We will begin with the best and most ancient of all Books:—­the BIBLE.  They have a very singular copy of what is called the Mazarine edition:  or rather the parent impression of the sacred text:—­inasmuch as it contains (what, I believe, no other copy in Europe contains, and therefore M. Bernhard properly considers it as unique) four printed leaves of a table, as directions to the Rubricator.  At the end of the Psalter is a ms. note thus:  “Explicit Psalterium, 61.”  This copy is in other respects far from being desirable, for it is cropt, and in very ordinary calf binding. Mentelin’s German Bible.  Here are two copies of this first impression of the Bible in the German language:  both of which have distinct claims to render them very desirable.  In the one is an inscription, in the German language, of which M. Bernhard supplied me with the following literal version:  “Hector Mulich and Otilia his wife; who bought this Bible in the year of Our Lord, 1466, on the twenty-seventh day of June, for twelve florins.”  Their arms are below.  The whole is decidedly a coeval inscription.  Here, therefore, is another testimony[55] of the printing of this Bible at least as early as the year 1466.  At the end of the book of Jeremiah, in the same copy, is a ms. entry of 1467; “sub Papa Paulo Secundo et sub Imperatore Frederico tertio.”  The second copy of this edition, preserved in the same library, has a German ms. memorandum, executed in red ink, stating that this edition is “well translated, without the addition of a single word, faithful to the Latin:  printed at Strasbourg with great care.”  This memorandum is doubtless of the time of the publication of the edition; and the Curators of the library very judiciously keep both copies.

A third, or triplicate copy, of Mentelin’s edition—­much finer than either of the preceding—­and indeed abounding with rough edges—­was purchased by me for the library in St. James’s place; but it was not obtained for a sum beneath its full value.[56]

Here is a copy of Eggesteyn’s Latin Bible, containing forty-five lines in a full page, with the important date of “24th May, 1466”—­in a coeval ms. memorandum.  Thus, you see, here is a date two years earlier[57] than that in a copy of the same Bible in the Public Library at Strasbourg; and I think, from hence, we are well warranted in supposing that both Mentelin and Eggesteyn had their presses in full play at Strasbourg in 1466—­if not earlier.  This copy of Eggesteyn’s first Bible, which is in its original binding of wood, is as fine and large as it is precious.