aparayle=apparatus.
P. 219. Young.—T—n=Tonson.
P. 220. Ferriar.—The first edition of this poem was issued as a quarto pamphlet in 1809. It is reprinted in the second volume of the second edition of Ferriar's Illustrations of Sterne, and other Essays, 1812, with some 140 additional lines.
'He, whom chief the laughing Muses own' is Aristophanes; the lines that follow refer to the fire of London. D—n=Dryden.
'On one of these occasions quite imperfect!"'—J. H. Burton. The Book-Hunter.
Ferriar mentions incidentally most of the famous printers of olden time. Aldine editions were those printed by Aldo Manuzio and his family in Venice from 1490 to 1597. The Elzevir family became famous on account of its duodecimos.
P. 225. Beresford.—Bibliosophia; or Book-wisdom, by the Rev. J. Beresford, was written as 'a feeling remonstrance against the prose work, lately published by the Reverend T. F. Dibdin under the title of Bibliomania; or Book-madness', quoted in successive pages.
P. 226. d'Israeli.—The verse is imitated from the Latin of 'Henry Rantzau, a Danish gentleman, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading', who 'discovers his taste and ardour in the following elegant effusion'.
P. 227. d'Israeli.—'An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled no doubt by my facetiously, he translates "mettant comme on l'a très judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef". The book, and the author alluded to, quite escaped him.'—I. d'Israeli. Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania, note.
P. 228. Dibdin.—Magliabechi was born at Florence, October 29, 1633. 'He had never learned to read; and yet he was perpetually poring over the leaves of old books that were used in his master's shop. A bookseller, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who had often observed this, and knew the boy could not read, asked him one day "what he meant by staring so much on printed paper?" Magliabechi said that he did not know how it was, but that he loved it of all things. The consequence was that he was received, with tears of joy in his eyes, into the bookseller's shop; and hence rose, by a quick succession, into posts of literary honour, till he became librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.'