should like to see in it hereafter a little less smartness, with a good deal more truthfulness. Its egotism and conceit might be lowered a peg with advantage to itself and the community. If there be virtue in this prescription for the Saturday's present weak Ies let us be content with the old saw, 'virtue is its own reward.' It is not that I like the Saturday Review less that I have squeezed this flavour into my little book, but because its erroneous criticism afforded a good opportunity to expose some of the common errors entertained by recent historians and more recent writers concerning our printed Bible, that drifted into it. If I have failed this time, a little grape on the next occasion may perhaps suffice.

HE secular history of the HOLY SCRIPTURES is the sacred history of PRINTING. The Bible was the first book printed, and the Bible is the last book printed. Between 1450 and 1877, an interval of four centuries and a quarter, the Bible shows the progress and comparative development of the art of printing in a manner that no other single book can; and Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity.

The honour of producing the first, and, as many think, the most perfect book, is now ascribed to Gutenberg alone, Fust not coming in

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for a share of the credit of the invention until after his famous lawsuit in 1455, when the Bible had been finished. We call it, therefore, the GUTENBERG BIBLE, and have no sympathy for any French name given to it simply because a copy found in a Paris library had the honour of being described by a French bookseller. After this suit, when Fust took over the business and associated Schoeffer with himself, there was probably a dispersion of the craft from Mentz to Bamberg, Strasburg, and other places, just as there subsequently was when Mentz in 1462 was besieged and taken by Adolphus, Duke of Nassau.

As the Art spread from Mentz throughout Germany, Italy, France, and the Low Countries, the Bible was generally the first, or among the first books printed by each of the early printers, though unquestionably during the progress of these great volumes through the press the several presses threw off a variety of smaller pieces, especially Indulgences and other typical or typographical aids of the Church, some of which perchance might bear dates earlier than the Bibles themselves, which were on the anvils at the same time.

Some half-dozen huge folio Bibles in Latin and German, besides the magnificent Psalters of 1457 and 1459, had appeared in type before a single volume of the Classics saw the "new lamp for the new learning." First and foremost of the ancient Classics came forth Cicero's De Officiis, in 1465, a little volume about the size of the Book of Genesis, followed soon after by his De Oratore and Epistolæ ad Familiares. Then came the ever-popular Virgil and Cæsar in 1469, and Pliny the Elder the next year. Ovid followed in 1471, and Valerius Maximus in 1472. Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio were fortunate enough among the modern classics to be set in type in 1470, 1471, and 1472, while the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer appeared some five or six years later from the press of Caxton. The first book in Greek came from the Milan press in 1476, followed by the first Greek classic author, dear old Æsop, in 1480, while the great Homer himself (reminding one of his own grim joke of Polyphemus) was held back and not devoured by the press till 1488.

In a word, up to the time of the discovery of America, in 1492, Columbus might have counted upon his fingers all the old classic authors (including Ptolemy and Strabo in their unbecoming Latin dress) who could throw any geographical light on the questions which the Great

Discoverer was discussing with the theologians of Spain; while, covering the same period, the editions of the Bible alone, and the parts thereof, in many languages and countries, will sum up not far less than one thousand, and the most of these of the largest and costliest kind.

We have been endeavouring for the last quarter of a century or more to compile as complete a list of printed Bibles and Parts of Bibles as possible from the earliest period to the present time, and the remarkable result is a table of some 30,000 titles, representing about 35,000 volumes. By throwing all this vast store of Biblical bibliography into one strictly chronological list, we see at a glance what Biblical work was going on in every part of the world under each year, or any given year, and comparatively how the production of the Holy Scriptures in one country or language ranged with those of another. We see, for instance, that all the earliest printed Bibles were in the Latin Vulgate, the first complete edition of the Septuagint not having been issued from the press of Aldus till the year 1518, the very year of the 14th German Bible.

The earliest printed Bibles in the modern European languages were the first and second German Bibles by Mentelin and Eggesteyn, of Strasburg, of rather uncertain date, but certainly not later than 1466. In 1471 appeared at Venice two translations into Italian-the one by Malermi, printed by Vindelin de Spira, and the other by Nicolas Jenson. In 1477 was printed the first New Testament in French by Buyer, at Lyons, and the same year appeared the first edition of the Old Testament in Dutch, printed at Delft by Jacob Jacobs zoen and Mauritius Yemants zoen. In 1480 was published the splendid Bible in the Saxon or Low German language, from the press of Heinrich Quentel, of Cologne, followed by a second edition in 1491, and a third in 1494. The Psalms, in Dutch, first came out in 1480, in small octavo, and in Greek and Latin in 1481, while the first Hebrew Pentateuch appeared in 1482. The entire Bible done into French paraphrase was published by Guyard de Moulins in 1487. A full translation appeared in the Bohemian language, printed at Prague in 1488. The same year appeared the entire Old Testament in Hebrew from the press of Abraham ben Chayim de' Tintori, at Soncino.

This chronological arrangement shows us also many noteworthy points, such as that nearly all the earliest Bibles were huge folios; that the first Bibles printed at Rome and Venice appeared in 1471, and that the sixth

German Bible by G. Zainer, in 1475, at Augsburg, was the first with the leaves folioed or numbered; that the first quarto Bible appeared in 1475, printed by John Peter de Ferratis at Placentia, which was also the first book printed at Placentia; that the first of Coburger's celebrated Bibles appeared in Nuremberg in 1475, and that by the end of the century no less than thirteen large folio Bibles had come from this house alone; that the four splendid Bibles printed in 1476 all bear the printers' signatures, though it is difficult to say with certainty which was the first -viz., that of Moravus at Naples, Jenson at Venice, Gering, Crantz, and Friburger at Paris, or that of F. de Hailbrun and N. de Frankfordia at Venice; that the first Bible with a distinct title-page was printed at Venice, by George de Ravabenis in 1487, in small quarto; and that the first Bible in small octavo, or "the poor man's Bible," was the earliest, or among the earliest books, from the press of Johann Froben, of Basle, in 1491, and is certainly one of the neatest and tidiest Bibles in our Collection. This splendidly illuminated and bound copy is lent us from the Bodleian Library.

Prior to the discovery of America no less than twelve grand patriarchal editions of the entire Bible, being of several different translations, appeared from time to time in the German language; to which add the two editions by the Otmars of Augsburg of 1507 and 1518, and we have the total number of no less than fourteen distinct large folio preReformation, or ante-Lutheran Bibles. No other language except the Latin can boast of anything like this number.

As the discovery of America was the greatest of all discoveries, so the invention of the Art of Printing may be called the greatest of all inventions. But no sooner had Columbus reported his grand discovery through the press than the Pope assumed the whole property in the unknown parts of the earth, and divided it all at once between the two little Powers in the Peninsula, wholly disregarding the rights and titles of the other nations of Europe. The same little game of assumption has been tried, from time to time, with regard to this great invention, but the press has a protective power within itself, which the Church can smother only with ignorance and mental darkness.

From this rapid survey it will be apparent that our earliest Bibles, many of them printed most sumptuously on vellum, must have each cost