water-mark.  The younger Schweighaeuser thinks my doubts about its age not well founded; conceiving it to be a coeval document.  But this does not affect its authenticity, as it may have been an accurate and attested copy—­of an original which has now perished.  Certainly the whole book has very much the air of a Copy:  and besides, would not the originals have been upon separate rolls of parchment?[218]

I now come to the PRINTED BOOKS:  of which, according to the MS. catalogue by Oberlin, (who was head librarian here) there are not fewer than four thousand three hundred, printed before the year 1520:—­and of these, again, upwards of eleven hundred without dates.  This, at first hearing, sounds, what the curious would call, promising; but I must say, that of the dated and dateless books, printed before the year 1500, which I took down, and carefully opened—­and this number could not be less than four or five hundred—­there was scarcely one in five which repaid the toil of examination:  and this too, with a thermometer frequently standing at eighty-nine and ninety, in the shade in the open air!  Fortunately for my health, and for the exertion of physical strength, the public library happened to be very cool—­while all the windows were opened, and through the openings was frequently heard the sound of young voices, practising the famous Martin Luther’s Hymn—­as it is called.  This latter was particularly grateful to me.  I heard the master first sing a stave, and he was in general accurately followed by his pupils—­who displayed the well-known early tact of Germans in the science of music.  But to revert to the early printed books.

FIRST GERMAN BIBLE; supposed to have been printed by Mentelin; without date:  Folio.  Towards the latter half of this copy, there are some interesting embellishments, in outline, in a bistre tint.  The invention and execution of many of them are admirable.  Where they are coloured, they lose their proper effect.  An illumination, at the beginning of the book of Esther, bears the unequivocal date of 1470:  but the edition was certainly four or five years earlier.  This Bible is considered to be the earliest German version:  but it is not so.

LATIN BIBLE, BY MENTELIN:  in his second character.  This Bible I saw for the first time; but Panzer is decidedly wrong in saying that the types resemble the larger ones in Mentelin’s Valerius Maximus, Virgil and Terence:  they may be nearly as tall, but are not so broad and large.  From a ms. note, the 402d leaf appears to be wanting.  This copy is a singularly fine one.  It is white, and large, and with rough edges throughout.  It is also in its first binding, of wood.

LATIN BIBLE; printed by Eggesteyn.  Here are several editions, and a duplicate of the first—­which is printed in the second smallest character of Eggesteyn.[219] The two copies of this first edition are pretty much alike for size and condition:  but one of them, with handsome illuminations at the beginning of each volume, has the precious coeval ms. date of 1468—­as represented by the fac-simile of it in Schoepflin’s Vind.  Typog.  Tab.  V. Probably the date of the printing might have been at least a year earlier.