The APOSTLES CREED. In German. Only seven leaves, but pasted together--so that, the work is an opistographised production. This is a very rare, and indeed unique volume; and utterly unknown to bibliographers. Each cut is about the same size, and there are twelve in the whole. There is no other text but the barbarous letters introduced at the bottom of the cut.
MIRABILIA URBIS ROMÆ. Another generally unknown xylographic performance; printed in the German language: being a small quarto. I have secured a duplicate of this singular volume for Lord Spencer's library, intending to describe it in the Ædes Althorpianæ.[53]
The LIFE OF ST. MEINRAT; in German, in a series of wood-cut representations. This Saint was murdered by two men, whose Christian names were Peter and Richard, and who were always afterwards haunted by a couple of crows. There is a German introduction of two pages, preceding the cuts. These cuts are forty-eight in number. At the thirtieth cut, the Saint is murdered; the earlier series representing the leading events of his life. The thirty-first cut represents the murderers running away; an angel being above them; In the thirty-second cut, they continue to be pursued. The thirty-third cut thus describes them; the German and the version being as follow; "Hie furt man die mord vo danne un wil schleisse vn redern die rappen volget alle zit hin nach vn stechet sy." "Here they bring the murderers, in order to drag them upon the hurdle to execution, and to break them upon the wheel. The crows follow and peck them."
In the thirty-fourth cut Peter and Richard are tied and dragged at the heels, of a horse. In the thirty-fifth they are broken upon the wheel.
The Calendar of Regiomontanus--A decidedly xylographical production; the first date is 1475, the last 1525. A fine sound copy, but cropt. In a duplicate copy the name of the mathematician is given at the end.
CANTICA CANTICORUM. First edition. A beautiful copy; cropt, but clean. Sixteen cuts, uncoloured. The leaves have been evidently pasted together. Another copy, coloured; but of a later date. In fine preservation. A third copy; apparently the first edition; washed all over with a slight brown tint, and again coarsely coloured in parts: This copy singularly enough, is intermixed with portions of the first edition (as I take it) of the Apocalypse: very clumsily coloured. A fourth copy, also, as I conceive, of the first edition; rather heavily coloured. The back grounds are uncoloured. This is larger than the other copies.
DEFENSIO IMMACULATÆ CONCEPTIONIS B.M.V. Without place; of the date of 1470. This is a Latin treatise; having four cuts in each page, with the exception of the first two pages, which exhibit only Saints Ambrose, Austin, Jerom and Gregory. At the bottom of the figure of St. Austin, second column, first page, it is thus written; "f.w. 1470." In the whole sixteen pages. The style of art is similar to that used in the Antichrist.[54] Of this tract, evidently xylographical, I never saw or heard of another copy.
The foregoing list may be said to comprise the chief rarities among the BLOCK BOOKS in the Public Library at Munich; and if I am not mistaken, they will afford no very unserviceable supplement to the celebrated work of Heineken upon the same subject. From this department in the art of printing, we descend naturally to that which is connected with metal types; and accordingly I proceed to lay before you another list of Book- Rarities--taken from the earlier printed volumes in this most extraordinary Library.
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]