
wife. She presents, as it were, the tragic side of 
the heroine of the ‘ Biberpelz,’ but with the life 
and vivacity left out, for the latter, with all her sins, 
or her lack of moral sense, was a living woman. 
No one in this tragi-comedy, as Hauptmann names 
it, except the mason himself, is straight or true, and 
one cannot help wondering what he is doing in that 
galley. As some one says, ‘everything here is 
rotten, undermined, eaten away by vermin, rats, 
and mice.’ It is a sordid tale of deceit, brutality, 
and murder, and yet it illustrates the tragic side of 
the strength of the maternal instinét. 

‘Die Kinder,’ Hermann Bahr’s last play, is a 
comedy in which, as is usual in these days, nothing 
happens. All the characters talk incessantly ; they 
discuss, they argue, till they weary us. The theme 
is twofold: heredity and the superiority in their own 
eyes of twentieth century children to their parents. 
It turns out that both the children, a girl and a 
boy, really have the mother who has always been 
attributed to them. But there has been a sort of 
game of general post with the fathers. The chil- 
dren would seem to have inherited their characters 
and qualities chiefly from the mother. I am not 
sufficiently acquainted with the science of eugenics 








158 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


to know if this demonstration has any scientific 
value, but it makes an uncommonly dull play. The 
action, or perhaps I should say the talk, is compli- 
cated and difficult to follow. 

The German novelist seems, unconsciously doubt- 
less, to be following Mrs. Humphry Ward’s example, 
and making a¢ctual people and actual facts the basis 
of his story. In‘ Purpur,’ by Edward Stilgebauer, 
the romance of the life of King Ludwig II. of 
Bavaria is told, and in ‘ Kénigsliebchen,’ by Gustav 
Klitscher, that of Jerome Bonaparte. The lives 
of both these princes present admirable material 
for romance. They are not treated historically in 
these books, but they, and those conneéted with 
them, appear under thinly veiled disguises; and it 
must be confessed that the plan in both cases is 
successful, and the novels are full of interest and 
well worth reading. 

Although the name of Valentine de Milan, 
Duchess of Orleans, is well known, Emile Collas 
has made the first attempt actually to write her 
history. Her period, the end of the fourteenth 
century, the end of the Middle Age, is exception- 
ally interesting in that it resembles a preface to 
modern history. And besides, Valentine de Milan 
is one of the most attractive figures in French 
history. Her story is a sad one. She loved her 
husband, and pursued his assassin with as much 
tenacity as the Scottish queen who lives for us in 
Rossetti’s ‘ King’s Tragedy’ pursued her husband’s 
murderers. Valentine had the motto, ‘ Rien ne 
m’est plus, plus ne m’est rien,’ inscribed on the 
walls of her apartments. The tale is well told, 





+ 


a i i a A ak 


RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 159 


with sympathy and yet with impartiality. Every 
statement is based on authorities, and the whole 
shows careful and laborious research. 

In ‘Marquis de Saint-Maurice. Lettres sur la 
cour de Louis XIV., 1667-70,’ edited with an intro- 
duction and notes by Jean Lemoine, we have new 
and pi€turesque details on men and matters of the 
Court of Louis XIV. The letters—a veritable 
‘Journal de Cour’—are addressed to the Duke of 
Savoy, and form a series of sketches on the two first 
campaigns of the war with Holland, the disgrace 
of La Valliére, the triumph of Mme. de Montespan, 
the affairs of the Chevalier of Lorraine, the last 
years and death of Madame, the marriage of La 
Grande Mademoiselle, and the disgrace of Lauzun. 
But it is perhaps the portrait of the King himself 
that gives the book its greatest value. ‘Le roi 
Soleil’ appears in these letters as an entirely human 
person. But it is disappointing that there should 
be scarcely any reference to the great literary figures 
of the time or to the stage. Saint-Maurice seems 
once to have met La Rochfoucauld, whom he 
chara¢terises as one of the greatest geniuses in the 
kingdom. The lack of an index or a table of con- 
tents much detra¢ts from the value of the book. 

Material for the historian may be found in 
Arthur Chuquet’s ‘Lettres de 1815. Premiére 
Série,’ a volume in the ‘ Bibliotheque inédite de la 
Révolution et de Empire.’ The letters belong to 
the period of the return from Elba, Napoleon’s 
march on Paris and the beginning of the Hundred 
Days. The contents of the volumes in the. series 
are not necessarily arranged chronologically, nor 





160 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


will only unpublished documents be included. 
Anything which, although it has appeared before, 
is difficult of access or requires commentary, will 
be inserted, for says Chuquet very wisely, ‘linédit 
deja “‘édit” les uns le liront pour le premier fois, 
les autres aimeront a le relire.’ 

A memoir as fascinating as any novel is ‘ Le 
Roman d’un Royaliste sous la révolution. Souvenirs 
du C* de Virieu,’ by Marquis Costa de Beauregard. 
Costa died about a year ago, and René Bazin in a 
charming preface gives an account of Costa’s life 
and career. The book is dedicated to the Mar- 
quise de Virieu with the hope that she will love 
the ancestors of her husband, who are described in 
it, for ‘la souffrance est un mot de passe entre les 
dimes. Avoir beaucoup souffert, c’est parler toutes 
les langues. C’est étre compris de tous.’ The life 
and death of this stanch royalist are the romance of 
history itself. He died for his cause at the siege 
of Lyons. The story, full of adventure and pathos, 
is told with a vivacity and direétness that make it 
delightful reading. His relations with his wife 
and children are full of charm, for he married for 
love at a time when people married ‘ par conven- 
ance ordinairement, par ambition souvent, par 
pauvreté quelquefois, mais jamais par amour.’ 

Wherever we go nowadays, in nearly all the 
books on any subject we chance to open, we are 
met with the word progress, and some of us flatter 
ourselves that progress is an entirely new thing 
discovered by ourselves the day before yesterday. 
Jules Delvaille, however, thinks differently, and has 
in the ‘Colleétion historique des grands philosophes ’ 





—n i rien fee oe oelUCOUZe[CUee OS ae 


RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 161 


written a volume entitled ‘ Essai sur lhistoire de 
Vidée de progrés jusqu’a la fin du XVIII* siécle.’ 
He defines progress as a sort of rupture between 
what ;has been, what is, and what will be. He 
traces the different conceptions of progress that 
have obtained since the world began, and shows 
how these different notions may exist in the same 
philosopher. However much social life is domi- 
nated by the idea of progress, the movement of 
thought cannot be enclosed in a frame of one 
pattern. 


* * * * * 


The following recently published books deserve 
attention :— 


Louis Bonaparte en Hollande d’aprés ses lettres, 
1806-10. Par André Duboscq. 


The letters are preceded by an ‘apergu historique,’ and inter- 
spersed by necessary explanatory matter so as to form a continuous 
narrative. 


Thouret, 1746-94. La vie et l’ceuvre d’un 
constituant. Par Ernest Lebegue. 


No special biography of Thouret has before appeared. He was 
a fine orator, and a very important member of ‘]’assemblée con- 
stituante.’ 


La Marine Militaire de la France sous les régnes 
de Louis XIII. et de Louis XIV. Tome I. 
Richelieu, Mazarin, 1624-61. Par G. Lacour- 
Gayet. 


The ‘mot’ of an admiral, quoted in the preface, ‘lhistoire 
technique de la marine peut vieillir: je ne crains pas de le répéter, 
son histoire dramatique sera toujours jeune,’ serves sufficiently as an 
introduction to this interesting book. The second volume will 
deal with Colbert, Seignelay, L. et J. Pontchartrain, 1661-1715. 


II, M 





162 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 


La troisitme Campagne d’Italie (1805-6.) Par 
Edouard Gachot. 


There is an interesting chapter on Michel Pezza, ‘le vrai Fra 
Diavolo.” The book is furnished with portraits, maps, and plans 
of great interest and usefulness. 


Kleine historische Schriften. Von Max Lenz. 


Essays written between 1885 and 1897. The subjects include 
Ranke, Luther, Napoleon and Prussia, Bismarck in various aspects, 


Die Staufischen Kaiserwahlen und die Ent- 
stehung des Kurfiirstenthums. Forschungen von 
Hermann Bloch. 


A close piece of research in twelfth and thirteenth century 
history. 


Das Drama Heinrich von Kleists. Band I. 
Kleists Ringen nach einer neuen Form des Dramas. 
Von Heinr. Meyer-Benfey. 


An elaborate study and criticism of the subject for the expert 
and the man of culture. The second volume will appear in the 
autumn, 


Gerhart Hauptmann. Die Entwicklungsgang 
seiner Dichtung. Von Kurt Sternberg. 


A survey of all Hauptmann’s work up to the present date, with 
explanations and summaries of the plays and novels, and criticism 
from Sternberg’s standpoint. 


* * * * * 


The following studies in English literature are 
of interest :— 


Jeremy Colliers Angriff auf die englische Biihne. 
Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des englischen Dramas. 
Von Dr. Johannes Ballein. 


A very complete and detailed study of the subject. 





RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 163 


In Studien zur englischen Philologie, edited by 
Lorenz Morsbach : 


Das englische Faustbuch und Marlowes 
Tragédie. Von Dr. R. Rohde. 


Tudor-Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, 
and Destiny of the English Language. By 
J. L. Moore. 


Die sprachliche Form der Chaucerschen 
Prosa, ihr Verhaltnis zur Reimtechnik des 
Dichters so wie zur Sprache der alteren Londoner 
Urkunden. Von Johann Frieshammer. 


E.uizABeTH LEE. 








AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ ROYALIST 
WRITER: SIR EDMOND PEIRCE, 


late King, and the severe losses he had suffered at 
the hands of the Commonwealth by sequestration, 
he goes on to state ‘that hee hath nevertheles 
written, and with much danger and expence 
published in print many things, which have been 


very serviceable to his now Majesty and the 
Church.’ What these ‘things’ were is shown in 
a document attached to the petition, and headed, 
‘A Note of the severall peeces written and privately 
printed and then published by Sir Edmond Peirce, 
knight and Doétor of Lawes,’ which consists of 
twelve items: 


1. The Kentish Petition delivered by S‘ William Boteler 
and other Kentish gent. in the house of Commons, although 
the same were voted scandalous and seditious, and to bee 


burnt by the hangman. [British Museum pressmark: 
E. 142. (10)] 

2. His Majesties just right and title to the crowne 
asserted in full and free parliament, and the successe 


against him, an argument rather to bring him in, than 
keepe him out. 





AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ WRITER. 165 


3. An appeale in the case of the late King his party. A 
thing written and caused to bee delivered to Oliver, when 
the knife was conceaved to bee even at all our very throats. 
[E. 1956. (17)] 

4. Vox Veri Anglorum, or Englands lowde cry for their 
king. [E. 763. (3)] 

5. Anglorum Singultus, or the sobbs of England 
poured forth, to bee presented to General Monck. This 
was enclosed and sent to General Monck the same night 
hee first came into London. [E. 774. (3)] 


6. England’s Monarchy, asserted and proved to bee the 
freest state and best comonwealth throughout the world. 


[E. 1016. (16)] 


7. The grand designe of the Jesuits upon England 
discovered, &c. [E. 1o1g. (16)] 


8. The addresse to Gen: Moncke, and the declaration 
of the gentry of Essex, &c. [669. f. 25. (1)] 


g. The English Episcopacy and Liturgy asserted, &c. ; 
with the most glorious and royall martyr the late King his 
opinion and suffradge for them. [E. 1032. (10)] 


10. The late newes, or letter from Bruxelles unmasked, 
and his Majestie vindicated from the base calumny and 
scandall therein fixed on him. [E. 1org. (12) (17)] 


11. Severall letters concerning the cause, &c., written, 
though not printed, and sent to severall persons, and 
diverse of them with books inclosed, &c. 


12. Certaine arguments written and delivered to diverse 
parliament men, against the bill proposed to settle the 
sequestered livings in the possession of the Invaders, 

[Dom, State Papers. Chas. II., Vol. 1., 113. I.] 


Leaving out of account the last two items, which 
were clearly never printed, we have disclosed by 
this list the author of ten hitherto anonymous 








166 AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ 


tracts, published during the Commonwealth period 
and at the Restoration. Taken by itself this is a 
gain, because anonymous writings, whether they 
be good or bad, are always a nuisance to the 
bibliographer as well as to the reader; but in the 
case of Commonwealth literature it is certainly 
interesting, if not always important, to be able to 
show who was the writer of any particular traéct 
or tracts. In this case the pamphlets were the 
work of a man of some standing, a man of intelli- 
gence, and a man accustomed to reasoning, who 
had fought and suffered for what he considered to 
be right, and who remained a staunch adherent to 
the Royalist cause. 

Of the ten tra¢éts known to have been printed, 
nine are in the British Museum and one is un- 
identified; but Sir Edmond Peirce’s name has 
never been associated with any of them, either in 
the Thomason Catalogue or the General Catalogue, 
nor does it appear at all in the Dictionary ot 
National Biography. For these reasons I have 
ventured to put on record a brief notice of this 
Royalist writer and his work. 

