the price of a farm. Later they could be had for a cow, but now a morning's milking of a cow will procure for a farmer a first-class well-bound Bible in his own language.

At this late day it is difficult to arrive at the precise dates of several of the earliest and most important printed Bibles, most of the dates having been first assumed by bibliographers without sufficient authority, and subsequently followed by others without inquiry. From an inscription by one Cremer, the illuminator and binder of the Gutenberg Bible, now in the National Library of Paris, we know positively that the book was printed before August, 1456. From another inscription in a copy of Pfister's Bible, also in the Paris Library, the work is assigned to Bamberg, before 1461, but the church register of Bamberg shows that this Bible was printed prior to March, 1460. More recently it has been announced and confirmed that the copy of the first of Mentelin's Latin Bibles, in the Library of Freiburg in Breisgau, bears an inscription by the rubricator showing that these important volumes had been printed prior to 1460 and 1461.

With these new data, and a new scrutiny by the light of recent bibliography, and new comparisons of our undated Bibles with books of positive dates and known printers, brought together, like the present Caxton Memorial Collection, to say nothing of the great aid derived from our recent photo-bibliography, or means of safely comparing books in one library with those of another, it is to be hoped that the day of more exact bibliography is at hand. It will not surprise us to find that the order of printing of the first seven of the great German Bibles, all of which are without dates, may be hereafter somewhat modified, or that our new scrutiny may even yet develop new or unrecognized editions in every department of Biblical research.

We therefore, for the extraordinary opportunity afforded us for comparing and collating rare Bibles and other valuable books in this unique Caxton Memorial Collection, tender herewith our warmest thanks to each and all of our contributors, and more especially to Her Majesty the Queen, His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl Spencer, Earl of Jersey, Earl of Leicester, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Curators of the Bodleian Library, the University Library, Cambridge, the University Library, Edinburgh, Sion College, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Advocates'

Library, Edinburgh, the Signet Library, Edinburgh, Mr. W. Amhurst Tyssen-Amhurst, Mr. Francis Fry, Mr. David Laing, Mr. Thomas Longman, Mrs. Jolyffe, the Rev. Dr. Gott, Vicar of Leeds, the Dean of St. Paul's, Mr. Henry White, Rev. Dr. Ginsburg, Mr. M. Ridgway, Mr. E. S. Kowie, Mr. C. D. Sherborn, Mr. J. Mathers, Mr. George Tawse, Rev. L. B. Kaspar, Sir Charles Reed, Mr. H. Cleaver, the University Press, Cambridge, the University Press, Oxford, Mr. Thomas Stapleton, Mr. A. Gardyner, Messrs. Bagster and Sons, Messrs. Spottiswoode and Co., and others; but still more are our thanks due to Mr. Henry J. Atkinson, who has liberally lent us above four hundred editions of the Bible in all languages. Some of these editions are of very considerable rarity and value, while others, though not of the choicest or rarest kind, are, very many of them, of the middle class of Biblical Bibliography, which are so difficult to meet with and which are of such immense importance to the student in arriving at a clear history of editions, versions, and translations. Scores of these editions are not in our national library, and we know not where else to lay our hands upon them.

Our collection boasts of nearly all the earliest and most famous Bibles and Psalters, together with representative editions of the later revisions, translations, versions, and languages down to the present time, to the extraordinary number of above one thousand editions. This unexpected and overwhelming liberality of our patrons has very nearly overwhelmed and buried the arranger and cataloguer, but he trusts that great bibliographical good will eventually result from this rare opportunity of comparison, collation, and scrutiny. Rare Bibles, early New Testaments, the Psalms, and other parts of the Scriptures are, it is well known, scattered all over the country; and we trust that people who possess them will bring or send up these lost children, and have them identified and properly registered. We shall willingly undertake this additional labour for the sake of the opportunity of discovering new and hitherto undescribed editions.

The famous collection of Bibles in the Royal Library of Stuttgard is said to exceed eight thousand editions; but by comparison of the catalogue of our present Caxton Celebration Collection with the catalogue by Adler, printed in 1787, the patient and curious reader will see that more than one-half of our collection is not represented at Stuttgard. So

likewise of the extraordinarily rich collection of some five thousand titles of Bibles in the library of Wolfenbüttel. The collection of Bibles and parts thereof in the Lenox Library of New York in all languages, is probably unsurpassed in rare and valuable editions, especially in the English language, by any library, public or private. Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol, the indefatigable collector, has succeeded in bringing together above one thousand editions of the English Bible, Testaments, Psalms, &c., most of them prior to 1700, to say nothing of above one hundred editions in ancient and foreign languages. The Rev. Dr. Ginsburg, of Wokingham, possesses a unique collection, astonishingly rich in early and rare Latin, German and Hebrew Bibles and parts thereof, including, we believe, the whole fourteen pre-Reformation German Bibles, and almost every edition of Luther's early Bibles and parts, the genuine as well as the counterfeit editions. Besides these his collection contains many other editions in other languages, both ancient and modern, to the extent, in all, of between two and three thousand editions; and, what is of infinite importance to Bible and bibliographical students, the Doctor makes his collection as free to them as to himself. But the Library of the British Museum to-day contains probably by far the richest collection of Bibles and Parts thereof in the world, numbering at present above sixteen thousand titles; but even this our Caxton Celebration Collection, so hastily brought together, contains very many editions not to be found in our national library.

