1541, of these great and magnificent volumes scattered throughout the land, fifteen or twenty thousand copies, in the families of the nobility and gentry as well as in most of the eleven thousand parish churches, to say nothing of the precious seed planted on good ground by Tyndale, Coverdale, Rogers, Cranmer, and Cromwell, it was impossible for the English nation not to advance, though it might from time to time require a Philip and a Mary to steady its progress. We therefore hug these Great Bibles to our bosoms, and count them as the choicest gems of our libraries. It is for these reasons that I gave so much space to them in the Catalogue, Nos 813-825, and made such prominent display of them in the Caxton Exhibition.

There were certain preliminary steps, never to be forgotten, which contributed to this inestimable boon of free Scriptures, such as the fall of Wolsey, the divorce of Catharine of Aragon, the separation from Rome, the Royal Supremacy backed by Act of Parliament, the paving the road with the hardest and best heads, of More, Fisher and others; the destruction of the monasteries, the force of royal proclamations, the Act of the Six Articles, the drawing of the fangs of Convocation; and finally the Act of 1538 directing that all books of Scripture should have the sanction or licence of the King, the Privy Council or a bishop, which threw the whole matter, in spite of Convocation, into the hands of Cranmer and Cromwell. Some of these motions may at first sight appear retrograde, but if so, it was only the drawing back for a harder blow. The seven' 68, 69 distinct editions of the 'Great Bible' are identified and known by the several dates in their colophons. These are the editions, 1, of April 1539; 2, April 1540; 3, July 1540; 4, November 1540; 5, May 1541; 6, November 1541; and 7, December 1541. Besides these, the two November editions of 1540 and 1541 were both reissued with large portions of the volumes reprinted, thus making two more editions which I number 8 and 9. Five of these editions are very nearly alike and make up each other, viz. N° 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7. They are in large black letter, 62 lines on a full page, and on strong thick paper. The other editions of November are on thinner paper, 65 lines. The whole nine editions 6 have a fine showy woodcut border to the first title, all alike from the same cut, except that in the 4th edition of November 1540 and all subsequent editions the arms of Cromwell, who was beheaded on the 28 July 1540, are obliterated. 67 It is the aim of true bibliographers to find copies pure and distinct, with no leaves of other editions mixed. Mr Francis Fry's elaborate book on these nine editions is the best and surest guide. The wood-cut first title-] e-page has generally hitherto been ascribed to Holbein, but Wornum in his life of Holbein, and others have recently so strongly pronounced against this opinion, that it is now generally abandoned. I give on p. 21 a reduced facsimile of it, 4 by 3 inches, the original measuring 14 by 93 inches.

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Let us now see how our learned Scholastikos treats this subject. His remarks, as usual, are worth quoting: "Next" in interest.. comes the first, perhaps we should say the only" authorized edition—that of Henry VIII, printed by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1539, and celebrated in history as the Great Bible. Of this there are several copies [in the Exhibition], and the woodcut title,59 said to have been designed by Holbein,60 is worth studying. At the top the King is seated on a throne, ensigned with his arms, and surrounded by his courtiers, to whom he distributes copies of the book. At either side Cromwell and Cranmer, each also identified by his shield, are similarly employed; and round the head of each person is a scroll, on which we read 'Vivat Rex,'* or, where the person represented is a child,65 'God save the King,' for children, of course, could not be expected to cheer in Latin.6 There is a tragic interest, too, about these curious pictures. Among the copies exhibited is one in which the circular space previously filled with Cromwell's arms is left blank. The shield has disappeared in the interval between the issue of the two copies."

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This is a masterpiece of packing—a dozen crammers in a dozen lines! and yet so cleverly told that it requires an expert to detect the deception. When a gentleman describes to us beautiful flowers as blue which we know to be red we generally let it pass, for we know that he is colourblind. In like manner, when a gentlemanly clergyman or Saturday reviewer tells us a string of historical facts which we know to be fictions, we either mentally wish Dogberry to write down his proper designation, or we regard him as truth-blind, and so let him parrotize at will. In this case it may be remarked that there is probably no evidence that the first edition of the 'Great Bible' of April 1539 was ever 'authorized '57 beyond the words 'cum privilegio,' etc. The book was a private mercantile venture, and the licence to print was as much a protection against rival printers as a privilege to publish. Great influence was used then and for the next four years to obtain royal recommendation to secure purchasers in families and churches. Again it was not printed by 58 Grafton and Whitchurche, although their names be on the title, but it is known to have been printed by François Regnault in Paris in 1538 under the editorship of Coverdale. Grafton and Whitchurche probably paid most of the expenses and sold the books for their own profit. The April 1540, or second edition, printed in London (Anthony Marler advancing the money for printing, etc. and Grafton and Whitchurche, together or separately, acting as publishers), bore for the first time on the title the words 'Apoynted to the vse of the churches.' The 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th editions of 1540 and 1541 had also the same line 'Apoynted,' etc. Yet these words cannot be construed to mean 'authorized.' They simply mean that in the almanac for every day in the year, and in the tables for Salisbury or other use, one may find the psalms,

lessons, epistles and gospels, etc. pointed out or appointed for the use in churches. The Bishops' Bibles after 1572 bore both the words 'authorized' and ' appointed,' but never, I believe, was the word 'authorized' so used before 1574.