All that is known to me about Sir Edmond 
Peirce is what is told in the Report of the Com- 
mittee for Compounding, where it is said that he 
was a judge of the Admiralty of the Cinque Ports, 
by letters patent, and held other offices, which he 
lost through the extinétion of the ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction. He had chambers in Doétors Com- 
mons, and a house in the parish of Greenwich. 

At the outbreak of the Civil War he took up 
arms for the King, and raised a troop of horse, and 





ROYALIST WRITER. 167 


no doubt saw some of the fighting. He was in the 
garrison at Oxford at the time of its surrender, and 
was set free under the articles then agreed upon, 
and was granted a pass on the 3oth June, 1646. 
He compounded for his estate shortly afterwards 
and was fined £82. So much for the man; now 
for his work. With regard to the first item in the 
list, the Kentish Petition, we may assume from his 
claiming the authorship that he had something to 
do with drawing it up, and that it was by his 
means that a copy of it was sent to the printers. 
It is a quarto of four leaves, and its full title is: 


‘The Petition of the Gentry, Ministers, and Com- 
monalty of the County of Kent, Agreed upon at the 
General Assizes last holden for that County. The Copie 
of which Petition being delivered to Judge Mallet (who 
was for that circuit) a afterwards to the Earle of Bristoll. 
Which Petition being concealed from the Parliament by 
the Earle of Bristoll and the said Judge Mallet, was for 
the same, both committed to the Tower, March 28, 1642. 
London, printed 1642.’ 


The petition prayed for the establishment of 
episcopal government in the Church, for laws 
against laymen who dared to preach, that the 
King’s message of the 2oth January should be 
speedily taken into consideration, and that a good 
understanding should be arrived at without delay 
between the King and the two Houses of Parlia- 
ment. 

The fate of this petition is briefly recorded by 
Thomason on his copy: ‘ This was burned by the 
hand of ye hangman.’ But whether he was 








168 AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ 


referring to the original petition or the printed 
copies of it is not clear. 

The next item in the list has not been identified, 
and we have no means of knowing whether it 
related to Charles I. or Charles II. 

The third piece is extremely interesting. In his 
list Sir Edmond Peirce calls it a ‘thing written 
and caused to bee delivered to Oliver, when the 
knife was conceaved to bee even at all our very 
throats.’ It was, therefore, penned about the year 
1654, but was not printed until 1660. It forms an 
oétavo of some 120 pages, and the title runs, ‘ An 
Appeal in the Case of the late King’s party. 
Printed in the year 1660.’ 

In the preface the author says that during 
Cromwell’s protectorate he received reliable in- 
formation from a ‘friend and near kinsman’ that 
Cromwell meditated the entire destruction of the 
Royalist party, and that this friend warned him 
either to leave it or expect utter ruin. This kins- 
man Peirce describes as being of a mild and gentle 
temper and disposition, though ‘misled in his 
judgement,’ and as one who was on great terms of 
intimacy with Cromwell. Sir Edmond Peirce 
implored his friend to use his best influences with 
Cromwell on behalf of the Royalists, and mean- 
while he sat down and wrote ‘The Appeale,’ ‘in a 
small allowed time (occasions then so requiring it) 
but great confusion and perplexity of mind, which 
in such haste done, his said friend, after perusall 
thereof, himselfe seemed so to approve of it, that 
he was more desirous then the writer, that it might 
be speedily shewed to the then Proteétor, and so 





ROYALIST WRITER. 169 


far engaged himself for security upon all events to 
the appellant that he gave way to such his desires, 
which were performed accordingly. And what 
account he thereupon had thereof from his said 
friend, with order that it should not then be made 
publike, it is not much material] further to declare, 
then is herein above premised.’ 

The fact that this pamphlet has been ascribed to 
the pen of Sir Roger L’Estrange makes the above 
account especially interesting, while anyone with 
a taste for speculation may busy themselves with the 
identity of the ‘mild and gentle friend’ who was 
in Cromwell’s confidence. Like Clarendon and 
most of the writers of that time, Sir Edmond Peirce 
was given to long and involved sentences and stilted 
phraseology ; but he wrote fearlessly, and although 
he was writing to Cromwell, he was in no sense 
servile nor abusive, but put the case of himself and 
his fellow Royalists in a masterly way, so that this 
book deserves to rank with the best literature of 
that period. 

The remainder of Sir Edmond Peirce’s work 
does not call for much notice. Most of it consisted 
of appeals for the restoration of the Monarchy, 
based on the failure of the Commonwealth and the 
great sufferings that large classes of the people were 
enduring. A passage in ‘Vox Veri Anglorum’ 
speaks of the contempt in which the Rump Parlia- 
ment was held, which, the author says, ‘may be 
easily heard and seen, not onely in the open streets 
chanted out in Rithmes and sonnets, but upon 
the wals of almost every Ale-house and tipling- 
hutch.’ He warns General Monck that he has 








170 AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ 


such an opportunity for restoring the nation to its 
former prosperity as no man had had for twenty 
ears. 

ss Anglorum Singultus, or the sobbs of England,’ 
was a pamphlet of twelve pages that bore the im- 
print: London printed for D. L. 1660. This was 
also an appeal to Monck couched in very much the 
same strain as the preceding, while ‘ Englands 
Monarchy" and the-‘ Addresse to Gen: Moncke,’ 
were intended to drive home the arguments. 

But Sir Edmond Peirce was not only a Royalist 
to the core, he was also a staunch believer in and 
upholder of the Church of England. Hence we 
find in this list two pamphlets dealing with this 
subject. The item entered as, ‘The grand designe 
of the Jesuits upon England discovered’ is doubtless 
the eight-page pamphlet, without title-page, pub- 
lished according to Thomason on 4th April, 1660, 
with the heading, ‘The Jesuits grand design upon 
England, clearly discovered in a letter lately written 
from a Father of that Society.’ The letter is signed 
J. M. and addressed from ‘ Doway 27. March, 1660 
Stilo novo.’ As there is no reason to suppose that 
Sir Edmond Peirce would claim credit for another 
man’s work, we must suppose him to have been the 
author of this traét, and that the signature and 
address were fictitious. In conneétion with this it 
is interesting to note that the type with which this 
pamphlet was printed was the same as that used in 
the ‘ Appeale.’ 

The second of these two pamphlets followed a few 
months later, Thomason’s copy bearing the date 
14th July, 1660. The full title is: 





ROYALIST WRITER. 171 


‘The English Episcopacy and Liturgy asserted by the 
Great Reformers abroad, and the most glorious and Royal 
Martyr the late King, His Opinion and Suffrage for them. 
Published by a private Gentleman for the Publique Good. 
London: Printed by Thomas Leach for Henry Seile, 
over against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street, 1660.’ 


As its title implies, this was a defence of the Church 
of England against the Church of Geneva. It con- 
sisted chiefly of extracts from the writings of Calvin, 
Beza, and Casaubon, intermixed with historical 
anecdotes concerning some of the martyrs of Queen 
Mary’s reign, and finishing up large quotations 
from the writings of King Charles I., which the 
author introduces with this fulsome paragraph : 


‘But let a Retreat be made from these crude lines and 
a listen given to those charming drops from a Royal pen 
seraphically enabled whilst on earth, and now so tran- 
scendently qualified, as not to be reached so much as in 
any imagination, which frail humanity is in the least sort 
capable of.’ 


Truly Sir Edmond Peirce’s loyalty amounted to 
idolatry. In the traéts ‘ England’s Monarchy’ and 
‘The English Episcopacy’ we get a clue to the 
printer, the first having the imprint, ‘ London, 
Printed by W. G. for Richard Lowndes at the 
White Lion in St. Paul’s Churchyard 1660,’ and 
the second, ‘London. Printed by Tho. Leach, for 
Henry Seile, over against St. Dunstan’s Church, 
in Fleet Street. 1660.’ The ‘W. G.’ probably 
indicated William Godbid of Little Britain. 

‘The Declaration and Address of the Gentry of 
the County of Essex,’ a broadside issued on 28th 








172 AN ‘ANONYMOUS’ WRITER. 


April, 1660, did not reveal the printer, being 
‘printed for Gabriell and Thomas Collins at the 
Middle Temple Gate in Fleetstreet,’ while the 
pamphlet ‘Anglorum Singultus’ is even more 
vague; its imprint is ‘London, Printed for D. L. 
1660.’ No bookseller with such initials has been 
found at this period, and it is impossible to guess 
who they can stand for. None of the other pieces 
make any mention of either printer or bookseller. 
One or two of these can be identified as coming 
from the same press, but there is not enough 
evidence to enable us to say with certainty whether 
that press belonged either to the W. G. or Thomas 
Leach above mentioned, or to some other printer. 
Henry R. Promer. 





ON THE RED PRINTING IN 
THE 1611 BIBLE. 


‘GY29) PAVING to take a certain part in pre- 

S paring a ‘reduced facsimile’ of the 

1611 Bible in connection with the 
Tercentenary Commemoration of its 

issue, it was my business to find out 

what the printer of 1611 meant by certain unusual 
red marks, appearing to the number of many 
hundreds, in the Calendar pages, which are partly 
printed in red. Examination revealed that the 
same sort of marks appear not only in the 1611, 
but also in the 1613, 1617, 1634 and 1640 editions 
of the Authorized Version, and that they are not 
always in the same place, nor always of the same 
length. If these are accidents in the printing, 
why should such a large number appear in so many 
Folio Bibles; and can their presence be explained? 
We will turn to the page of the 1611 Bible 
beginning ‘January hath xxxj days.’ On this 
page, in many cases where letters appear in red in 
the tables, there is also in their immediate neigh- 
bourhood an unnecessary red line. It is usually 
short, it is sometimes longish, and where longish 
it never gives the whole of the ‘rule.’ In this 
page there are as many as eighty-one such cases, 








174 ON THE RED PRINTING 


These do not appear at all in the Oxford facsimile. 
Being regarded as defeéts in the printing, they have 
been ‘routed out’ in every case. Was it correct to 








(get 
on Sis sary 










































































Sol im Prcipus. 


Ne 

















Fig. 1.—Part of the February page of the Kalendar of the 1611 Bible. 
(The red lines and letters of the original appear here in black with square 
dots, or scored through.) This is an instance of bad register. Observe 
under the word ‘ Mary’ the notch in both red and black lines, proving 
that both were printed from the same piece of metal. 


‘rout’ them out? Were these lines, perpendicular 
and lateral, an unnecessary and unintended effect of 
the old printer? Let us put ourselves in his 
position, and see if we can answer these questions. 





IN THE 1611 BIBLE. 175 


We will suppose that he had completed setting- 
up, and had submitted proofs of the Calendar 
pages in black only. Having got the pages passed 
for press, he would impose them two pages in a 
forme, and lay the forme on the bed of the press. 
We can tell exactly which two pages were so 
placed. The Bibles of 1611-40 are arranged for 
binding in 12-page sections; that is to say, three 
_printed sheets of four pages each are inserted one 
into the other, and so folded, making a strong back, 





6 








} WIMOST SHEET 
a 


\’ 








| a i} MIDOLE SHEET 
é2 











a“ 
OUTSIDE 
‘| SHEET 
€: 


[a ' 
: 
Fig. 2.—Diagram showing mode of arranging pages for sewing a 


seétion (12 pp.) of the 1611 Bible. Each sheet is of course printed on 
both sides: the separation is only to show the numbering of the pages. 


through which the seétions are sewn. A simple 
diagram will show what is meant. Consequently 
if page 1 is badly out of register, one would expect 
to find page 12 also badly out of register; and this 
is usually the case. The next proceeding of the 
1611 printer would be to raise the types to be 
worked with black ink, by means of a thick under- 
lay, to such a height above the red as would 
prevent the red from receiving an impression when 
the frisket was doubled down and the press was 








176 ON THE RED PRINTING 


pulled over. One can see that this is what he did, 
because everything that ought to appear in the 
black appears. Even when there are black rules 
running amongst the red letters, these black lines 
appear perfectly correét and unbroken. Having 
printed the full number of copies of the black 
forme of two pages (no doubt having arranged the 
second page in the same way), he would then lift 
his forme off the press, remove the underlay from 
the black, and attempt the more difficult task of 
printing in the red. 

Here, a word about the press and the paper. 
Our printer’s wooden handpress, the platen of which 
would cover only one page at a time, although 
the bed would hold two pages, would be a poor 
implement for two-colour-printing. His paper, 
handmade of course and deckle-edged, would vary 
in size—if not to a great extent, at any rate sufh- 
ciently to prevent perfect register. The frisket on 
the handpress, even in modern days, is a sort of 
jointed continuation of the tympan, rather like a 
window-sash without glass—the missing panes 
being represented by holes cut out of a sheet of 
stout paper stretched tightly on the frame. The 
holes let through the types which are to appear on 
the sheet; the solid paper keeps out everything 
else—or rather should keep out everything else— 
which is not to appear. But parts of the rules in 
the Calendar pages of the 1611 Bible are so close 
to the red letters, that no mere holes cut in a paper 
frisket with a pair of scissors would prevent part of 
the rules from appearing; yet the solid part of the 
frisket would block out the remainder. It is to 


-— — ~~ © Mek aw OH OUMlUClCUDPLDLHLU OCU 





IN THE 1611 BIBLE. 177 


this, undoubtedly, that the unintended and unneces- 
sary bits of red which we see in such profusion, are 
due. The ink-balls have supplied them with red 
ink against the will of the printer; the frisket has 
let part of them through, again contrary to the will 
of the printer, but it has blocked out most of the 
black forme. The register was good, because the 
red letters were never removed from the forme, and 
it could not be otherwise than correét so far; and 
whatever variation there might be, was due to the 
slight difference in size of the sheets of paper, only 
revealed when our printer laid them to needles on 
the tympan which served him as guides. 

