As to the printed books of an early date, they are few and unimportant—­if the subject of them be exclusively considered.  There is a woeful want of classics, and even of useful literary performances.  Here, however, I saw the far-famed I. de Turrecremata Meditationes of 1467, briefly described by De Murr; of which, I believe, only two other copies are known to exist—­namely, one in the Imperial library at Vienna,[169] and the other in the collection of Earl Spencer.  It is an exceedingly precious book to the typographical antiquary, inasmuch as it is supposed to be the first production of the press of Ulric Han.  The copy in question has the plates coloured; and, singularly enough, is bound up in a wooden cover with Honorius de Imagine Mundi, printed by Koberger, and the Hexameron of Ambrosius, printed by Schuzler in 1472.  It is, however, a clean, sound copy; but cut down to the size of the volumes with which it is bound.  Here is the Boniface of 1465, by Fust, UPON VELLUM:  with a large space on the rectos of the second and third leaves, purposely left for the insertion of ms. or some subsequent correction.  The Durandus of 1459 has the first capital letter stamped with red and blue, like the smaller capital initials in the Psalter of 1457.  In this first capital initial, the blue is the outer portion of the letter.  The German Bible by Mentelin is perfect; but wretchedly cropt, and dirty even to dinginess.  Here is a very fine large genuine copy of Jenson’s Quintilian of 1471.  Of the Epistles of St. Jerom, here are the early editions by Mentelin and Sweynheym and Pannartz; the latter, of the date of 1470:  a fine, large copy—­but not free from ms. annotations.

More precious, however, in the estimation of the critical bibliographer—­than either, or the whole, of the preceding volumes—­is the very rare edition of the Decameron of Boccaccio, of the date of 1472, printed at Mantua, by A. de Michaelibus.[170] Such a copy as that in the public library at Nuremberg, is in all probability unparalleled:  it being, in every respect, what a perfect copy should be—­white, large, and in its pristine binding.  A singular coincidence took place, while I was examining this extraordinarily rare book.  M. Lechner, the bookseller, of whom I shall have occasion to speak again, brought me a letter, directed to his own house, from Earl Spencer.  In that letter, his lordship requested me to make a particular collation of the edition of Boccaccio—­with which I was occupied at the very moment of receiving it.  Of course, upon every account, that collation was made.  Upon its completion, and asking M. Ranner whether any consideration would induce the curators of the library to part with this volume, the worthy librarian shouted aloud!... adding, that, “not many weeks before, an English gentleman had offered the sum of sixty louis d’or for it,—­but not