I do not know that it is necessary to say any thing about the old churches of St. Stephen and St. Martin: except that the former is supposed to be the most ancient. It was built of stone, and said to be placed upon a spot in which was a Roman fort--the materials of which served for a portion of the present building. St. Martin's was erected in 1381 upon a much finer plan than that of St. Arbogaste--which is said to have been built in the middle of the twelfth century. Among the churches, now no longer wholly appropriated to sacred uses, is that called the New Temple--attached to which is the Public Library. The service in this church is according to the Protestant persuasion. I say this Church is not wholly devoted to religious rites: for what was once the choir, contains, at bottom, the BOOKS belonging to the public University; and, at top, those which were bequeathed to the same establishment by Schoepflin. The general effect--both from the pavement below, and the gallery above--is absolutely transporting. Shall I tell you wherefore? This same ancient choir--now devoted to printed tomes--contains some lancet-shaped windows of stained glass of the most beautiful and exquisite pattern and colours!... such as made me wholly forget those at Toul, and almost those at St. Owen. Even the stained glass of the cathedral, here, was recollected ... only to suffer by the comparison! It should seem that the artist had worked with alternate dissolutions of amethyst, topaz, ruby, garnet, and emerald. Look at the first three windows, to the left on entering, about an hour before sun-set:--they seem to fill the whole place with a preternatural splendor! The pattern is somewhat of a Persian description, and I should apprehend the antiquity of the workmanship to be scarcely exceeding three hundred years. Yet I must be allowed to say, that these exquisitely sparkling, if not unrivalled, specimens of stained glass, do not belong to a place now wholly occupied by books. Could they not be placed in the chapel of St. Lawrence, or of St. Catharine, in the cathedral?
As I am now at the close of my account of ecclesiastical edifices--and as this last church happens to be closely connected with a building of a different description--namely, The PUBLIC LIBRARY--you will allow me to colophonise my first Strasbourg epistle with some account of the contents of this library.
The amiable and excellent younger Schweighæuser, who is head librarian, and one of the Professors in this Gymnase, was so obliging as to lend me the key of the library, to which I had access at all hours of the day. The public hours are from two till four, Sundays excepted. I own that this accommodation was extremely agreeable and convenient to me. I was under no restraint, and thus left to my own conscience alone not to abuse the privilege conceded. That conscience has never given me one "prick" since the conclusion of my researches.[215]
My researches were usually carried on above stairs, at the table where the visitors sat. Of the MSS. I did not deem it worth while to take any particular account; but there was one, so choice, so splendid, so curious, so interesting, and in such an extraordinary state of preservation, that you may as well know it is called the famous Hortus Deliciarum of Herarde, Abbess of Landsberg. The subjects are miscellaneous; and most elaborately represented by illuminations. Battles, sieges, men tumbling from ladders which reach to the sky--conflagrations, agriculture--devotion, penitence--revenge, murder,--in short, there is hardly a passion, animating the human breast, but what is represented here. The figures in armour have nasals, and are in quilted mail: and I think there can be little doubt but that both the text and the decorations are of the latter end of the twelfth century. It is so perfect in all its parts, and so rich of its particular description, that it not only well merits the labour which has been bestowed upon it by its recent editor Mr. Engleheardt, but it may probably vie with any similar production in Europe.[216]
However, of other MSS. you will I am sure give me credit for having examined the celebrated Depositions in the law-suit between Fust and Gutemberg--so intimately connected with the history of early printing, and so copiously treated upon by recent bibliographers.[217] I own that I inspected these depositions (in the German language) with no ordinary curiosity. They are doubtless most precious; yet I cannot help suspecting that the character or letter is not of the time; namely of 1440. It should rather seem to be of the sixteenth century. Perhaps at the commencement of it. These documents are written in a small folio volume, in one uniform hand--a kind of law-gothic--from beginning to end. The volume has the following title on the exterior; "Dicta Testium magni consilij Anno dni mo. cccco. Tricesimo nono. The paper is strong and thick, and has a pair of scales for the water-mark. The younger Schweighæuser thinks my doubts about its age not well founded; conceiving it to be a coeval document. But this does not affect its authenticity, as it may have been an accurate and attested copy--of an original which has now perished. Certainly the whole book has very much the air of a Copy: and besides, would not the originals have been upon separate rolls of parchment?[218]
I now come to the PRINTED BOOKS: of which, according to the MS. catalogue by Oberlin, (who was head librarian here) there are not fewer than four thousand three hundred, printed before the year 1520:--and of these, again, upwards of eleven hundred without dates. This, at first hearing, sounds, what the curious would call, promising; but I must say, that of the dated and dateless books, printed before the year 1500, which I took down, and carefully opened--and this number could not be less than four or five hundred--there was scarcely one in five which repaid the toil of examination: and this too, with a thermometer frequently standing at eighty-nine and ninety, in the shade in the open air! Fortunately for my health, and for the exertion of physical strength, the public library happened to be very cool--while all the windows were opened, and through the openings was frequently heard the sound of young voices, practising the famous Martin Luther's Hymn--as it is called. This latter was particularly grateful to me. I heard the master first sing a stave, and he was in general accurately followed by his pupils--who displayed the well-known early tact of Germans in the science of music. But to revert to the early printed books.
FIRST GERMAN BIBLE; supposed to have been printed by Mentelin; without date: Folio. Towards the latter half of this copy, there are some interesting embellishments, in outline, in a bistre tint. The invention and execution of many of them are admirable. Where they are coloured, they lose their proper effect. An illumination, at the beginning of the book of Esther, bears the unequivocal date of 1470: but the edition was certainly four or five years earlier. This Bible is considered to be the earliest German version: but it is not so.
LATIN BIBLE, BY MENTELIN: in his second character. This Bible I saw for the first time; but Panzer is decidedly wrong in saying that the types resemble the larger ones in Mentelin's Valerius Maximus, Virgil and Terence: they may be nearly as tall, but are not so broad and large. From a ms. note, the 402d leaf appears to be wanting. This copy is a singularly fine one. It is white, and large, and with rough edges throughout. It is also in its first binding, of wood.
LATIN BIBLE; printed by Eggesteyn. Here are several editions, and a duplicate of the first--which is printed in the second smallest character of Eggesteyn.[219] The two copies of this first edition are pretty much alike for size and condition: but one of them, with handsome illuminations at the beginning of each volume, has the precious coeval ms. date of 1468--as represented by the fac-simile of it in Schoepflin's Vind. Typog. Tab. V. Probably the date of the printing might have been at least a year earlier.
LATIN BIBLE: printed by Jenson, 1479. Folio. A fine copy, upon paper. The first page is illuminated.