I have said that the workman’s press, a wooden 
one, was twice as large in the bed, that is, the table 
on which the forme lay, as in the platen, that is, 
in the flat part which comes down and gives the 
squeeze. Why was this? Firstly, it is easy to see 
that two pages must be printed on one side of a 
single sheet of paper and two more on the back of 
them, or there would be nothing to fold or to sew 
through, when the completed work had to be bound. 
Secondly, if the platen of the press had been enlarged 
until it was big enough to take two folio pages, then 
every other part of the press must be enlarged to 
correspond, and an unwieldy piece of mechanism 
would have been the result, requiring twice the 
power to work. No; the handpressman, having 
inked his forme, and doubled down his frisket, ran 
the table half in, and pulled the platen down on to 
one page, ze., on half his forme; then, having 
released the pull, he ran the second half under the 
platen and so printed his second page. 


II. N 











178 ON THE RED PRINTING 


But to return to the red forme. This time the 
1611 printer would have to raise the type intended 
to be printed in red by means of a thick underlay, 
and to let down the black. But here his troubles 
would begin. He would put snippets of paper one 
under the other beneath each red letter until he got 
it to a sufficient height to raise it above the black ; 
and the difficulties of underlaying the numerous 
letters scattered in and out among the rules would 
be very great. The printer of whom we are think- 
ing was not, it must be remembered, inking his 
forme with a roller: such things were not invented 
till nearly two centuries later. Our printer would 
be using two convex pads fitted with wooden 
handles, z.e., the printing balls described in Moxon, 
*Mechanick Exercises,’ No. VI. These ink-balls 
were only sufficient to ink part of a folio page at 
atime; yet the trouble of the 1611 printer in this 
case would be, not to cover much type, but to cover 
little. He evidently did ink part of the page here 
and there; and he evidently did work the red from 
the same forme which still held the black. On 
a Calendar page of the 1617 Bible, ‘To Find 
Eafter for Euer,’ at the bottom of the table, is 
a long brace, made up of pieces of type-metal. It 
has a curl round at one end and a broken joint. 
The curl and broken joint are both faithfully 
repeated mm red close to the previous printing in 
black. The printer could, and did, when he had 
anything like sufficient space round the letter he 
was inking, avoid reproducing the lines in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the rubricated letter 
or letters; but when the rule was close, the skill 














IN THE 1611 BIBLE. 179 


of the printer was not sufficient to prevent the 
elastic surface of the ink-ball from leaving a certain 
quantity of red ink on the rules which had been 


{ March rrvt.. | 

it | omigve pou 
et | Alpatlit. (ff 
eye | Darchrrbvt. | rrbit 
ena | Apert, iF 
epit | AApztl t. ttf 
cp | Apeilzrut. § jreiit =| 














i. 





46 


=7X 7 you pee baue found 
Ge qeneties falleth thaty 








Fig. 3.—Part of the ‘ Table to finde Easter,’ from the Kalendar of the 
1617 Bible. (The red lines and letters of the original appear here in 
black with square dots.) Exce ‘ie for part of the ‘ brace’ the register, 
it will be observed, is very 


previously printed in black, and which were, while 
the red forme was being produced, only to a small 
extent below the surface of the red. Sometimes 
the register was good, and then, as may be seen by 
inspection, the red was actually printed on the top 





180 THE 1611 BIBLE. 


of the black. The paper no doubt was damp, and 
the impression drove it down. 

It only remains to add that in the two illustra- 
tions to this article which represent fragments or 
the Calendar pages, the red markings of the original 
are represented by scored letters and dotted lines. 


Horace Hart. 





THE AUTHOR OF THE ‘MODUS 
LEGENDI ABBREVIATURAS,’ 


m@yMONG the tracts printed in the 
we fifteenth century which are catalogued 
in the handbooks as anonymous is one 


$in utroque iure.’ It appears, however, 
to have been hitherto overlooked that the author's 
name, along with other information, is contained 
in the form of an acrostic in the se¢tion entitled, 
‘De decreto uersificato.’ The introduction to this 
section runs as follows: ‘Sed quia decreti rubricas 
nimis esset taediosum enumerare propter maximam 
multitudinem, ne tamen naturam eius praeteream 
uersus subiungam totam materiam decreti signifi- 
cantes in genere de qualibet distinétione et omnibus 
quaestionibus cun¢étarum causarum.’ After this 
explanation come the verses themselves, some 290 
hexameters, beginning: ‘Collige uersus quid uult 
distinétio quaeuis,’ the first letters of which can be 
read downwards to the following effect : 


Wernherus monstrat ut sic distin¢tio fiat 

Sancti Germani Spirae canonicus 

Cuius erat patria Schussenrieth in Sweuia. 

Discere causarum quarumlibet ordine membra. . . 


Thus far the tenor of the passage is quite certain, 
though numerous minor emendations are necessary 





182 ‘MODUS LEGENDI ABBREVIATURAS.’ 


to restore it. The remainder has been so freely 
altered that the sense cannot now be recovered, and 
the condition of the whole suggests that it has been 
worked over by an editor who was unaware of 
Wernher’s acrostic. Two further points may be 
noted ; firstly, that the acrostic is exaétly the same, 
apart from one or two accidental variants, in all 
the printed editions, and, secondly, that the ‘ editio 
princeps’ appears to be that of the R-Printer at 
Strassburg, c. 1475 (Hain *11480), a city to which 
work from Speier would at that date naturally be 
sent for printing. 

The name of Werner of Schussenried is unknown 
to the general authorities for this period; but pre- 
sumably his date is not much anterior to that of 
the R-Printer’s issue of his traét. The college or 
S. Germanus, in which he was a canon, lay outside 
the walls of Speier, and was sacked and burnt by 
the troops of Frederick I., Eleétor Palatine of the 
Rhine, when they ravaged the Bishop of Speier’s 
territory after the battle of Seckenheim, 30th June, 
1462—a date which may perhaps be taken as a 
‘terminus ante quem,’ for the college was not 
rebuilt, but was, after some discussion, merged or 
incorporated in that of S. Maurice within the city 
at the beginning of 1468. 

VicToR SCHOLDERER. 





THE SO-CALLED GUTENBERG 
DOCUMENTS.’ 


wK) T is argued, not unreasonably, that in 
%& 1450 Gutenberg must have been able 
M6 to show a specimen of his work to 
ney) Fust, and to convince him that it 
—® would be profitable, otherwise Fust 
would not have lent him any money. Some 
authors contend that already in Oétober, 1448 
(see above, Doc. No. XVIII.), two years before 
Gutenberg’s Mainz printing-office was in full (!) 
operation, his rich relatives had realised the prac- 
ticability of his plans, as in that year they procured 
for him his first Mainz loan (Schorbach, ‘ Festschr.,’ 
p- 273). Schwenke (‘Centralbl.,’ 1901, p. 292) 
thinks that from the beginning of the contract 
with Fust [that is 1450, when Fust lent him the 
first 800 guilders] till the commencement of the 
printing of B42 in 1453, Gutenberg made ‘ experi- 
ments’ and manufactured his types for this Bible. 
And Zedler says (‘ Gutenb.-Forsch.,’ p. 93) that he 
can trace Gutenberg’s experiments twelve years 
further back, that is, to 1437. As Zedler derives 
this year from his interpretation of the Strassburg 
Law-suit of 1439, which I cannot accept, I leave 


* Previous articles on this su bject were printed in Vol, X. of the 
Second Series of the ‘ Liprary. 





184 THE SO-CALLED 


it out of the question, merely asking what specimen 
or specimens could Gutenberg have shown to his 
relatives in or before 1448, and to Fust in 1450? 

To facilitate the discussion of this question I give 
here two lists of the early types and books which 
have hitherto been attributed, some to Gutenberg, 
some to Schoeffer, some to Pfister, but which the 
chief German bibliographers of the present time 
attribute all to Gutenberg. The first list (A) con- 
tains the books printed either in the B3® type, ie., 
that of the 36-line Bible, or in type resembling it ; 
the second (B) enumerates the books printed in 
the B4? type, z.e., that of the 42-line Bible, which, 
for reasons explained below, must be ascribed to 
Peter Schoeffer, not to Gutenberg. 


Gutenberg’s types and books according to Schwenke, 


Zedler, and other German bibliographers. 


A. 


Type 1a. First phase of the (Gutenberg or) 
36-line Bible type, called the Donatus type, which 
Gutenberg is said to have manufactured before his 
art of casting type was so far developed that he 
was able to make the type for B42 (Zedler, < alt. 
Gutenberg-type,’ 1902, pp. 1, 14). Schwenke 
(‘ Verdff. der Gutenberg-Gesellsch.,’ ii., 2) states 
that its height (including up- and down-strokes) is 
slightly over 8 (8-8.3) mm., the body of the x 
measuring about 5 mm., with a little blank space 
left between the lines. 





GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 185 


(i.) Poem on the ‘ Weltgericht’ (Last Judgment); now 
called, Extract from the German Sibylline book (‘ Verdff.,” 
v. 1); fragment of one paper leaf, showing eleven lines 
on both sides. It was discovered at Mainz about 1892, 
having apparently served as back to some documents 
presumed to have belonged to the Mainz University 
Archives. At that time it belonged to Eduard Beck, 
employé of a Mainz bank, who presented it in 1903 to 
the Gutenberg Museum. It is presumed to be the oldest 
produc of Mainz typography, and to have been printed 
c. 1443-7 (Zedler and Wallau in ‘Verdffentl.,’ iii. ; 
Schwenke in ‘Centralbl.,’ 1908, p. 75). Prof. Edw. 
Schréder (‘ Verdffentl.,’ iii., 7 sgg.) thinks that the whole 
poem consisted of fifty-six verses in forty-six lines; 
that it was written after 1350; that, philologically, the 
language is against the Mainz idiom; that it was the 
work of a dilettant, who was not a native of Mainz, but 
lived not far from it. 

(ii.) Donatus, twenty-seven uneven lines; no inter- 
punction; fragments of two rubricated vellum sheets 
= four leaves (4, 5, 8, 9), recently discovered by Prof. 
Voulliéme in the Heiligenstadt Gymnasial Library, in the 
binding of a copy of Joh. Herolt, ‘ Sermones de tempore 
et sanctis,’ Strassburg (M. Flach), 1488 (Hain *8496), 
now preserved in the Berlin Royal Library. Schwenke 
(‘Centralbl.,’ 1908, p. 71 sgq.) states that the leaves belong 
to an edition differing from the Paris Donatus in the 
length of its lines (which measure 160-7 mm. against 
155-62 mm. in Paris) and in the arrangement of the text. 
He thinks it is the earliest [German] Donatus hitherto 
known, and should be placed after the ‘ Weltgericht,’ but 
before the Paris Donatus. 

(iii.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines, small folio; two 
vellum leaves (5, 10) of an edition of fourteen (?) leaves, 
preserved in the Paris National Library. It is usually 
called the Donatus of 1451, this year being written on 
one of the leaves, though Zedler considers it a forgery 





186 THE SO-CALLED 


of Prof. Bodmann, who discovered the fragments ¢. 1800 
at Mainz (see G. Fischer, ‘ Typog. Seltenh.,’ p. 55 59. ; 
id. ‘Essai sur J. Gutenberg,’ p. 68 sg.). This Donatus 
is now placed before the Kalendar of 1447-8. Zedler 
(‘ Verdffentl.,’ i., p. 14 5g., and Facs.) states that it shows 
“the same type’ as the Kalendar, but in an earlier, more 
imperfect stage. Schwenke says (‘ Verdffentl.,’ ii., p. 24) 
that its type is in an ‘ experimental and transitional stage,’ 
and (‘ Centralbl.,’ 1901, p. 291) that it shows a ¢ which is 
older, he thinks, than the ¢ in the books enumerated 
below ; the new ¢ appears already in the 31-line Indulgence, 
though he is of opinion that the Donatus and Kalendar 
types are not Gutenberg’s first products (see Hessels, 
‘Gutenberg,’ p. 176 sgg.; J. E. Hodgkin, ‘ Rariora,’ ii., 
1902, p. 28). 

(iv.) Donatus of twenty-seven (?) lines in the Berlin 
Royal Library. Two strips of vellum leaves (40 mm. by 
20 mm.), containing the remains of three lines and about 
thirty (partly mutilated) letters, found in the Heiligen- 
stadt Library, in the binding of a copy of Joh. Herolt 
(‘Sermones de tempore et sanctis,’ Strasburg, printer of 
the ‘Vitas Patrum,’ ¢. 1485; Hain *8495). Schwenke 
(‘Centralbl.,’ 1908, p. 75) states that the fragments show 
the characteristic Donatus type, with the oldest i, s, and 
t, and the same text, differently arranged, as the Paris 
leaves (the recto = Par. 5%, li. 18-20; the verso = Par. 5°, 
li. 18-20). 


