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The new Public Libraries Bill, which received the Royal Assent in the last days of 1919, should do much to assist the development of what is already an important educative force. We look forward in time to a national library system, with a central clearing house of books and a free interchange between the individual libraries. It is surely only in this way that the multifarious needs of an increasingly alert and well-educated society can adequately be met.
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Tuesday, March 23rd, is the date fixed for the sale of the second portion of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson's collection of illuminated manuscripts. Thirty-four lots are to be sold—twenty-six MSS. and eight fifteenth-century books, printed on vellum and more or less illuminated, "which mark the transition from writing to printing ... and are an indispensable addition to any complete collection of medieval illumination."
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The first fourteen lots are English manuscripts. A twelfth-century book, Hegesippus de excidio Judeorum, is remarkable for its contemporary binding, one of the very few of such bindings which have come down to us. Lot XL. is a fourteenth-century Psalter, which appears to have belonged to John of Gaunt, and subsequently to Henry VI. A similar Psalter, evidently by the same hand, though of a rather later date, exists in the library of Exeter College. These two Psalters are, in Mr. Yates Thompson's opinion, the high-water mark of English illumination, being perhaps second only to the St. Omer Psalter.
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The eight printed books range in date from 1466 to 1498, and include a copy of the excessively rare Institutiones of Justinian, printed at Mainz by P. Schöffer, 1468. The twelve MSS. which conclude the sale are of French and Italian origin and have all belonged to famous owners. Among them is an early fifteenth-century MS. of Boccaccio's Des Cleres et nobles femmes, illustrated by miniatures of that Parisian school of illuminators who "almost renounced the use of gold for backgrounds and made use of bright and rich colours in broad masses." The book belonged to the Admiral de Coëtivy, who was killed at the siege of Cherbourg in 1450. Mr. Yates Thompson quotes an extract from one of the Admiral's letters, which proves him to have been an ardent lover of his books. "Envelopez bien mes livres," he writes to his servants, giving directions for the packing and dispatching of his library, "et les faites enfoncer en pippes (casks) en et par manière que s'ilz cheoient en l'eaue, qu'ilz ne se puissent mouller ne gaster en aucune manière."
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