Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885.

Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885.
of such monuments and memorials of the typographic art and the historic past as have escaped the wreck and been preserved to this day.  That exhibition and use must be governed by regulations which will insure to the fullest extent the security and preservation of the treasures intrusted to our care, in the enforcement of which the trustees anticipate the sympathy and co-operation of all scholars and men of letters, through whose use and labors alone the public at large must chiefly derive real and permanent benefit from this and all similar institutions.”  The “regulations” adopted by the trustees for the preservation of their treasures do not seem unreasonable.  Admission is by ticket, which may be procured of the librarian by addressing him by mail.  We have space for but the briefest possible glimpses at these treasures.  The chief rarities in typography are found in the north and south libraries on the first floor.  In “first editions” it would be difficult to say whether the library prides itself most on its Bibles, its Miltoniana, or its Shakesperiana.  In Bibles the whole art of printing with movable types is fully portrayed, the series beginning with the “Mazarin,” or Gutenberg, Bible, the first book ever printed with movable types.  There are Bibles in all languages.  There is the first complete edition of the New Testament in Greek ever published, its title-page dated Basle, 1516.  In a glass case in the north library are the four huge “Polyglot” Bibles, marvels of typography, known as the Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and English Polyglots.  In the same case repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus,—­three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, sacred to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures rests.  Tyndale’s New Testament, the first ever printed on English ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King James version known as the “Wicked Bible.”  In this copy the printer, as a satire on the age, omitted the word “not” from the seventh commandment, and for this piece of waggery was heavily fined, the money going, it is said, to establish the first Greek press ever erected at Oxford.  Among its “first editions” the library has that of Homer, 1488, and that of Dante, 1472.  The Milton collection deserves special notice:  in addition to the first editions of the poet’s various works, it contains a folio volume of letters and documents pertaining to Milton and his family, with autograph manuscripts giving exceedingly interesting details of the poet’s private life and fortunes.  One of these is a long original letter from Milton himself to his friend Carlo Dati, the Florentine, with the latter’s reply; there are also three receipts or releases signed by Milton’s three daughters, Anne Milton, Mary Milton, and Deborah Clarke, a bond from Elizabeth Milton, his widow, to one Randle Timmis, and several other agreements and assignments, with the autographs of attesting witnesses.  In folio editions of Shakespeare,
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Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.