Zedler thinks that many experiments must have 
preceded the Astronomical Kalendar which follows, 
and is printed in a new type of the same form as 
the above type 1a. 

Type 14. Second phase of the above type 14, 
also called the Kalendar type, and living on, 
according to Schwenke (‘Centralbl.,’ 1908, p. 70), 
from 1448 to 1457; see below, nos. xv., xvi. 





GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. _ 187 


Zedler (‘ Verdff.,’ iii., 19) thinks this to be a new 
type of the same form as type 1, and (‘ Veréff.,’ 
i., 16; ‘ Forsch.,’ p. 103) he is of opinion that 
Alb. Pfister, who understood neither the cutting 
nor the casting of types, bought it of Gutenberg 
and continued to use it while still at Mainz. 


(v.) Astronomical Kalendar, said to be for the year 
1448, therefore supposed to have been printed at the 
end of 1447. Fragments of two large vellum sheets 
(49.41 cm. by 18.5 cm.) printed on one side only, dis- 
covered in 1901 by Dr. Zedler (‘Verdff.,’ i.) in the binding 
of a manuscript bound in, and belonging.to, the monastery 
of Schénau, in Einrich, near Mainz, now preserved in the 
Landesbibliothek (No. 19) at Wiesbaden. It calculates, 
for one year, the ephemerides of the phases of the moon, 
etc., and is thought to have originally consisted of six 
leaves (334 by 24 cm.) printed on one side only, one for 
every two months; the leaves preserved give the calcula- 
tions for January, February (tenth line cut away), March 
and April; therefore, the third part, perhaps, of the 
whole. It is presumed that a Kalendar belonging to it 
must have been printed on a separate sheet, or that it 
served as an Appendix to a so-called perpetual Kalendar. 

Zedler (‘die alt. Gutenberg-type’) gives a facsimile of 
the document, and says that in this faultlessly printed 
Kalendar we have the types of B® as they appear in the 
Turk-kalendar (see below, no. viii.), though some of the 
types differ, and (‘ Verdff.,’ iii., 19) that many specimens 
must have preceded this work of 1447, pointing out 
(pp. 8, 11) that some of the #’s and several other letters 
and combinations of letters have been touched up by 
hand (see below, p. 200 59). 

Schwenke (‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 1 sgg. and p. 24) says that a 
long interval separated this Kalendar from the 1454 
Letter of Indulgence and the Turk-kalendar; and on 








188 THE SO-CALLED 


p- 28 explains that this Kalendar is a stage in the develop- 
ment of the printing practice of B*; see Bauschinger, in 
‘ Literar. Centralbl.,’ 1902, col. 1662, against K. Haebler, 
ibid. col. 1434 59. 

(vi.) 31-line Indulgence, beginning ‘ Vniuersis’; three 
different issues (A, B, C) with the printed year mccccliiii., 
and one issue (D) with the printed year mceccclv., all 
printed on vellum. Of issues A and B no sold copies 
have yet come to light. But three unsold copies of each 
are preserved at Brunswick, Wolfenbattel and Hanover 
(Culemann collection). Of issue C ten sold copies are 
known to exist in various libraries, with dates ranging 
from 22nd Odétober, 1454, to April, 1455, besides three 
unused copies. Of issue D ten sold copies, with dates 
from 7th March, 1455, to 30th April, 1455, and four 
unused copies are known. 

The Church-type used in this Document for the dis- 
tinguishing words has always been thought to be identical 
with that of B®. But minute differences show that this 
cannot be the case. The type (ii.) used for the text 
is bastard Roman, for which see below. See Hessels, 
‘Gutenberg,’ p. 150; Schwenke, in ‘ Verdff., ii., 10. 
Zedler (‘ Forsch.,’ pp. §8, 77, 78) ascribes this Indulgence 
type (its small size presupposing a deal of training) to 
Schoeffer, though he must have manufactured it ‘in 
Gutenberg’s office, basing this opinion on peculiarities in 
the type, which he regards as Schoeffer peculiarities, and 
on Schoeffer’s colophon, in which he alludes to Peter and 
the two Johannes. 

(vii.) Donatus, twenty-six lines, two rubricated sheets 
(= four leaves, 1, 2+9, 10) of an edition of eighteen 
leaves, placed between 1447 and 1450, preserved in the 
Berlin Royal Library (‘ Centralbl.’ xxvii., p. 65 599.). 

(viii.) ‘ Manung widder die Durken’ (Turk-kalendar). 
Almanac for January, 1455 (therefore printed in Decem- 
ber, 1454) in 4°. Five (six) paper leaves, twenty and 
twenty-one uneven lines on a page (54 and 6 blank). 














GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. __ 189 


A copy discovered in 1806 in the Jesuit Library at 
Augsburg, now preserved in the Munich Hof-Library. 
According to Zedler (‘ Verdff., i., 16, 118) printed with 
the types of the 1448 Kalendar, but when already some- 
what worn. He also thinks that this and the numbers xi. 
and xii. were printed at Bamberg. Cf. Hessels, ‘Guten- 
berg,’ p. 157; Schwenke, in ‘ VerOff.,’ ii., 11. 

(ix.) A German translation of the Bull of Pope Calixtus 
IIL., dated xii. Kal. July (= 20th June), 1456. Fourteen 
rubricated paper leaves, 4° (13° and 14 blank), in the 
Kalendar type, though two of the capital E’s belong to 
the B® type (‘Centralbl.,’ xxvii., 73). Preserved in the 
Berlin Royal Library. Not to be ascribed to P. Schoeffer. 

(x.) Donatus, twenty-seven (or thirty?) lines, which 
seems to have consisted of twelve vellum leaves, of which 
the leaves (imperfect) 1, 2, 8, 11, 12 have been preserved. 
One fragment of a leaf (11?) showing twenty-five lines, 
a second of a leaf (12?) showing twenty-six lines, in the 
British Museum (C. 18 e 1. No. 5). Leaves 1 and 2 are 
in the Bodleian Library (Auét 2. Q infra I. 50. No. 5 
from the Kloss colleétion), and leaf 8 in the Mainz Town 
Library. See Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 159, No. 6, 7. 
Zedler, in ‘ Verdff.,’ i., 41, gives (reduced) facsimiles 
(Plates ix. and x.) of the fragments, and says that it is an 
edition of thirty lines; Schwenke (iid., ii., 21, with fac- 
similes and p. 29) places this Donatus between the Turk- 
and Laxier-Kalendars. 

(xi.) Conjunctiones et Oppositiones Solis et Lunae 
(now called by German bibliographers Laxier- or Aderlass- 
Kalendar). A calendar for 1457, therefore printed at end or 
1456; a broadside paper sheet, apparently without a water- 
mark, printed on one side, of which the upper half (the 
months January to June, that is nineteen lines and traces 
of the twentieth, i.¢., second line for July) of the only 
copy known, discovered in the Mainz Archives (by 
G, Fischer, in 1803), is in the Paris Library. Originally 
it seems to have consisted of thirty-six lines of text with 








190 THE SO-CALLED 


three lines as heading. See Schwenke, in ‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 13, 
Zedler, ‘Gutenberg-Forsch,’ p. 96 sgg., and in ‘ Verdff.,’ 
i., 37, where he gives a facsimile of it on Taf.v. The 
document measures 18.5 by 26.6 cm. 

(xii.) Der Cisianus (not Cislanus) zu Dutsche. A 
folio paper sheet, printed on one side, thirty-six lines, with 
separate headline. It is thought to be a Kalendar for 
1457 (=end of 1456), or for 1456 (end of 1455); 
see Zedler, ‘Gutenberg-Forsch.,’ p. 96 s¢q., and in ‘ Veroff.,’ 
i, 16, 48. Schwenke, ‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 15 ; Wyss, in ‘Cen- 
tralbl.,’ 1901, p. 145; K. Haebler, ‘Le soi-disant Cisianus 
de 1443, Besancon, 1902 (also in ‘Le Bibliographe 
moderne, An, 6, 1902, pp. 5-40, 188-210); Edw. 
Schréder, in ‘Centralbl.,” 1902, p. 437 sgg. The Tross 
copy mentioned in Suppl. to Brunet’s ‘ Manuel’ (1878, 
s. v. Cislanus) was bought in 1870 for the Cambridge 
University Library. 

(xiii.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines ; fourteen (?) vellum 
leaves (in a quire of seven sheets). The British Museum 
(pressmark C 18 e i. No. 2) acquired the leaves 4, 10, and 
11 (entire), with fragments of Il. 2, 6-9 and 13, from the 
Kloss collection. A fragment of six and a half lines in 
the Bodleian Library may belong to this edition, as also 
two small fragments of the leaves 1 and 14 (?) discovered in 
the Gymnasial Library at Heiligenstadt in the binding of 
a volume (perhaps bound at Erfurt). See Schwenke, in 
‘Centralbl.,’ 1908, p. 75; id., in ‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 17; Zedler, 
in ‘ Veroff.,’ i., 15, 18, 41, who gives facsimiles (reduced) 
on plates vi. to viii. ; Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 158, No. 5. 

(xiv.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines (length 150 and 
157 mm.). Schwenke, ‘Centralbl.,’ 1906, p. 449 599., 
calculates this edition to have consisted of one quire of 
seven vellum sheets (= fourteen leaves), of which the 
two rubricated centre sheets (leaves 6 to 9) have come to 
the Berlin Royal Library from the collection of Gust. 
v. Emich (No. 195, 196) at Vienna. He adds (1) that 
they are printed in the Kalendar type; (2) the arrange- 

















GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 1gI 


ment of the text deviates from that in the London 
Donatus, wherefore he places it after that edition, but 
before the Bamberg-Oxford fragments; (3) the form of 
the types is the same as that of the London fragments, 
and sharply distiné& both from the oldest form of the 
Donatus type and the B® type. 

(xv.) Donatus, twenty-seven uneven lines (150-4 mm.). 
Three strips of a rubricated leaf (5), discovered in the 
binding of a copy of ‘Aen. Sylvius Familiares Epp.’ 
(Narnberg, 1481) preserved in the Karlsruhe Hof- u. 
Landesbibl. Schwenke (‘ Centralbl.,’ 1907, p. 112) states 
that the present fragments can belong neither to the 
London nor to the Berlin Donatus, though he failed to 
ascertain whether they could belong to the Munich or to 
the Oxford-Bamberg D”, and thinks that they may be 
part of a fifth edition of twenty-seven lines in this type. 
It shows some similarities with the London D”, the 
‘Cisianus’ and the Laxier-Kalendar, but has an @a which 
he has not found anywhere else. 

(xvi.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines, one rubricated 
vellum leaf (6), in the Kalendar type, from Erfurt, in the 
Berlin Royal Library (‘ Centralbl.,’ 1910, xxvii., 62). 

(xvii.) Donatus, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, or thirty 
(?) lines. Fragments of a vellum sheet (two leaves) of 
this edition discovered in the binding of a copy of Pauli 
Veneti ‘Summa Naturalium,” Mediol. 1476, in fol. which 
from the Episcopal Library at Salzburg was transferred to 
the Munich Hofbibl. (pressmark, Rara, 103, 1 m.). 
Schwenke, describing the fragments (‘Centralbl.,’ 1906, 
Pp. 452 59g.), calculates that they may be the fourth and 
ninth of an edition of twelve leaves, though certain cir- 
cumstances lead him to think that it might have consisted 
of thirteen (12+ 1) leaves of twenty-eight lines. The 
impression, he says, is good and clear, resembling that of 
the Munich Donatus of twenty-seven lines. 

(xviii.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines. Fragment of a 
vellum leaf (3 ?) discovered in the binding of the Latin 








192 THE SO-CALLED 


MS. 24,510 of the Munich Hofbibliothek. Schwenke, 
in ‘ Verdff., II., 19, No. 8 (Facs. Taf. 3), points out some 
additions to the type of this edition. 

(xix.) Donatus, twenty-seven lines, which presumably 
also consisted of seven vellum sheets, but is only known 
from two vellum fragments of the leaves 6 + 9, the upper 
part of which is preserved in the Bodl. Library (Aud. 2 Q 
infra I. 50, No. 6), the lower part in the Bamberg Royal 
Library (vi., F. 1). Schwenke (‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 20, and Taf. 
iv. facs.) says that the two fragments were found in the 
binding of a Bamberg Aét-book, and that one of them 
belonged to Kloss before it came to Oxford; cf Zedler, 
Veroff., i., 42 5g., and Taf. xi. (facs.). 

(xx.) Donatus, twenty-eight (?) lines, One defective 
vellum leaf, showing twenty-five lines, formerly in the 
possession of Jacq. Rosenthal (Incun. typ. ii., No. 2154), 
afterwards in the Amherst Collection (Sotheby’s Sale 
Catal., No. 288. Seymour de Ricci’s Handlist, No. 5). 

Another leaf (apparently the corresponding half of the 
sheet) in the Mainz Gutenberg Museum. Schwenke 
(‘ Veroff.,” ii., p. 23, and Taf. vii., and ‘ Centrabl.,’ 1907, 
p. 114) ascribes this edition to Pfister of Bamberg. 