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As to the description of the woodcut border of the title 59-69 a mere glance at the annexed reduced facsimile will show the incorrectness of it. Above the king the Almighty is seen among the clouds; and the King, Henry VIII, with the royal arms at his feet, seated in a large armchair, is distributing the word of God, with his right hand to the archbishops and bishops (known by their mitres) representing the Church; and with his left hand to the nobility, known by their coronets. Below in the centre of the inner margin is Cranmer, designated by his arms at his feet, giving out the word of God to the clergy, while on the other side of the title, just opposite, stands Cromwell, at foot his arms, distributing the Bible to the gentry. So far, among all these figures there is not one 'Vivat Rex.'64 But in the double compartment at the bottom of the page under the title are crowds of the people both men and women standing and sitting between the two emblems of civilization, the pulpit and the prison, both fully occupied. The pulpit, apparently at Paul's Cross, is on the left side, occupied by a preacher with many listeners, mostly seated in the foreground, and standing crowded in the background. Among these are several scrolls with 'Vivat Rex,' * but

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not round the head of each person. Over the crowd of men and women at back is a single scroll with 'God save the King.' On the right, opposite the pulpit is the prison, perhaps a tower of Newgate, across the precincts, with several prisoners looking at the crowd mostly facing them, some with Vivat Rex' as before, and in the foreground two youths 65 seated on the ground and a man kneeling, underneath a scroll with 'God save the King.' There are no children, and therefore the poetic expression for children of course could not be expected to cheer in Latin '66 is a stroke of the imagination worthy the palmy days of the Saturday Review. Lest our Scholastikos may attempt to shield himself at the expense of confessing that he had savoyed this whole account of the 'Great Bible' from a contemporary historian, even to the pretty fiction about the children cheering in Latin, I venture to give him the friendly advice that he had better not do that, because it will not look well, as a matter of taste, for his patron the Saturday to print beauties plagiarized from a writer whom it is never tired of abusing, misquoting, and savagely reviewing.

The reader will by these comments and the facsimile perceive how utterly void of truth is the whole of the reviewer's description of the 'Great Bible' and its title, to say nothing of its many editions. It seems at first sight inconceivable that any writer can go on thus writing sentence after sentence crammed with error, deceit, and all uncharitableness. I can account for it only on the supposition that if he be a parson or pastor he may have caught from his flock the foot and mouth disease, because as Williams of the Crown says, he has it bad, leastwise, it is apparent that every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it.

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But lest my porch to this little catalogue may be mistaken for one intended for the Saturday Review itself, it becomes necessary to hasten to a conclusion. The reviewer now proceeds nearly a whole line without anything exceptional, until he stumbles into a hornet's nest of errors; 'but we fail to find any special" notice of the sole English issue of Queen Mary's reign.' He then proceeds to say that in 1553 Whitchurche published a Bible "without note or comment," all the preliminary matter printed with the Great Bible, including the Calendar and the Table of Lessons, being omitted.' 'At least one copy appears in the Catalogue.' 'Strange to say, those days of bigotry seem to have been favourable to Bible-printing; " for the same year, 1553, witnessed the appearance of the first Spanish edition,' etc. In reply, the reader is referred to Nos 874 and 875 of this Catalogue for special"1 notices of two copies of this very Bible, both of which were in the Exhibition, and displayed from its opening. Indeed, our critic seems not to have failed to notice one' copy, and so contradicts himself. But the odd part of the joke is, that this plain and cheap edition of the Great Bible was issued by Whitchurche

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in Edward VI's reign and not in Mary's. It must have appeared before the 6th of July, 1553, when Edward died, for it is professedly a Protestant Bible, since we find at the end of it a table to find the Epistles and Gospels usually read in the Church, according to the boke of Common-Prayer. Scholastikos has thus managed, as usual, to misstate every fact, and then expresses surprise that in those days of bigotry in England, a Bible should be printed in Spanish" at Ferrara!

Of the notice of the Geneva New Testament first76 divided into verses, 1557, he should have added 'in English,' for this division into verses is copied from Stephens' Greek and Latin Testament of 1551. Pagninus had also divided the whole Bible into verses as early as 1528, see N° 746. Three" copies of the Breeches Bible, first edition, were exhibited, one on large paper, see Nos 909, 910, 911. I must here plead guilty to having led our critic into error as to the number of 200 distinct editions 78 of this work. In writing my note under N° 909, not remembering the number of editions and for the moment not having time to look up my memoranda, I wrote the round number 200, charging my memory to count up the editions and correct the figures in the proof. The printer set it up in full and I never thought to correct the error. The true number cannot, I think, be more than 170. The critic has thus obtained this fact from the authority he disputes.

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For want of space I must omit to notice as it deserves the long rigmarole of errors and irrelevant nonsense about the edition of 1649 by the Stationers' Company.79-89 There is nothing new in this long paragraph and very little that is true. There was a copy of this edition belonging to myself exhibited, but by some mistake it failed to be entered in the Catalogue, a matter however of little consequence, inasmuch as it was a sole edition and a failure. I do not believe that this mixed edition had any influence in superseding the Genevan version or marking the period of its going out of use. The whole passage however is a fine display of useless information and might appear rather astounding to any one who did not know whence it was filched.

Scholastikos next informs us with the air of a martyr that he does not 'find a single perfect copy of the first issue of the so-called Authorized Version.'91 'One, near the door, seems only to have its New 92 Testament title;' wrong again, for the copy next to the door was Earl Spencer's fine and perfect copy with not only the New92 Testament title but the original first title, with the woodcut border, and before the words "Appointed to be read in churches" were added. This is N° 1036 of the present Catalogue. By its side was another fine and every way perfect copy of the same first issue of the 1611 version having the engraved copperplate title, N° 1035, exhibited by myself. I refer the reader to my revised note under N° 1035 for a full answer to the critic's sneers and arbitrary,100 foolish and ridiculous dicta respecting the first two editions