Notwithstanding the active research of many eminent scholars for the last three centuries, Biblical Bibliography is even now but in its infancy. The subject is so vast that no general bibliographer can more than indicate certain special and prominent editions. It is now more than one hundred and fifty years since Le Long published in Latin the last edition of his bibliography of the Bible. The work was excellent in its day, but very imperfect in many departments, especially English. About a century ago Masch re-edited and vastly improved certain parts of Le Long, especially the editions of the Bible in the ancient languages. He left the work, however, unfinished; so that for Bibles in most of the modern languages we have still to refer to Le Long.

In this brief sketch of the History of Printing, as illustrated by the reproduction of the Bible by moveable types, we have left ourselves

space merely to allude to the first five editions of Erasmus's New Testament in Greek and Latin, 1516-35, a work which marks the beginning of a new era in Biblical bibliography; to the Psalter of Giustiniani in five languages, printed at Genoa in 1516, with the first life of Columbus in the long note on the nineteenth Psalm, in which are given some important particulars of Columbus's second voyage along the southern coast of Cuba, nowhere else to be found; to the first Bible in Greek, the Septuagint from the press of Aldus of Venice, in 1518; and above all to the first Great Polyglot Bible of Cardinal Ximenes, printed at Alcala in six large folio volumes between the years 1514 and 1517, though not published till 1520, the most memorable monument of typography the world had yet seen. Nothing less than the inpouring wealth of the Indies, combined with the overbearing power of Ximenes, at that time could have collected the manuscripts, collated and edited them, and printed these splendid volumes in such a sumptuous manner in the short space of fifteen years! While Ximenes was building up this great monument in Spain, Wolsey was about building Hampton Court. Two Cardinal virtues! It would be curious to inquire which cost the more money, the Polyglot or the Palace, and which won the greater honour!

This brings our running narration down to the time of Luther, Protestant Germany, and Scripture-hungry England. The presses of Caxton and his successors had been more than half-a-century in operation, and yet not a chapter of the Bible had ever appeared, as such, printed in the English language. It is true that in his Golden Legend Caxton had printed in 1483 in English nearly the whole of the Pentateuch, and a great part of the Gospels, under the guise of the lives of Adam, Abraham, Moses, the Apostles, and others; but all was mingled with so much of priestly gloss and dross that though probably read in churches it was never recognized as the Holy Scriptures. The Liber Festivalis of 1483 contained also some Scripture paraphrases; and in 1509 Wynkyn de Worde printed a fine edition of the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. These were the nearest approaches that the English people made to the printed Bible in our own tongue. It is true that many copies of the Bible and New Testament translated into English by Wycliffe and his followers were scattered throughout the country in manuscript, and had given educated people and persons of quality a taste of the Book of Books.

It is not unlikely that had not the bones of Wycliffe, buried in the little churchyard of Lutterworth, been dug up and burnt, and his ashes cast into the Swift, by order of the Council of Constance, under the pious protective benevolence of the Church and priesthood, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, Caxton in the last quarter of the same century might have begun in England his great work of printing, like most of the great printers of the Continent, with the Bible in his native tongue, and thus have modernized Wycliffe's Bible, and cast it into another and a rapider Swift.

But Caxton was prudent and wise, as well as a man of business. He had witnessed the storm, and recognized the obstructive and selfish power which gloried in mental darkness, and taught ignorance as the peculiar knowledge and birthright of the people. It was a part of the same piece of priestly wisdom that a few years later gave itself utterance in a sermon at Paul's Cross, in these ever-memorable words: "We must root out printing, or printing will root out us." So Caxton and his successors, taking the prudent and business-like course, printed what was most likely to sell in peace; and so the Scriptures in our vernacular tongue saw not the dawn in England, but awaited the broad daylight of the Reformation, in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, long after they were familiar to the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch, and the Bohemians. The educated of England, however, were not ignorant of the Scriptures, for Coburger of Nuremberg, and probably other continental printers, had established warehouses in London, for the sale of Latin Bibles, as early as 1480, and perhaps earlier. There is an instructive letter in the Public Record Office from Coverdale and Grafton to Cromwell, written from Paris the 12th of September, 1538, in behalf of their host, Francis Regnault, who was then printing the "GREAT BIBLE" for them: "Where as of long tyme he [Regnault] hath bene an occupier into England more than xl. yere, he hath allwayes provyded soche bookes for England, as they moost occupied, so yt he hath a great nombre at this present in his handes as Prymers in Englishe, Missoles wt other soche like wherof now (by ye company of ye Booksellers in London) he is utterly forbydden to make sale, to the utter undoying of the man. Wherfore most humbly we beseke yo' lordshippe to be gracious and favourable unto him, yt he may have lycence to sell those which he hath

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