1c. New fount of types 1a and 16, with various 
stamps and matrices modified, according to Zedler 
(in ‘ Verdff.,’ is, 18, 45 599.), who points out 
several differences between the types of B36 and 
the smaller works described above. On these 
differences see also Schwenke, in ‘ Centralbl.,’ 1g01, 
p. 289 sgg. Zedler (in ‘ Verdff., i., 48) thinks that 
Albrecht Pfister, while still at Mainz, obtained this 
type from Gutenberg, but printed B3° at Bamberg, 
not before 1457 (iéid., pp. 37,48). Schwenke (in 
‘ Veroff.,’ ii., 1) regards the type of B3® as a ‘ con- 
tinuation’ of the Donatus and Kalendar type, and 
calculates that, in this way, this type has had a life 




















GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. _ 193 


of nearly twenty years, that is, from about 1443 
(the supposed date of the ‘ Weltgericht’) till about 
1462 (the last known date of Pfister). 


(xxi.) Bible of thirty-six lines. Two volumes, folio, 
882 leaves, with two columns of thirty-six lines each 
on a page. Some bibliographers, assuming that Pfister 
printed it, call it the Pfister Bible. A paper copy is in 
the Paris Library, and also a separate copy of the last leaf 
(Apocalypse), which bears the rubricator’s manuscript date 
1461. Other copies are preserved in the Rylands-Spencer 
library, in the British Museum, at Jena, Leipzig, Antwerp, 
etc. (Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 160; Bernard, ‘ Origine,’ 
ii., 31). Schwenke (‘ Untersuch.,” p. 75 sgg.) is of 
opinion that the leaves 1 to 4 reéto of vol. i., and the 
leaves 1 and 2 reéto of vol. ii., were printed from a 
manuscript, but that the remainder of the book is a care- 
less reprint of B®. Zedler (‘Forsch.,’ p. 104) thinks 
that Pfister began B® before B* was finished, but after 
having printed the first nine pages, laid the work aside, 
to take it up again after the publication of B®. He 
calculates that eighty copies were printed on paper and 
twenty on parchment (/. ¢., 106). See Hessels, ‘ Guten- 
berg,’ p. 160. 


Of the small text- or brief-type ii. of the 31-line 
Induigence of 1454 (the manufacture of which 
Zedler ascribes to Peter Schoeffer, though work- 
ing in Gutenberg’s office; see ‘ Verdff.,’ i., 49; 
‘Gutenberg-Forsch.,’ p. 76, and Schwenke, in 
‘ Verdff.,’ ii. 10) no further trace has been found. 

[For types iii. and iv., see List B of Schoeffer’s 
books. ] 

(xxii.) Type v. The ‘first stage’ of type vii., 
supposed by Otto Hupp (‘Ein Missale Spec.,’ 
1898) and others to have served for printing 


II, oO 














194 THE SO-CALLED 


1) A ‘Missale speciale,’ in the possession of Herr 
Ludw. Rosenthal at Munich; (2) a ‘ Missale Abbrevi- 
atum,’ discovered in 1900 in the Benediétine Church of 
St. Paul, in the Lavantthale. Most German biblio- 
graphers agree that these Missals could not have been 
printed before 1480. 


(xxiii.) Type vi. The large type of the Psalter 
of 1457. 

(xxiv.) Type vii. The small type for the same 
Psalter (said to be the ‘second stage’ of type v.). 
Both vi. and vii. were also used for the ‘Canon 
Missae’ of 1458, a copy of which is preserved in 
the Oxford Bodleian Library. See H. Wallau, in 
‘ Veroff.,’ iii., 37 599. 

(xxv.) Type viii. used for 


(1) Joannes de Balbis, ‘ Catholicon’ of 1460, folio, 373 
leaves, two columns of sixty-six lines each; (2) Matth. 
de Cracovia, ‘ Traétatus racionis,’ twenty-two leaves, thirty 
lines to a page, 4°; (3 and 4) Thomas de Aquino, 
‘Summa de articulis fidei’; two 4° editions, one of thirteen 
leaves, with thirty-four lines to the page; the second of 
twelve leaves, with thirty-six lines to the page; (5) An 
Indulgence of 1461 of fifteen lines. 


B. 


Printer of the B+? (Peter Schoeffer). 
Types iii. and iv. 


(i.) 30-line Indulgence ; one issue (A) with the printed 
year mccccliiii., and two issues (B, C) with the printed 
year mccccl.quinto. All printed on vellum. Of issue A 
only one copy has been discovered (now in the Rylands- 
Spencer Library) which was sold at Cologne on 27th 

















GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 195 
February, 1455, the printed year mecccliiii. having been 


altered with the pen to mecccliiiij. Of issue B two sold 


Type iii. (Church type) has hitherto always been 
regarded as identical with that of B42, but recent 
researches have brought out the faét that this is not 
the case (see ‘ Veréff.,” i., 49; Schwenke, ‘ Unter- 
such.,’ p. 58). 


Type iii. continued : 


(ii.) Bible of forty-two lines (also called the Mazarine 
Bible), printed before 15th August, 1456, as the binder of 
the paper copy of vol. ii. in the Paris Library states that 
he finished its rubrication on that day, and that of vol. i. 
on the 24th of the same month. Two volumes, folio, 641 
leaves of two columns of forty-two lines each, but in some 
copies the columns of pp. 1-9 contain forty lines only, 
while the tenth page has two columns of forty-one lines 
each, though the difference in the number of lines makes 
no difference in the space which they occupy. For 
other copies see Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 170; Dziatzko, 
‘Beitr. zur Gutenbergfrage,’ Berlin, 1889. Schwenke, 
‘Festschr.,’ has drawn up a list of all the copies known 
to be still in existence, and on p. 67 suggests that Guten- 
berg may have printed some small books before 1453 
with this type, before it was filed down. No trace of 
them has as yet been found. In ‘Centralbl.,’ 1905, 
p- 259, he declares that with this type Gutenberg created 
his first, perhaps his only, great work. In the copy known 
as the Klemm copy, bought by the Saxon Government in 
1886, and presented to the Deutsches Buchgewerbe- 
museum at Leipzig, the year ‘1453’ is written in small 
Arabic numerals of fifteenth century form, at the bottom 





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196 THE SO-CALLED 


of the last leaf of the second volume. But this date is 
highly suspicious, for Klemm, who must have known the 
importance and high value of such an early date if genuine, 
never mentioned it, though he described his copy three 
times, in 1883 and 1884 (see Hessels, in ‘Tue Lisrary,’ 
July, 1908). But Schwenke (‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 1, 26; ‘Guten- 
berg-Feier,’ 1900; ‘Centralbl.,” 1901, p. 289 sgg.) and 
Zedler (‘ Verdff.,’ i., 8, etc.; ’Centralbl.,’ 1907, p. 207) 
accept it as genuine. 

(iii.) Donatus of thirty-three lines (125-30 mm.). 
Vellum fragment in the Bodleian Library. No printed 
initials. 

(iv.) Donatus, thirty-three lines (132-5 mm.). Vellum 
fragment at Paris, without printed initials; three rubri- 
cated leaves (5, 6, 8) in the Berlin Royal Library 
(* Centralbl.,” xxvii., 68). 

(v.) Donatus, thirty-five lines, printed, according to 
the colophon, ‘per Petrum de Gernssheym, in urbe 
moguntina cum suis capitalibus.’ It is ornamented with 
the initials and uncials of the 1457 Psalter. See Hessels, 
‘Gutenberg,’ p. 171, No. 8. Schwenke would place it 
between 1467 and 1469 (p. 68). Copy in the Paris 
National Library (Vél. 1038), and one leaf in the Cam- 
bridge University Library. 

(vi.) Donatus of twenty-six lines (long 110 mm.). 
One defective (nearly unimpaired text) vellum leaf, dis- 
covered in a Munich private library, in the binding of a 
volume printed at Cologne in the early sixteenth century. 
It is now in the Mainz Gutenberg Museum  Schwenke 
(‘ Centralbl.,’ 1905, p. §31) thinks that this leaf may belong 
to the same edition as that in the British Museum. 

(vii.) Donatus of twenty-six lines (long 105 mm.). One 
vellum leaf at Mainz, another at Hanover, a third in the 
British Museum (Schwenke in ‘Centralbl.,’ 1905, pp. 529, 
531). The uncials of the 1457 Psalter are used for the 
initials of the chapters ; see Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 168, 
No. 3. 




















GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. _ 197 


(viii. Donatus, thirty-three lines (125-8 mm.) One 
defective vellum leaf (the first), in 1903 announced for 
sale in Ludw. Rosenthal’s Cat. 105, No. 3, with facs., 
and purchased by the Berlin Royal Library (Libri in 
membr. impr. 64"). The uncials of the large Psalter type 
are used for the initials of the chapters; for the first 
initial (P) room was reserved, but it has not been filled 
in. Schwenke, in ‘ Centralbl.,’ 1905, p. 529 sg. 

(ix.) Donatus, thirty-three lines. One vellum leaf (the 
first), in the Berlin Royal Library (pressmark, Libri in 
membr. impri. 64, 2), discovered in the binding of a 
volume which formerly belonged to the Abbey of Ochsen- 
hausen, and contained various incunabula of Pforzheim, 
Spire, Cologne till 1508. Its text differs’ slightly from 
the preceding edition; the first initial is filled in (red) 
by the rubricator; the other initials (of chapters) are 
the Psalter uncials. Schwenke, in ‘Centralbl.,’ 1905, 
P- 530 59. 

(x.) Donatus, thirty-three(?) lines. Small fragment of 
a vellum leaf (ca. 12 by 7 cm.) discovered in the binding 
of Incun. V 33000 in the University Library at Giessen. 
Schwenke (‘Centralbl.,” 1905, p. 532) calculates that it 
may be leaf 10 of a rubricated copy, and tells us that 
although it has (in ch. 33) wrongly ‘audiuntwr’ for 
‘audiuntor,’ just like the 35-line edition with Schoeffer’s 
name, its text differs from the latter edition, nor can it 
belong to the 33-line Paris edition. 

(xi.) Cantica ad Matutinas; only known from one 
vellum leaf (the first) in the Paris Nat. Library, con- 
sidered to be the remains of a Psalterium (perhaps of 
thirty-eight leaves) for the printing of which Humery (!) 
may have furnished the type (Schwenke, ‘ Untersuch..,’ 
p- 72 59q.). Judging from the leaf preserved, the work 
corresponded in every respect to the 42-line Bible, having 
double columns, forty-two lines, etc. 

(xii.) Donatus, twenty-four lines, printed, according to 
Schwenke (‘Gutenberg-Feier,’ p. 70), between 1470 and 











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198 THE SO-CALLED 


1477- See Hessels, ‘Gutenberg,’ p. 168, No. 3; Leop. 
Delisle, in ‘ Journ. des Savants,’ 1894, p. 140; Zedler, 
‘Forsch.,’ p. 114. 


Of the small text or brief type (iv.) of the thirty- 
line Indulgence of 1454, which Zedler (in ‘ Ver6ff.,’ 
i., 49, and ‘ Gutenberg-Forsch.,’ p. 76) ascribes to 
Gutenberg, no further trace has yet been found. 


In 1840, before the fragment of the Weltgericht 
(No. 1) had become known, Eug. Duverger (‘ Hist. 
de linvention de limprimerie’) pointed to the 
27-line Donatus (No. 2) as Gutenberg’s ‘speci- 
men,’ and published a facsimile of one of its pages, 
which Van der Linde copied (‘ Geschichte,’ p. 81 3). 

Both authors told us (see my ‘ Haarlem, the 
Birthplace of Printing,’ p. 60) that 


‘the first nine lines of this page were printed with too 
soft types of lead, and show the rapid wearing out of the 
types by printing; the types of the next nine lines are 
less worn; the types of the lines 19 to 24 are still less 
worn, while the types of the last three lines, manufaéttured 
with the same punches, were cast of better metal, similar 
to those of the 36-line Bible.’ 


The Donatus, however, does not bear out this 
description, otherwise it would, as Zedler rightly 
remarks (‘Forsch.,’ p. 51), be a caricature and 
forgery, in the same way as he regards the notes 
and the date 1451 written on the leaves, forgeries 
of the well-known Prof. Bodmann. According to 
Zedler (‘ Veréff.,’ i., 15 sgg.) it was printed with 
‘the earliest variety of the B36 type,’ that is, the 
‘first phase’ of the ‘Gutenberg’ (or Donatus) type, 
which also, he says, served for the ‘ Weltgericht’ 

















GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 199 


[No 1], which latter, he thinks (‘ Verdff.,’ iii., 
p- 2 s9g.), preceded the Paris Donatus, and was 
printed c. 1444-7, when Gutenberg had not yet 
brought his art to that height which he reached in 
the Astronomical Kalendar [No. v.] printed for 
1448 [therefore at the end of 1447],' so masterly 
[with Gutenberg’s second phase of the B3 type = 
the Kalendar-type] that it must have been preceded 
by many experiments. Zedler tells us that in this 
‘masterly’ printed broadside several letters have 
been touched up by hand with writing ink, for the 
purpose of linking them on to the letters which 
follow them. Exx. gr., wherever fis followed by 
o (8th January, gth February, etc.), or ¢ (7th, gth 
February, etc.), or # (1st March); ¢ by s (8th Feb- 
ruary, 7th March, etc.), or ¢ (1st April), or w (3rd 
April); s¢ by e (3rd, sth January, etc.); ¢ by o 
(5th, r1th January, etc.) or w (13th January), etc., 
the strokes through the f and ¢ and the top of the 
c have been, he says, broadened out by ink by hand, 
so as to combine them with the letter following. 
As the types of the Kalendar, he adds, 


‘are freshly cast, with sharp and expressive outlines, and the 
fine bows over the j’s, the hair-strokes of the ¢’s being 
nowhere wanting, they required no further touching up. 
Hence, as several letters are linked together with ink by 
hand after the printing had been done, this operation cannot 
have been necessary on account of any defedtive printing 
tools; it rather proves that Gutenberg endeavoured to 


' Zedler (‘ Verdff.,’ i., 14) declares that the dates assigned by 
him to these three works fill up the gap between Gutenberg’s 
residence at Strassburg (12th March, 1444) and his first appearance 
in Mainz (17th Oétober, 1448). 











