treatise on bibliography up to that date. Oldys, whose British Librarian first appeared in 1737 but was never completed, was among the first in this country to divert the public taste from an exclusive attention to new books, by making the merit of old ones the subject of critical discussion; and Maittaire, who was second master of Westminster School, and who died in 1747, first established the study of bibliography in England on a solid basis. The labours of Dibdin we shall have occasion frequently to refer to; they mark a new phase of bibliography in England which followed the opening up of the Continent after the great war with France. The science in America has been cultivated only recently ; but the names of Cogswell,
Ticknor, and Jewett are already well-known to bibliographers.
I. The Constituent Parts of Books, and Differences of Editions.
The history of the materials used for early manuscripts a subject fruitful in research lies outside the limits we have proposed for bibliography as the study of printed literature. Fortunately for the spread of books, in the modern sense of the term, the invention of printing was preceded by the important discovery of the art of making paper from linen rags. The precise date of this discovery is not known, nor are writers agreed as to the country in which it was made; but it seems to be ascertained that this kind of paper was in general use in Europe before the end of the 14th century. Caxton and the other early English printers appear to have used paper of foreign manufacture. Such questions, among others, as the relative priority of different editions, or the productions of different presses, are frequently to be determined by a comparison of the constituent elements of the books themselves; but the subject is too technical to be noticed in detail. The question as to the origin of printing belongs strictly to a consideration of that art; but as its history and its progress are illustrated by the productions of different presses, the bibliographer will find much matter of interest in the principal works devoted to the subject. Prominent among these are the Monumenta Ti/pographica of "Wolfius, Ham burg, 1740; Meerman s Origines Typographical; Prosper Marchand s Histoire de I origine et des premiers pr ogres de I Imprimerie, 1740, a valuable supplement to which was published by M. Mercier, Abbe" de Saint Leger, in 1773, and republished in 1775; and Lambinet s Itecherches his- toriques, litteraires, et critiques surVorigine de I Imprimerie, first published at Brussels in 1799.
An accurate knowledge of the different forms of books is necessary to the bibliographer, as without it no book can be correctly described; and however easy such knowledge may appear, it is yet certain that errors in this respect have been committed even by experienced biblio graphers, and that doubts have been entertained as to the existence of editions, owing to their forma having been inaccurately described.[1] These mistakes generally proceed from this, that there are different sizes of paper com prehended under the same name. But the water-lines in the sheets afford a test, as they are uniformly perpendicular in the folio and octavo, and horizontal in the quarto and duodecimo sizes. In the infancy of printing the sizes were generally folio and quarto, and some have supposed that no books were printed in the smaller forms till after 1480; but M. Peignot instances many editions in the smallest forms of an earlier date ; as may be seen in the article " Format " of the supplement to his Dictionnaire de Bibliologie. The subject of water-marks is treated at length in Sotheby s Principia Typographica.
The respective merits of different editions can bo ascertained often only by minute inquiries. It is a principal object of the bibliographical dictionaries, to be afterwards mentioned, to point out those editions of important works which such inquiries have discovered to be the best. There are many particulars in which one edition may diffei from or excel another. There may be differences 01 grounds of preference in size, in paper, and in printing. Later revision by the author may give his work, when it comes to be reprinted, a complexion differing largely from what it had at the first ; while the first edition exhibits his orginal thoughts as they came fresh from his pen. One edition may derive its superiority from being furnished with notes, an index, or a table of contents. Plates make great differences in the value of editions, and even in the value of copies of the same edition. In the beautifully engraved edition of Horace by Pine, a small error in the first impressions serves as a test whether any copy contains the best engravings of those elegant vignettes which illustrate that edition. The medal of Augustus, on page 108 of the second volume, has in the first copies the incorrect reading Post Est instead of Potest ; this was rectified in the after impressions ; but as the plates had meanwhile sustained some injury, the copies which show the incorrect reading are of course esteemed the best. Dibdin, in his Bibliomania, points out this as an instance of preference founded on a defect ; but the real ground of preference is the superiority of the impressions, ascertained by the presence of this trifling defect. There are sometimes differences between copies of the same edition of a work.[2] Walton s Polyglot Bible is a celebrated instance. The printing of that great work, for which Cromwell liberally allowed paper to be imported free of duty, was begun in 1G53 and completed in 1G57, and the preface to it in some copies contains a respectful acknowledgement of this piece of patronage on the part of the Protector ; but in other copies the compliment is expunged, and replaced by some invectives against the republicans, Walton having on the Restoration printed another pre face to the copies which had not by that time been dis posed of.[3]
II. Early Printed Books.
been applied, were printed, not with movable types, but from solid wooden blocks. These consisted of a few leaves only, on which were impressed images of saints and other historical pictures, with a text or a few explanatory lines. The ink was of a brownish hue, and glutinous quality, to prevent it from spreading. These are known by the name of Image Books, or Block Books, and are generally supposed to have succeeded the earlier impressions for playing cards, which are dated back to the end of the 14th century. Strictly speaking, they were the immediate precursors, rather than the first specimens of typography ; in fact, they mark the transition to that art from engraving.[4] Peignot puts their number at seven or eight, but others have extended it to ten. They belong chiefly to the Low Countries, and were often reprinted, as is generally thought,
during the first half of the loth century, and, indeed, after- ↑ See Boulard, Traile Elementaire de Bibliographic, pp. 38, 39.
- ↑ The Voyage to Cadiz is sometimes wanting in Hakluyt s Navigations, 1598-1600. A reprint is often inserted to supply this want, which may be known from the original by its having only seven para graphs in p. 607, vol. i., whereas the original has eight. The ori ginal ends on p. 619, the reprint on p. 620.
- ↑ See vol. i. of Dr Clarke s Bibliographical Dictionary for some curious details on this point.
- ↑ Mr Holt, who contends that printing preceded engraving, aseril.fcs the date of 1423 on the St. Christopher to a forgery for 1493, and asserts that no copy of the Liblia Paupernm was known before 1485. See Notes and Queries, 4th series, ii. 265.
