A PAGE FROM HENRICI BULLOCI ORATIO, THE FIRST CAMBRIDGE BOOK
The style of the oration is even more lavish than the ceremonial preparations. "Scarcely from the obsequious senates of Tiberius and Domitian did the incense of flattery rise in denser volume or in coarser fumes."[7]
Bradshaw pointed out that the type used for the printing of the Oratio appears to be quite new. Many of the lines are wavy and irregular and there are no woodcut initials or ornaments of any kind. The second imprint, at the end of the book, runs: Impressa est haec oratiūcula Cantabrigiae, per me Ioannem Siberch, post natum saluatorem, Millesimo quingentesimo uicesimoprimo. Mense Februario. A second impression was printed a few months later and issued with Siberch's third book.
Four libraries possess copies: the British Museum; the Bodleian Library; Lambeth Palace; and Archbishop Marsh's Library, St Patrick's, Dublin. Cambridge unfortunately has no copy.
ii The second Cambridge book is the rarest of all those printed by Siberch, only one copy (John Selden's, bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in 1659) having been preserved.
It contains a letter addressed by a 'certain faithful Christian' to 'all Christians' and a sermon of Augustine De miseria ac brevitate vitae, of which the full title may be read in the facsimile. In addition to its uniqueness, the book has a further interest in that the Greek motto on the title-page was printed from the first genuine moveable Greek type used in England. Woodcuts depicting scenes from the Last Judgment and probably copied from a German Book of Hours are also used on the title-page.