200 THE SO-CALLED 


satisfy, even in minute details, the public eye accustomed 
to manuscripts; it was not worth while to manufacture 
special ligatures for such combinations, wherefore they are 
also wanting in B*.’ 

These manipulations, Zedler says, are plainly 
visible in the original, but not in the photograph, 
because the ink used for the purpose has every- 
where become pale. Therefore, without seeing 
the original, we cannot test this particular point, 
on which he lays such stress. As far as I know, 
such manipulations are not improbable, for I have 
myself observed somewhat similar operations in 
copies of the ‘Speculum humanae salvationis,’ not, 
however, effected for the purpose of linking certain 
letters together, but for giving them readable forms 
when they had come out badly through defective 
types or printing. If, therefore, Gutenberg printed 
only this one copy, he might have touched it up 
with his own hand, or have it touched up by others 
in his printing-office ; in such a case, however, he 
was not consulting the ‘ public eye.’ But if, as is 
probable, he printed more copies than one, and had 
felt anxious to give his work the appearance of 
manuscript, or to avoid all eye-sore to the public 
accustomed to combined letters, he could, with 
little extra trouble or time, have cast these special 
ligatures while he was making or had already cast 
others of the same kind. Ligatures, combined 
letters, and letters with signs of contra¢tions over 
them occur in the ‘ Weltgericht’ and the Paris 
Donatus, both printed according to Zedler by 
Gutenberg in an ‘ earlier phase’ of the same type, so 
that these characteristic types were not unknown to 























GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 201 


him. They appear also in the later Turk-Kalendar, 
in the Sanitary- or Laxier-Kalendar, and in B3®%, all 
printed, says Zedler, in a third phase of Gutenberg’s 
type. In fact, we may feel sure that the early 
printers, before engraving or casting any types, first 
ascertained from their manuscript models what 
letters, combinations of letters, signs of interpunc- 
tion, and contractions were required. Yet we are 
invited to assume that Gutenberg’s anxiety and care 
for the public taste did not arise till he had cast this 
new (second) type for the Astronomical Kalendar.' 
But suppose the three works just mentioned, or even 
one of them, had been printed by Gutenberg, in 
the years attributed to them, that is, 1443 to 1447, 
therefore long before he borrowed money from 
Fust in 1450, in such a case he must have been 
fully equipped during that time, for printing; that 
is, he must have possessed not only types and the 
instruments (patrices and matrices) for making 
them, but a workshop, a press, and other neces- 
saries for printing not only this, but any other work, 
great or small, otherwise he could not have printed 
anything, nor shown any specimen of his work. 
And yet, the Helmasperger document of 1455, 
if we are to take it as genuine, reveals Gutenberg 
to us as a beginner, not so early as 1447 or 1443, 
but so late as 1450, when he had not only to make 
his ‘tools,’ but even to borrow the money for 


' An examination of the Kalendar, on 16th August, 1910, 
convinced me that the faded spots here and there visible in the 
document are owing to the fading of the printing ink, and not to 
attempts to remedy, by writing ink, the imperfections of defective 
types. 











202 THE SO-CALLED 


making them, and, in addition, required to be 
supplied with everything necessary for printing, 
parchment, paper, ink, etc., and with money for 
keeping a workshop going, and maintaining him- 
self. 

It is, however, now contended that the researches 
of the late Dr. Karl Dziatzko (‘ Gutenberg’s friiheste 
Druckerpraxis,’ 1890) have shown 


(1) that (from the tenth page onwards) B* ‘is a reprint 
of B*; (2) that as the type of B® was already used in 
1454 to distinguish two lines and two or three words 
in the 31-line Letter of Indulgence from its smaller 
text type, it follows (3) that B* (which was finished 
before the 15th August, 1456) must have been printed 
by Gutenberg during his partnership with Fust (1450-55), 
and that for this Bible he manufactured the ‘tools’ 
(= new type) with the first 800 guilders which the latter 
advanced to him in 1450, after he had spent four or more 
years in experimental labours, of which not only the above 
named three, but other small works no longer preserved 
to us, were the result. 


In 1882 I explained in my ‘Gutenberg’ (pp. 
164-8, 171), the bibliographical and typographical 
reasons which then induced me (and the late 
Mr. Bradshaw) to ascribe B42 to Schoeffer, and 


' Dziatzko ascribed the types of B3* to Gutenberg, but the 
printing of it to him in combination with Pfister. Accordingly 
Prof. Hartwig explained (‘ Festschr.,’ 1900, Introd., p. 19) that 
B* was the ‘ work’ which Gutenberg had to ‘finish’ for the 800 
guilders advanced by Fust. But, while occupied with it, he saw that 
it was planned on too large a scale, and could not be executed for 
the money at his disposal. He applied, therefore, for further help, 
and Fust lent him another 800 guilders, whereupon he cut new 
types , and printed B# with them, 























GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 203 


I am not aware of anything having since occurred 
or been said to show this to be wrong. 

On the first opportunity that offered itself again 
to me, in ‘THe Lisrary’ of 1908 (p. 296 s99.), 
I endeavoured to point out how Dr. Dziatzko— 
struck by a ‘resemblance’ between the types of B36 
and B4?, and overlooking the faét that the earliest 
printers did not imitate each other’s types, but 
engraved and cast their types after the manuscripts 
of their time and respeétive localities—had come to 
the rather hasty conclusion that the two Bibles were 
printed in one and the same office, by one and the 
same printer, that is, Gutenberg. 

But Dziatzko’s results had already then been 
accepted and elaborated by Gottfr. Zedler (‘ Guten- 
berg-Forsch,’ 1901, p. 27 sgg.) and Paul Schwenke, 
who describes in a valuable monograph on B¢? 
(‘Festschr. zur Gutenberg-Feier,’ Berlin, 1900) 
thirty-eight copies (complete or known only from 
fragments) of this Bible preserved in public and 
private libraries, mentioning eight others which 
cannot now be traced. 

Both these learned librarians examined B3® and 
B42 from the same point of view as Dziatzko, and 
while professing to approach the question regarding 
the printer with an open mind, made it clear from 
the beginning that they were sure that it was 
Gutenberg. Like Dziatzko they saw that the 
types, especially the capitals of the two Bibles, differ 
from each other not only in size (those of B3® being 
taller and broader than those of B¢), but also in 
form; yet they regard these two different types as 
in principle the same (Schwenke, ‘ Festschr.,’ p. 78). 








204 THE SO-CALLED 


Nor do they differ from Dziatzko in their inimi- 
tably thorough and microscopic examination of the 
Bibles, telling us that they made it according to 
a ‘method,’ the initiation and perfection of which 
they ascribe to Dziatzko. 


‘Our present method of investigation,’ says Schwenke 
(‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 5), ‘as it was perfected by Dziatzko, is not 
content with merely stating the component parts and the 
forms of a type, but extends the research to the practice 
of using it, that is, the employment of parallel chief and 
secondary or by-forms of letters, the use of abbreviations, 
orthography, interpunction, endings of lines, the treatment 
of the beginnings and ends of chapters, and similar things.’ 


It is necessary to mention some details of this 
‘method,’ as it has produced results which cannot, 
I regret to say, be called satisfactory with regard to 
bibliography in general, and the controversy on the 
invention of printing in particular. In accordance 
with the ‘method,’ Dziatzko, Schwenke, Zedler, 
and other German scholars, have minutely examined 
the books and types included in the above lists. 
Every letter, every combination of letters on one 
type, their chief and secondary ' forms, all the signs 


* The chief form of the type called ‘the Gutenberg type’ (for 
which ‘ Gothic’ is a general and better name), is angular, orna- 
mented above and below with minute projecting spikes or teeth. 
For instance, an ordinary u, as used after g (que, quod), or / (fuper, 
fuf-), or / (-fluo), or v (vul-), consists of two perpendicular strokes 
or limbs, each having on its top as ornament a kind of arrow-head, 
forming an integral part of these limbs (#), but projecting slightly 
on the right and left of the perpendicular strokes of the letter. 
At the foot of the two strokes the same arrow-head appears in an 
inverted position (3), but connected together in the centre by a fine 
link, while on the top they are separated. This form is, mutatis 























GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 205 


of contraction above the letters or through their 
up-and-down strokes, all marks of interpunétion, 
hyphens, etc., are scrutinized, measured and de- 
scribed; the 7’s with strokes, bows, or dots above 
them, are counted ;' likewise the ¢’s with or with- 
out cross-strokes and with bows over them; and 
each of them is called a living symbol of ‘ Guten- 
berg’s inventive genius,’ or of his ‘unique con- 
ception of beauty and symmetry.’ The use of 
a particular letter, a stroke or a bow over the 4 
a stroke through af, or attached to a p (for per), 
allow us, they say, to deteét Gutenberg’s ‘ elemen- 
tary rules’ (Schwenke, p. 81), or his ‘care and 
solicitude for harmony’ between every stroke, be it 
a right or a left, an up or a down one. 


mutandis, the normal one for all letters. ‘These ornaments differ 
from the modern ‘ serifs.’ 

The ‘secondary,’ or ‘ by-form,’ has no such arrow-heads on its 
top, and the two strokes of the w are straight up to their top, where 
they slope slightly leftwards, while at the foot there is no other 
difference than that the left stroke is rounded off, and has, therefore, 
no projecting point on its left. This secondary wu is used after ¢, 
ty fy & 7, % Or a, etc. Somewhat similar truncated ‘ by-forms’ 
have p (after ¢), i (after g, c, or r), A (after ¢ or c), » (after g or c), 
m (after e), / (after e), etc., etc. “The ‘ by-forms” have no projeét- 
ing arrow-heads, because the latter would interfere with the more 
or less projecting points on the right of the letters which precede 
them. Schwenke (‘ Verdff.,’ ii., 4) feels doubtful as to whether 
this secondary form was obtained by filing down the ‘ chief’ form, 
or from special patrices and matrices. See also Dziatzko’s 
‘Gutenberg’s Druckerpraxis,’ p. 51, and at the end; Schwenke’s 
* Festschrift,’ etc. 

* Sometimes it is not without interest to count how often con- 
tractions are used or omitted on a page (see Zedler, in ‘ Veréff.,’ 
i, 18). The same use or absence of certain contractions may be 
noticed on several pages of the editions of the ‘Speculum humanae 
salvationis,’ 





| 
' 








206 THE SO-CALLED 


On the other hand, the absence of the same 
strokes or bows, or the wrong use of chief, instead 
of secondary forms of types, and vice versd, is to 
them a sign that the book under examination 
belongs to a later or earlier period of Gutenberg’s 
activity, or that the book was not printed by him 
at all (‘ Veréff.,’ i., 20); sometimes he or some 
compositor is presumed to have trimmed up his 
types for apparently no plausible reason (‘Ver6ff.,’ 
i, p. 17). In this way Schwenke deals (in his 
‘Festschrift’ and in ‘ Verdff.,’ ii., p. 1 sgg.; ‘Cen- 
tralbl.,’ 1901, p. 289 sgq.) with all the types ascribed 
to Gutenberg. Abandoning his opinion, expressed 
a year before, that the B4? type was Gutenberg’s 
first, he describes (in ‘ Verdff.’) those of the Paris 
Donatus (List A, No. 2) as the ear/iest phase or stage 
of the ‘ Gutenberg’ type, which is said to reappear, 
recast with some alterations, as a second ‘ phase’ or 
stage, in the Astronomical Kalendar for 1448 (1447), 
and as a third phase or stage (again recast with 
alterations) in B36 and the Pfister-Bamberg books. 

Schwenke himself points out (‘Centralbl.,’ p. 2g0) 
cardinal differences between some of the letters of 
B36 (exx.gr. the 4, E, R, t, ct) and the smaller 
Pfister (?) books (see List A) which are said to 
have been printed with an earlier phase of these 
‘Gutenberg’ types. Yet, on account of the many 
and striking agreements between the other letters, 
we cannot speak, he says, of two different types, 
but only of ‘two stages of development’ of one 
and the same type, and he feels certain (‘ Verdff.,’ 
ii., 1) that ‘ most of these letters were manufactured 
from the same stamps (patrices), probably even 











GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 207 


from the same matrices.’ He regards the types of 
B36 as the latest (‘Centralbl.,’ p. 290), because they 
are identical with those used afterwards by Pfister. 
The older phase, he says, is still employed in the 
Laxier-Kalendar of 1457 (end of 1456), so that 
the printing of B3° ‘ cannot have commenced before 
1457, and must have been finished before 1461.’ 
He is still uncertain as to whether this Bible was 
printed at Mainz or Bamberg, but in the water- 
mark of B3® he found nothing conneéted with 
Mainz, except once the ‘scales,’ which mark was 
identical with Dziatzko’s a, and 


‘the supposition that the copies of the Bible were so/d 
from Bamberg gains strength by the Stuttgart copy 
having been bound in a Bamberg binding-office; the 
Jena and Greifswald copies were probably also bound 
there; at Bamberg are preserved fragments of two (paper 
and vellum) copies (see Wetter, ‘Gesch.,’ p. 457), while 
the monastery Ilmbach, where the Wurzburg copy was 
originally preserved, is situated only about fifty kilo- 
meters from Bamberg.’ 


