in 1611 of the present version of our Bible. I have nothing to retract in that note and therefore the intelligent reader will see by my references 93-100 that the learned critic is floundering worse and worse in his egregious, bumptious, and random misstatements. It is indeed tiresome work this demolishing his old Spanish Castles 101.

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We come now to the very marrow of our Scholastikos's reasoning, ipse dixit upon ipse dixit! Egotism and London Assurance run mad, all at the expense of our Weakly which is made, if possible, more than ever ridiculous and that too without appearing to know it! It is stated that the collection of editions of the Authorized 102 Version is wretchedly poor. On the contrary, it was very rich, embracing with few exceptions all the prominent and best editions, according to the expressed opinions of trustworthy biblical bibliographers and critics. Indeed if any man challenge this statement I appeal to the Catalogue. Scholastikos however in his broad sweep admits one exception and says that the collection contains in fact only one volume of any importance,104 the Bodleian copy of the famous Bible of 1631,' 105 that is, the 'Wicked Bible' (see N° 1075), with the word not left out of the seventh commandment. This remarkable statement simply proves, I think, that this remarkable critic, Scholastikos, must be a clergyman of the high and palmy state and a Fellow of the Society of the Holy Cross. None but a parson carrying such odour of sanctity about him would be likely to pronounce the 'Wicked Bible' (reading, by purely typographical error in the seventh commandment, 'Thou shalt commit adultery,') an edition of importance!

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We are next informed that Scholastikos failed to find a first Oxford Testament,107 a first Cambridge 108 Testament, a Blaney's 110 quarto, a first Irish," a first American,112 etc. or in fact, with the exception of the Wicked Bible,' any thing of great note in this department. I answer that the first Oxford Testament is as yet an unascertained fact, as far as I know. I am inclined to think that the New Testament of 1673 in small quarto, issued with the first Oxford Bible of 1675, was first issued separately. If so, this was the first Oxford Testament, a copy of which is N° 1167. If this be not admitted then there were two editions of 1679 in octavo, both in the Bodleian, and both scarce. I know not which of the two was the earlier. I am sorry to disparage our witling's little conundrum about the first Oxford Testament, but one is really getting tired of it, for he has asked it four or five times during the past season in various articles in the Saturday Review with as yet no reply. He before asked it in his comments on Mr Gladstone's speech at the opening of the Caxton Exhibition, and since in his remarks on Mr Jones's address at the opening of the Librarians' Convention, page 419, of Oct. 6, in connection with Hamilton's Genealogies, which we are somewhere informed is wanting in the library of the British Museum. As to the first Cambridge Testament, if the reviewer means the little Geneva version of

[1590?], in 48mo, it could not be borrowed, only two copies being known to me, both inaccessible. If he means the small edition of 1628 it was there, see N° 1066. For the first Blaney's folio and quarto see Nos 1261 and 1262. The first Irish 111 was there from the opening of the Exhibition and is described under N° 1216*, dated Dublin, 1714. If these corrective hornets do not sting our Saturday critic then he may be classed among the pachydermatous.

We are next told that 'There is a poor116 copy of the Scots Bible in octavo,' etc. On the contrary, this was perhaps the finest book that came to the Exhibition from Scotland, a fine clean and beautifully bound copy, in the original richly tooled binding, the pride of Mr David Laing's collection. It is described under N° 1078 of this catalogue. Who but a critic that is truth-blind could coolly record such false statements? and if he could what is the object of such criticism? It is beyond our comprehension. There seems to be a moral squint in the eye of this writer. You never know when it is looking at you or telling the truth. It is painful to be thus placed on one's guard all the time against rampant ignorance, distorted conceit and warped knowledge. No honest University education, one would think, could possibly have turned out in this country such a master of the long-bow! He is manifestly a graduate of Nature's University, a genus, if not a genius, of his own kind,—a self-made man—who adores his maker—and sees no good in the handiwork of any other Author. I confess that I am tired of commenting upon the prolific misstatements of this critic, and though I have numbered them from 1 to 141 in this single page of the Saturday Review, I must remind him and my readers that all this false criticism relates exclusively to the English Bibles, which formed only a small and later portion of the Bible Exhibition. One trembles for him and the Saturday when he undertakes to discourse upon the early Bibles in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Bohemian, and many other languages, to say nothing of the Great Polyglots, parts of Bibles, etc. which are collated and described in this our little Catalogue-nearly a thousand selected out of about thirty thousand. But I leave the last score or two of my references untouched, having exhausted myself rather than the subject. The Saturday has had its fling and I have now fired my blank cartridge as promised, and come what may, shall continue to read the Review hoping in the future to find as in the past, now and then, an article of sterling merit, true, fair, noble, manly and generous. There are occasional articles in it that refresh one like the balmy breath of the south wind in springtime, and make one forget all these mountains of stuff and nonsense like the writings of Scholastikos and his kind. I ask no remedy, knowing that the Saturday Review is seldom brought to its apologetic knees as it was in italics by the Daily News on the 13th of October last, on its page 467. But I confess I

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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.

INTRODUCTION.

THE HISTORY OF PRINTING

AS ILLUSTRATED BY

THE PRINTED BIBLE,

1450-1877.

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

D

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