and then adds:
"He died 14 April, 1345. Holcot died in 1349."
There appears to be some confusion about the editions, also, of the Philobiblon. There is an edition, 4to. Par., apud Gaspar. Philippum, 1500; also edit. secund. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1598; and it is printed in the Philolog. Epist. ex Bibl. Melch. Goldasti, ed. Lipsiæ, 1674. But prior to all these is the edition "printed at Cologne, 1473," from which the translation is made, and which is described by Watt as "the editio princeps, and a work of uncommon rarity."
Query. Why does the Oxford edition of 1598 call itself "editio secundo?" If the Paris edit. of 1500 so far differ from that of 1473 as to entitle it to be considered a different work, had the second MS. passed through Holcot's hands?
J. SANSOM.
The translation of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, by Mr. Inglis, printed in 1832 for the late Mr. Rodd, is an unsatisfactory performance. The version is bald and spiritless, and some of the best passages of the original are rendered in language that does no justice to the author's meaning. His style is so peculiar, so allusive, and so full of metaphor and quotation, and the work is luminous with "the sparks of so many sciences," that a good translation is a desideratum.
I may inform your correspondent that one has lately been prepared and is announced for publication, with a memoir of the illustrious bishop. I may add that the Philobiblon has been six times printed: the last edition, if I remember rightly, was by Dr. James: but some old MS. copies of this remarkable treatise on the Love of Books exist, with some of which the text used by the translator should be collated. But, of the publication announced, it would not become me to say anything more, as the biographer is
Your faithful servant,
W.S.G.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.