On p. 18 of his monograph on B¢# he says: 


‘It is astonishing that the first large printed work which 
we possess is a typographic masterpiece, and it must have 
taken Gutenberg, even after he had created (!) the move- 
able type, many years of trial to produce this regular 
print on strong paper, the brilliant blackness and sharp- 
ness of the lines, etc.’ 


Speaking of the trellis or lattice-like book- 
writing (gegitterte Buchschrift) which Gutenberg 
used as model, he expresses his surprise: and 
admiration at Gutenberg’s dexterity and genius 





| 


208 THE SO-CALLED 


in manufacturing his B42 type, and presumes that 
Gutenberg, 


‘when his observations and experiments had taught him 
to bring each letter on one type—that is, enclose it in a 
rectangular space—he must have started with i, #, u, m, 
which oftener occur than the other letters, and have the 
most simple form. He could have had no difficulty in 
making these letters in such a way that when they came 
together their perpendicular strokes would always remain 
at an equal distance; in this way im would take up the 
same space as m; a similar system could be applied to 
i, /, f (with one stroke); a, 4, d, h, k, m, 0, p, 9, (final) o, 
u, v (with two strokes); m, w (with three strokes). But 
difficulties would present themselves in manufacturing 
letters like ¢, ¢, 6, g, 7, 4 *, y, which have on the right side 
of their perpendicular stroke an additional part, which 
had to be confined in the same space when brought 
together with other letters. In such cases the scribes 
made a shift, no doubt unconsciously, and from a natural 
feeling for symmetry, by closely connecting with such 
letters the perpendicular stroke following, and omitting 
the usual point on the left, where the two letters would 
touch each other. At the foot of the letters, or wherever 
an up-stroke is found, where the space on the left is free, 
the points remained unaltered. In this respect, however, 
Gutenberg could not follow them.’ 


He then explains Gutenberg’s contrivances for 
making his types square with each other, which, 
he says, we should not undervalue, though Guten- 
berg had conceived the first (!) idea of making 
a distinétion between chief and secondary forms, 
by examining the customs of the scribes. And 
then adds, 


‘earlier authors on printing had observed hardly anything 











nore nr OarHOoO tO 


Lon | 


@2awnwmn fm @® 


_—_— > — i. ese - 8S FO 


fo 


vr 


—~-; -_— Pa we 











GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS. 209 


of these contrivances, and had merely wondered about 
the differences in types. Wetter had noted something 
of it (‘Gesch. der Buchdruckerk.,’ Mainz, p. 358), but 
Duverger had explained the whole system in his ‘ Hist. 
de l’invention de l’imprimerie,’ Paris, 1840, p. 6, though 
only with regard to B®. It was then forgotten again, 
and even Faulmann, the technicus, was not clear about it. 
Latterly Dziatzko has shown the differences between the 
chief and secondary forms of the letters, and the systematic 
difference in their usage. O. Hupp (‘Ein Missale 
speciale,” Minchen, 1898, p. 18 sg.) had recognized the 
reason for this usage, but looked upon it as an art or 
subtilty of Peter Schoeffer, so that he regarded the almost 
entire absence of this usage in the Rosenthal ‘ Missale 
speciale’ as a criterion of its great age whereas it is the 
strongest proof against the supposed early date of this 
work,’ 


I have quoted Dr. Schwenke thus far, in order 
that the reader may form some idea of the nature 
and bearing of the ‘method,’ and because, inci- 
dentally, his last remark about the ‘ Missale speciale’ 
tersely exposes the error of judgment, which 
recently caused this work and the ‘ Missale 
Abbreviatum,’ which bear every mark of having 
been printed about 1480, to be advertized and 
described as a work printed by Gutenberg even 
before 1450. 

Dr. Zedler also observed differences between the 
capitals of B36 and B42, and sees no reason why 
‘Gutenberg, the manufacturer of the B3° type, 
should imitate his own B#? type, in cutting his 
small letters for B36, and work independently with 
regard to its capitals’ (‘Gutenberg-Forsch,’ p. 31 
5gq., and ‘ Verdff.,’ i., 27). But, clinging to the 

Il. P 








210 THE SO-CALLED 


idea that Gutenberg must have manufactured the 
two types, he argues that 


‘ Gutenberg, in the first instance, contemplated printing a 
Missal, as it would be more easy for him to cut its large 
letters on the stamps (pasrices). For such a book he 
required two kinds of letters, one smaller than the other, 
but cut on stamps of the same size of body (Kege/). 


He illustrates this theory by a facsimile of two 
passages in a manuscript Missal, one of which is 
written, as is customary in Missals, in larger letters 
than the other, though the larger letters occupy no 
more space than the smaller ones, and he tells us 
that 


‘Gutenberg, after years(!) or experiments, succeeded in 
engraving the B® and B* types, which both have a height 
of 8.1mm. But, beginning to print, he found that he 
could not overcome the difficulty of printing the numerous 
rubrics required in a Missal together with the black work. 
(This difficulty still hampered him while he was printing 
the copies of B* belonging to the first impression.) He 
then decided on printing a Bible, for which he selected 
the smaller letters of B*, with which he first printed some 
pages with two columns of forty lines each; but finding 
that space could be saved by reducing the body of the 
types, he filed them down so as to bring forty-one lines 
in a column (on p. 10), and then seeing that still more 
space could be saved he filed the types further down, to 
the size now found in the remaining part of B*’, where the 
columns have forty-two lines, though he had found it 
necessary to recast portions of his types on this reduced 
body.’ 


Again (‘ Gutenberg-Forsch.,’ p. 81), 


‘Gutenberg created with Fust’s money the enormous 
type-apparatus for the contemplated Missal, and also the 





























GUTENBERG DOCUMENTS.) 211 


apparatus for B® and B*. The form of the letters he 
could not take straight from his manuscript model; its 
creation was rather the result of long thought and numer- 
ous experiments, by which the inventor produced that 
system of artistically limbed letters which we see in B*, 
which it is Schwenke’s great merit to have revealed to us. 
The manufacture of all these types must have required 
several years. Composition and printing could only have 
begun in earnest after the completion of this labour. 
After many unsuccessful trials, which had to be made in 
a comparatively short time, Gutenberg became convinced 
that he would not succeed in creating, in the contemplated 
Missal, such a masterpiece of his new art as hovered 
before his ambitious mind.’ 


The only difference between Zedler and Schwenke 
seems to be this: the latter thinks that an unknown 
printer, in manufacturing the B3® type, ‘ roughly 
imitated’ that of B+, but under Gutenberg’s eye; 
while Zedler regards the B+? and B3® types as 
Gutenberg’s creation, though Schoeffer manu- 
faétured some of the capitals of B4? (‘ Forsch.,’ 
p- 45; i., ‘alt. Gutenberg-type,’ p. 9); he even 
endeavours to prove (‘ Forsch.,’ p. 34) that in the 
letters of B36 we have the ‘firstlings of the most 
blessed and far-reaching gift of intellect ever devised 
by the mind of men.’ 

It is impossible to discuss all the details and hypo- 
theses published by Dziatzko, Schwenke, Zedler, 
etc., regarding the types and books ascribed to 
Gutenberg, as such a discussion would require 
special types, and far more space than they them- 
selves had at their disposal. 

J. H. Hessets. 


(To be continued.) 














212 


THE LIBRARY OF A FORFAR- 
SHIRE LAIRD IN 1710. 


®OOKMEN of the present day are apt 
% to regard the Scottish country gentle- 
} man of the early eighteenth century as 
r one whose interests lay anywhere but 





must have had enough to do improving his infertile 
acres, without indulging in any of the whims 
peculiar to the bibliophile. 

This impression will, we think, be somewhat 
modified after a glance at the ‘ Catalogue of Books 
to be sold by Way of Auétion at Dundee, the 
2oth of March, 1710,’ part of which has been 
reprinted by Mr. Wedderburn, K.C., in ‘The 
Wedderburn Book.’ The books were those that 
belonged to the then deceased Sir Alexander 
Wedderburn, 2nd Baronet of Blackness, a son or 
Sir John, and a descendant of the _ illustrious 
brothers Wedderburn, of ‘Gude and Godlie Bal- 
lates’ fame. The Catalogue has the volumes 
arranged (after the old style) according to their 
sizes. There were 170 folios, 555 o¢tavos, 148 
quartos, and 86 duodecimos. Altogether there 
were more than 1,100 volumes, including treatises 
on theology, law, philosophy ; histories, Greek and 
Latin classics, demonology, and witchcraft. 























LIBRARY OF A FORFARSHIRE LAIRD. 213 


In the matter of novels and the de//es /ettres the 
Baronet had evidently kept himself abreast of the 
times. Among his light literature were ‘The 
Turkish Spy’ (published in 1702), ‘The Spanish 
Libertines’ (translated by George Stevens in 1707), 
and ‘A London Spye’ (1706), by Edward Ward 
(who kept a tavern, and was pilloried for his 
satirical verses, ‘ Hudibras Redivivus,’ and was 
lampooned in the works of Pope). These books 
are now well-nigh forgotten, and very rare. 

The first edition of Jonathan Swift’s ‘ Tale of a 
Tub,’ published anonymously in 1704 (the price 
of which now fluctuates between {5 and {10) was 
another of the works of the time that found its 
way from London to Dundee, probably two or 
three years before the Union was an accomplished 
fact. The ‘ History of the Renowned Don Quixote,’ 
in 4 vols., dated 1706—being the seventh English 
translation since 1612, and now worth about {2— 
was secured at the sale by the Laird of Auldbar for 
£9 125. Scots (16s. stg.); while Mr. Martin, of 
Grange of Monifieth, obtained ‘ Montaigne’s Essays 
made English by C. Cotton’ (3 vols., 1693) for 
£2 Scots (35. 4d. stg.). 

As might have been expected, Shakespeare’s 
Works found no place in the Laird’s library, for 
Shakespeare had not then ‘come to his own.’ 
Milton’s Works, Butler’s ‘ Hudibras,’ King James 
VI.’s Works, Bacon’s ‘ Essays,’ Hooker, Hobbes, 
Jeremy Taylor, and Locke were among the English 
classics that found their way from the sale to the 
libraries of other lairds in Dundee district. 

We are not told who secured the copy of the 














214 THE LIBRARY OF A 


romantic, if not always reliable, Hector Boece’s 
History (Paris edition, 1574), which realised 
£13 10s. Scots (or {1 2s. 6d. stg.), but the 
Laird of Powrie managed to get for £6 Scots 
(10s. stg.) Monsieur Rapin’s ‘ Critical Works in 
2 Vols. Englished by several hands’; Mr. John 
Hill paid £2 Scots (35. 4d. stg.) for Dr. Duncan’s 
* Advice against the Abuse of Hot Liquors,’ done 
from the French; and Innerichtie, another local 
savant, besides buying several Latin works on Demo- 
nology, showed his appreciation of English literature 
by carrying off for £1 17s. (Scots) ‘ Remarks upon 
Poetry, by Thomas Blount (1694), ‘an author,’ 
according to Chalmers, the Scottish historian, ‘in 
many ways not inferior to Montaigne.’ 

Parts i. and ii. of that epoch-marking book, 
‘Choice Colleétion of Scots Poems by several 
Hands’ (1706), which, according to literary 
historians, was precursor to the great flood of late 
eighteenth century ballads, were bought for 17s. 
by Robert Wedderburn, a brother of the deceased 
laird; while cousin Alexander, who, five years 
later, was to show active sympathy with the Stuart 
cause, chose three books, ‘ Manning’s Life of the 
Emperor Theodosius,’ ‘ A Lady’s Letters of Travels 
into Spain,’ Ainsworth on ‘The Five Books of 
Moses, the Psalms, and the Song of Solomon,’ a 
folio, published in 1639, at £1 7s. stg., said by 
Lowndes to be a ‘laborious and useful work, 
containing a literal translation of all the books 
mentioned therein, as well as annotations upon 


* The third part of this work was not published until 1711. 
The three parts are now worth about £4 45. 


























FORFARSHIRE LAIRD IN 1710. 215 


them.’ The commentator Henry Ainsworth was 
an English nonconformist, who, on account of his 
religious principles, was forced to live in Amsterdam, 
where he aéted as minister to a congregation of 
‘ Brownists,’ or ‘ Independents’ — the spiritual 
ancestors of the ‘Congregationalists’ of to-day. 
Ainsworth’s reputation as a scholar of rabbinical 
and oriental literature is said to have been equalled 
by few in Europe of his time. He died in the 
city of his exile in 1622. 

