But I had nearly forgotten to acquaint you with a remarkably fine, thick-leaved, crackling copy—­yet perhaps somewhat cropt—­of Cardinal Bessarion’s Epistles, printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome in 1469.  It is in old gilt edges, in a sort of binding of wood.

I now come to the notice of a few choice and rare Italian books:  and first, for Dante.  Here is probably the rarest of all the earlier editions of this poet:  that is to say, the edition printed at Naples by Tuppo, in two columns, having forty-two lines in a full column.  At the end of the Inferno, we read “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” in the gothic letter; the text being uniformly roman.  At the end of the Purgatorio: 

SOLI         DEO       GLORIA. 
Erubescat   Judeus    Infelir.

At the end of the Paradiso:  DEO GRATIAS—­followed by Tuppo’s address to Honofrius Carazolus of Naples.  A register is on the recto of the following and last leaf.  This copy is large, but in a dreadfully loose, shattered, and dingy state—­in the original wooden binding.  So precious an edition should be instantly rebound.  Here is the Dante of 1478, with the Commentary of Guido Terzago, printed at Milan in 1478, folio.  The text of the poet is in a fine, round, and legible roman type—­that of the commentator, in a small and disagreeable gothic character.

Petrarch shall follow.  The rarest edition of him, which I have been able to put my hand upon, is that printed at Bologna in 1476 with the commentary of Franciscus Philelphus.  Each sonnet is followed by its particular comment.  The type is a small roman, not very unlike the smallest of Ulric Han, or Reisinger’s usual type, and a full page-contains forty-one lines.

Of Boccaccio, here is nothing which I could observe particularly worthy of description, save the very rare edition of the Nimphale of 1477, printed by Bruno Valla of Piedmont, and Thomaso of Alexandria. A full page has thirty-two lines.

I shall conclude the account of the rarer books, which it was my chance to examine in the Public Library of Stuttgart, with what ought perhaps, more correctly, to have formed the earliest articles in this partial catalogue:—­I mean, the Block Books.  Here is a remarkably beautiful, and uncoloured copy of the first Latin edition of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis.  It has been bound—­although it be now unbound, and has been unmercifully cut.  As far as I can trust to my memory, the impressions of the cuts in this copy are sharper and clearer than any which I have seen.  Of the Apocalypse, there is a copy of the second edition, wanting a leaf.  It is sound and clean, but coloured and cut.  Unbound, but formerly bound.  Here is a late German edition of the Ars Moriendi, having thirty-four lines on the first page.  Of the Historia Beatae Virginis, here is a copy of what I should consider to be the