[548] “John Baskerville proposes, by the advice and assistance of several learned men, to print from the Cambridge Edition, corrected with all possible care, an elegant edition of Virgil. The work will be printed in quarto, on a very fine writing Royal paper, and with the above letter. The price of the Volume in sheets will be one guinea, no part of which will be required till the Book is delivered. It will be put to press as soon as the number of subscribers shall amount to five hundred, whose names will be prefixt to the work. All persons who are inclined to encourage the undertaking, are desired to send their names to John Baskerville in Birmingham, who will give specimens of the work to all who are desirous of seeing them. Subscriptions are also taken in, and specimens delivered by Messieurs R. and J. Dodsley, Booksellers in Pall Mall, London.”

[549] Of the two copies in the possession of Mr. S. Timmins, one is printed on very fine banknote paper, and the other, more heavily, on a coarse brown.

[550] Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Æneis. Birminghamiæ Typis Johannis Baskerville. 1757. 4to. As Baskerville reprinted this work in 1771 with the old date 1757 on the title-page, it is necessary to note that, in the genuine edition, among other peculiarities, the 10th and 11th Books of the Æneid are headed “Liber Decimus. Æneidos”, and “Liber Undecimus. Æneidos”, whereas in the re-impression they appear, uniform with the other titles, “Æneidos Liber Decimus.” “Æneidos Liber Undecimus.” A Virgil was printed in 8vo, in 1766.

[551] “I have always considered this beautiful production as one of the most finished specimens of typography” (Dibdin, Introduction to the Classics, 2nd ed. II, 335).

[552] “My neighbour Baskerville at the close of this month (March 1757) publishes his fine edition of Virgil; it will for type and paper be a perfect curiosity” (Shenstone’s Letters and Works, 1791, Letter 88).

[553] Other type was used for this work.

[554] Lit. Anec., ii, 411.

[555] “Η Καινη Διαθηκη”. Novum Testamentum juxta exemplar Millianum. Typis Joannis Baskerville. Oxonii e Typographeo Clarendoniano. 1763. Sumptibus Academiæ, 4to and 8vo.

[556] Some of the Punches were exhibited by the University Press at the Caxton Exhibition in 1877. Since then, thanks to the energy of the present Controller, Mr. Horace Hart, to whom we are indebted for the above extracts and specimens, the matrices of the fount have come to light as well as the punches and matrices of the two-line letters and figures belonging to it. These were exhibited at the British Association Meeting at Birmingham in August 1886, being catalogued as follows:—