The top price was reached by the disposal for 
£60 Scots (£5 stg.) of the then newly translated 
* Bayle’s Historical and Critical Diétionary ’—the 
published price of which was £3 3s. in London— 
a work which had been proscribed in France and 
in Holland on account of the author’s heterodox 
opinions. At the present day one may pick up a copy 
for a few shillings. Almost as costly, and assuredly 
much more recondite, were the works, in six 
volumes, of the German Jesuit scholar, Athanasius 
Kircher, bearing the mystic titles, ‘ Oedipus Aegyp- 
tiacus, ‘Ars Magna Lucis,’ and ‘Sphinx Mystagoga,’ 
which fetched {°57 Scots (£4 15s. stg.). Another 
expensive purchase was the copy, in two volumes, of 
Plutarch’s ‘ Lives,’ ‘ by Several Hands,’ at £49 ros. 
Scots (£4 25. 6d. stg.), which indicated very clearly 
that the ‘ bidding’ among the Scots lairds present 
at the sale was very keen. Altogether the sale 
realized £3,553 65. 4d. Scots (nearly £300 stg.)— 
a very respectable sum in those days, when, in 
England, and still more in Scotland, the value of 
money was much higher than at the present time. 
That the Baronet was no exception to the other 












216 LIBRARY OF A FORFARSHIRE LAIRD. 


Scots lairds of his day in his taste for reading is 
amply testified by some of the purchases already 
referred to, and by the faét that more than eighty 
purchasers at the sale were lairds in the neighbour- 
ing distriéts, and in Fife and Perthshire. 

The presence of so many book-buyers from this 
class at that early period of the eighteenth century, 
and their evident interest in all kinds of literature, 
go far to explain the extraordinary activity and 
output which later decades of the same century 
were to witness in the prose writings of David 
Hume, Reid, Adam Smith, Robertson the his- 
torian, Smollett, and Boswell, and in the poetry of 
Thomson, Ramsay, Blair, Home, Hamilton of 
Bangour, Falconer, Beattie, and Bruce, till the 
Augustan Age of Scottish Literature culminated 
in the works of Ferguson and Robert Burns. 

C. A. MAtcoim. 























REVIEWS. 


William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal. 
A study of his period and the influences which 
affected Shakespeare. By Mrs. C. C. Stopes. 
(Materialien zur Kunde des alteren englischen 
Dramas. Bd. 29.) Louvain, Leipzig, London, 
David Nutt. pp. xtv., 360. : 





xy \easyS Mrs. Stopes reminds us, the researches 


‘2 
AN RC of previous biographers of William 
7 Hunnis have usually ended in the asser- 
9/) Sed @ tion, ‘ Of his life very little is known.’ 
ee 8 To find that some 350 large pages have 
here been written as a record of him is thus a little 
surprising. Had Hunnis been a more interesting 
or more important person we should have been 
inclined to resent Mrs. Stopes’s method, for in that 
case we should have preferred to be given what 
information there is in a more compact form, inter- 
rupted with fewer digressions. But if the truth be 
told, Hunnis is a pretty dull writer, with no pre- 
tensions to anything higher than a ‘third’ in any 
class-list of Elizabethan literature, and for aught we 
know, he may have been a dull enough fellow in 
his daily life. But he lived in interesting and 
picturesque times and in interesting and picturesque 
employments, and when Mrs. Stopes pours forth 





















218 REVIEWS. 


information about these, vivified by the touches of 
actuality which quotations from original documents 
always convey, her readers have no cause to be any- 
thing but grateful. Hunnis was one of the Gentle- 
men of the Chapel Royal, and so we are given much 
useful information about these minor funétionaries. 
He was appointed under Edward VI., and we are 
therefore presented with a full and vivacious account 
of the situation on the King’s death and the early 
days of Mary’s reign. Hunnis was concerned in 
an abortive conspiracy in favour of Elizabeth, 
severely ignored or belittled by most historians, and 
so Mrs. Stopes atones for their deficiencies by an 
account of it, occupying some sixty pages, in which, 
it is only fair to say, she conveys the impression that 
Hunnis, amid the terrors of a Tudor examination 
for treason, bore himself with straightforwardness 
and pluck. Then we are told about his friend 
Nicholas Brigham, who built Chaucer a marble 
tomb in Westminster Abbey ; then about Hunnis’s 
relations with the Grocers’ Company, his super- 
visorship of the Royal Gardens at Greenwich at 
a salary of 12d. a day, and his appointment in 1566 
to succeed Richard Edwards as Master of the 
Children of the Chapel Royal, the history of this 
office being traced from the reign of Edward IV., 
with a good deal of information about the succes- 
sive holders of it. Two years later he obtained 
a grant of arms, which is made the occasion of 
another chapter, followed by one of four pages on 
the curious incident of his appointment by the 
Queen as Toll-taker on London Bridge, with the 
result, no doubt foreseen, that ‘the summe of £40 























REVIEWS. 219 


in gratification of the Queen’s Majesties Highness’ 
letters in the favour of the said William Hunneys for 
a lease in reversion of the wheeling and passage of 
London Bridge by her Majestyes gift’ was promptly 
voted by the Corporation to get quit of him. In 
1576 Hunnis was concerned through his son Robin 
with the alleged poisoning of Essex by Leicester, 
Robin as a page to Essex having ‘ tasted’ for him 
the poisoned wine and suffered an illness and the 
loss of his hair in consequence. After this Mrs. 
Stopes’s narrative becomes more literary and per- 
haps on that account a little less entertaining, and 
we are given full details as to Hunnis’s share in 
‘The Paradice of Dainty Devises’ (of which, by 
the way, the British Museum now possesses an 
earlier edition than that of 1596, the only one 
known to Mrs. Stopes as on its shelves), his ‘ Hyve- 
full of Honey,’ his minor poems, the earlier and 
later Chapel Revels, the festivities at Kenilworth 
(1575) in which he took part, and the plays which 
he is known to have written, but of which no 
copies can now betraced. Altogether Mrs. Stopes 
has brought oy Ng amount of informa- 
tion about the external faéts of the life of Hunnis, 
and about ‘his period.’ As to ‘the influences 
which affected Shakespeare,’ also mentioned on her 
title-page, we cannot speak with so much con- 
fidence. Like the ‘Shakespearian interest’ with 
which so many miscellaneous books are now 
credited in sale-catalogues, they seem somewhat 
unimportant in comparison with so large a phrase. 
Mrs. Stopes’s book is in no need of any such 


label. 











220 REVIEWS. 


The Frankfort Book Fair. The Francofordiense Em- 
porium of Henri Estienne. Edited with historical 
introduction. Latin text with English translation 
on opposite pages and notes by “fames Westfall 
Thompson. The Caxton Club, Chicago. 1911. 


Mr. Thompson has produced a careful translation 
of Henri Estienne’s ‘ Francofordiense Emporium,’ 
confronting it with the original, as every honest 
translator should do wherever considerations of size 
and cost permit, prefaced it with a lengthy intro- 
duction, printed it in a massive roman type designed 
by his fellow-clubman, Mr. R. F. Seymour, and 
illustrated it with a profusion of facsimiles for the 
most part only relevant to the text as being taken 
from books printed at Frankfort, but with one or 
two excellent maps. Estienne’s Eulogy on the 
Frankfort Fair being more full of Renaissance 
rhetoric than of information, for the history of the 
fair we turn to Mr. Thompson’s introduétion, 
where we find faéts in plenty. The writer would 
have done better if he had stuck closer to chrono- 
logy instead of darting backwards and forwards so 
often from one century to another. In his review 
of fifteenth-century printing and publishing he has 
made one or two slips, notably when he quotes the 
sale in 1462 ‘by one man of 2 Bibles, 15 Psalters 
and 30 Cannon’ as proof that the early printers 
‘had not confined their stock-in-trade to books,’ 
whereas the reference is clearly to the Canon of the 
Mass printed by Fust and Schoeffer about 1458, of 
which a copy is at the Bodleian. But pretty well 
everything which one can desire to know about the 























REVIEWS. 221 


Frankfort Fair is here, and Mr. Thompson is fortu- 
nate in having turned his attention to so interesting 


a subject. 


A. W. P. 


Bibliography of Library Economy 1876-1909. By 
H. G. T. Cannons. Stanley Russell & Co. 
1910, pp. 448. 


Mr. Cannons has compiled a valuable work which 
may not inaptly be termed the Librarian’s Cruden’s 
Concordance. It is nothing less than a classified 
bibliography of all articles which have appeared in 
professional publications in the English language 
during 1876-1909. It contains 15,000 entries, 
arranged under 1,900 subject headings, and an 
alphabetical subjeét index of 2,500 direét references. 
The work is a veritable ‘Where’s Where’ for 
librarians, and a godsend to all employed in 
libraries. Many will have reason to thank Mr. 
Cannons for being the means, through his book, 
of their finding anyone of the thousands of papers 
on library matters therein recorded. The only 
suggestions that we should like to make, should a 
second edition be called for, are (1) that the refer- 
ences should include the year as well as number or 
volume; (2) that the number of the volume be in 
roman numerals, which would also obviate the 
necessity for using brackets; (3) that complete 
books be included, such as Courtney’s ‘ Register 
of National Bibliography,’ and the lives of Panizzi 








222 REVIEWS. 


and Bradshaw; and (4) that biographical notices 
of librarians that have appeared in other than 
library journals or transactions be recorded. As 
examples of this last suggestion, we have in our 
mind the obituary notices in the ‘ Atheneum’ of 
Mr. J. P. Edmond and Mr. A. R. Spoffard. A 
slight error occurs in the preface. Mr. H. M. 
Barlow, of the Library of the Royal College of 
Physicians, who is there referred to as a doétor, 
is not a medical man. 
W. W. 


Bibliotheca Celtica: a register of publications relating 
to Wales and the Celtic peoples and languages for 
the year 1909. Aberystwyth, The National 
Library of Wales, 1910. pp. Vi., 123. 


The National Library of Wales has just issued, 
under the title of ‘ Bibliotheca Celtica,’ a register 
for the year 1909 of publications relating to Wales 
and the Celtic peoples and languages. This volume 
is the first of a series to be continued annually. It 
extends to 123 pages, and contains particulars of 
books printed in Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, 
Breton, English, German, and French, and published 
in the British Isles, on the Continent, and in 
America. Of the publications catalogued about 
370 are in the Welsh language. Most of the 
Continental publications included are works on 
Celtic philology, literature and history, and the 
works in the English language included deal mostly 























REVIEWS. 223 


with Welsh and Celtic subjeéts, but also comprise 
books by Welsh authors on other topics. The 
publications of Eisteddfodau and of other institu- 
tutions of an academic chara¢ter are included, and 
their distribution supplies interesting evidence of 
the pursuit of Welsh democratic culture wherever 
Welsh emigrants are found to have settled in any 
numbers. For instance, the Eisteddfodic seétion 
includes the publications of five American organisa- 
tions, and of eight such institutions in England. 
The difficulty of colleéting such material is un- 
doubtedly very great, but an excellent start has 
been made. The colleétion of publications in the 
other Celtic languages must also be a matter of con- 
siderable difficulty, but we find here the beginning 
of a really great work, which some day will enable 
the student to obtain first-hand information of all 
the activities of the scattered members of what has 
been called the Celtic race. The work has been 
carefully done, and cannot fail to be of immense 
assistance to public libraries and private colle¢tors. 
The fullest details available are given, and printed 
catalogue cards of the standard size can be supplied 
for all the entries in the volume. 

Two technical points have interested us. The 
first is as to the size-notation, which is here given 
in millimetres ; thus, the first entry ends: ‘ pp. 464. 
172x112. Cloth, 7s. 6d.’ Now to the ordinary 
reader of a catalogue ‘172x112’ does not conve 
much meaning, but in this instance, facing the first 
page of text is a full-size facsimile of a scale, one 
side showing 7 inches, the other 178mm. The 
notation is thus made not merely intelligible but 











224 REVIEWS. 


interesting. ‘The other point is that both in this 
bibliography and in the Catalogue of the Barlow 
Dante collection noticed below the British Museum 
heading ‘Academies’ is adopted. It used to be said 
that no one but Panizzi would have introduced this 
heading into an English catalogue, and the remark 
is probably true; but it seems to be found a con- 
venient one for all that. 


Catalogue of the Dante colleétion in the library of 
University College, London. By R. W. Chambers. 
Oxford, printed for University College, London, 
by Horace Hart. 1910. 


This catalogue records not only the colleétion 
bequeathed to University College by Henry Clark 
Barlow with an endowment for an annual course of 
leétures on the ‘ Divina Commedia,’ but also from the 
Dante books in the libraries given by Prof. James 
Morris, F. D. Mocalta, and Dr. Whitley Stokes, 
together with some at present in the hands of a 
prospective benefactor. The name of Mr. R. W. 
Chambers, the librarian of University College, is an 
ample guarantee that on the scale and method on 
which it has been planned the catalogue is as good 
as could be desired. The absence of anything of the 
nature of subjeét-headings is the less to be regretted 
because of the bibliographical information about 
Dante obtainable elsewhere. The catalogue shows 
the existence at University College of a good 
working collection with a few rarities.