The discrepancy between these writers, on another important point, is not less remarkable than their agreement in error, as above-described. Pits says Caxton flourished in 1483; Fuller, that he died in 1486; and Tanner, that he flourished about 1483, and died in 1491. Shakspere died in 1616: in what year did he flourish?
BOLTON CORNEY.
Minor Notes.
A Hint to Catalogue Makers.
—Among the many excellent schemes proposed for the arrangement and diffusion of common means of information, one simple one appears to have been passed over by your many and excellent correspondents. I will briefly illustrate an existing deficiency by an example.
While collecting materials for a projected critical commentary on the Timæus of Plato, I was surprised to find the commentary of Chalcidius wholly wanting in our library at Christ Church. Subsequently (when I did not want it, having secured a better edition at the end of Fabricius' Hippolytus) I discovered a fine copy of Badius Ascensius' editio princeps, bound up with Aulus Gellius and Macrobius, but utterly ignored in the Christ Church catalogue.
This instance shows the necessity of carefully examining the insides of books, as well as the backs and title-pages, during the operation of cataloguing. Our public libraries are rich in instances of a similar oversight, and many an important and recherché work is unknown, or acquires a conventional rarity, through its concealment at the end of a less valuable, but more bulky, treatise.
I have been aroused to the propriety of publishing this suggestion, by purchasing, "dog cheap", a volume labelled Petrus Crinitus, but containing Hegesippus (i.e. the pseudo-Ambrosian translation from Josephus) and the Latin grammarians at the end, all by the afore-mentioned printer.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.