I have a note, and should be glad to put a query, on the subject of a small octavo volume, of which the title is, "Indicis Librorum Expurgandorum, in studiosorum gratiam confecti, tomus primus; in quo quinquaginta auctorum libri præ cæteris desiderati emendantur. Per Fr. Io. Mariam Brasichellensem, sacri Palatii Apostolici Magistrum, in unum corpus redactus, et publicæ commoditati editus. Superiorum permissu, Romæ, 1607." Speaking of this index, Mendham says:—
"We now advance to perhaps the most extraordinary and scarcest of all this class of publications. It is the first, and last, and incomplete Expurgatory Index, which Rome herself has ventured to present to the world, and which, soon after the deed was done, she condemned and withdrew.... After a selection of some of the rules in the last edition of the Expurgatory Index, the editor in his address informs the reader, that, understanding the expurgation of books to be not the least important part of his office, and wishing to make books more accessible to students than they were without expurgation, he had availed himself of the labours of his predecessors, and, adding his own, issued the present volume, intending that a second, which was in great readiness, should quickly follow; (but, alas! it was not allowed so to do). Dated Rome, from the Apostolic Palace, 1607.... Nothing more remains on the subject of this Index, than to report what is contained in the inaccessible work of Zobelius, Notitia Indicis, &c., but repeated from by Struvius or Ingler, his editor, in the Bibliotheca Hist. Lit.—that Brasichellen or Guanzellus was assisted in the work by Thomas Malvenda, a Dominican; that another edition was printed at Bergomi in 1608; that when a fresh one was in preparation at Antwerp in 1612, it was suppressed; and that, finally, the author, like Montanus, found his place in a future index."
The second volume promised never appeared. The work, however, became exceedingly scarce; which induced Serpilius, a priest of Ratisbon, in 1723, to print an edition so closely resembling the original, as to admit of its being represented as the same. The imposition, however, being detected, another edition was prepared by Hesselius, a printer of Altorf, in 1745; and then the remaining copies of the former threw off their mask, and appeared with a new title-page as a second edition. The original and counterfeit editions of this peculiar work are sufficiently alike to deceive any person, who should not examine them in literal juxtaposition; but upon such examination, the deception is easily apparent. The one, however, may be fairly considered as a fac-simile of the other. (See the Rev. Joseph Mendham's Literary Policy of the Church of Rome exhibited, &c., chap. iii. pp. 116-128.) Mendham adds, that "there is a copy of the original edition" of this index "in the Bodleian Library, Oxford," presented to Sir Thomas Bodley by the Earl of Essex, together with the Belgic, Portuguese, Spanish and Neapolitan Indices, all which originally belonged to the library of Jerom Osorius, but had become part of the spoil of the expedition against Cadiz in 1596. I am acquainted with the Bodleian copy of the original edition of this rare work; but I wish to put the Query—Where is a copy of the counterfeit edition of Serpilius to be seen, either with its original title-page, or as it appeared afterwards, when the mask was thrown off? I am not aware that any one of our public libraries (rich as several of them are in such treasures) contains a copy of this curious little impostor.
J. Sansom.
8. Park Place, Oxford, May 29. 1850.
Queries
SIR GEORGE BUC.
Can any of your readers inform me on what authority Sir George Buc, the poet, and Master of the Revels in the reign of James I., is recorded by his biographers to have been a native of Lincolnshire, and to have died in 1623? In the Biogr. Britann., and repeated by Chalmers, it is stated that he was born in Lincolnshire, in the sixteenth century, descended from the Bucs, or Buckes, of West Stanton and Herthill, in Yorkshire, and Melford Hall, in Suffolk, and knighted by James I. the day before his coronation, July 13, 1603. Mr. Collier, in his Annals of the Stage, vol. i., p. 374, says, that on the death of Edmund Tylney, in October, 1610, he succeeded him as Master of the Revels, and wrote his Treatise on the Office of the Revels prior to 1615. He also says,—
"In the spring of 1622, Sir George Buc appears to have been so ill and infirm, as to be unable to discharge the duties of his situation, and on the 2nd of May in that year, a patent was made out, appointing Sir John Astley Master of the Revels."—Biogr. Britann., p. 419.