Three on vellum—(1) Royal Library, Madrid; (2) Royal Library, Turin; (3) supposed to have been reserved for the Cardinal. Pinelli, 1789, £483, bought by MacCarthy. MacCarthy, 1817 £676 (16,000 francs), bought by Hibbert. Hibbert, 1829, £525.
On paper—Harleian copy, sold by Osborne for £42. Maittaire’s imperfect copy sold for 50s. Sunderland, £195. Earl of Crawford, 1887 (general title wanting), £56. Beresford Hope, 1882, £166. W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891, £100.
The vellum copy sold in the Pinelli sale was, according to Dibdin, taken to Dr. Gosset when on a bed of sickness, in the hopes that the sight might work a cure on that ardent book-lover.[55]
John Brocario, son of Arnoldus Brocario, the printer of this polyglot, when a lad, was deputed to take the last sheets to the Cardinal. He dressed himself in his best clothes, and delivered his charge into Ximenes’ hand, who exclaimed, “I render thanks to Thee, O God, that Thou hast protracted my life to the completion of these biblical labours.” He told his friends that the surmounting of the various difficulties of his political situation did not afford him half the solace which arose from the finishing of his Polyglot.[56] A few weeks after the noble enthusiast died.
Plantin Polyglot Bible, 1569-72, 5 vols. Five hundred copies printed; greater part lost at sea.
Earl of Ashburnham, 1897, on vellum (wanting the “Apparatus”), £79.
Walton’s Polyglot Bible, 6 vols. folio, 1657 (with Castell’s Lexicon), does not keep up its price.
Seaman, 1676, £8, 2s. Bernard, 1698, £10. Duke of Grafton (without Castell), £38, 13s. Edwards, £61. Heath, £73, 10s. (bought by the Earl of Essex). H. Perkins, 1873, £19, 15s. At the Wimpole library sale (Lord Chancellor Hardwicke), 1888, a copy of Walton without Castell fetched £9, 5s. The Ashburnham copy, which had belonged to Henry, Duke of Gloucester, fourth son of Charles I., with his name on the binding, which was in blue morocco, sold in 1897 for £28.