P. 5. Of the public collections in England, those of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, at Oxford, of which very little remains, and of Sir John Gyllarde, Prior of the Calendaries' Gild in Bristol (founded before 1451), appear to be the pioneers. For the latter the Bishop of Worcester is said to have provided, in 1464, a receptacle or building; but the collection was destroyed by fire in 1466.
P. 5. Illuminated MSS.—A great store of information is capable of being collected on the subject of the embellishing and finishing processes which MSS. underwent when the scribe had done his part. Among the Paston Letters occurs a bill from Thomas (the) Limner of Bury St. Edmunds to Sir John Howard, afterward Duke of Norfolk, in 1467, for illuminating several books, and we have also one of Antoine Verard of Paris, "Enlumineur du Roy," in 1493 for similar work executed for the Comte d'Angoulême by artists in the printer's employment.
P. 7. Circulating Libraries.—There was a library of this class at Dunfermline in 1711 and at Edinburgh in 1725. When Benjamin Franklin came to London, there was nothing of the kind. A bookseller named Wright established one about 1740, and it was kept up by his successors. Sion College was limited in its lending range to the London clergy.
P. 9. Add the Le Stranges of Hunstanton to the East Anglian collectors.
P. 9. Kent as a Hunting-ground for Books in Old Days.—Flockton of Canterbury it was who once sold Marlowe's Dido, 1594, for 2s. He was a contemporary of William Hutton, the Birmingham bookseller. This may have been the very copy which formerly belonged to Henry Oxinden of Barham, near Canterbury, and passed in succession into the hands of Isaac Reed, George Steevens, the Duke of Roxburghe, Sir Egerton Brydges, and Mr. Heber. The price charged by Flockton, however, was fairly extravagant in comparison with that given by John Henderson, the actor, for the copy which subsequently belonged to J. P. Kemble and the Duke of Devonshire—fourpence—probably the original published price.
P. 10. Bristol Houses.—Add Strong. Strong's catalogues for 1827-1828 are now before me, and describe 10,000 items. No such stock has been kept at Bristol since. Jefferies had in former days some very remarkable books on sale—Caxtons included; and Kerslake and George could shew you volumes worth your notice and money, whoever you might be. Now, alas! you have to leave the city as empty as you entered it.
P. 18. Loss of Old Books.—The fate of a heavy percentage of our earlier books—of the earlier books of every people—is curiously and mournfully readable in the illiterate bucolic scrawls, doing duty for autographs and inscriptions, which tell, only too plainly, how such property slowly but surely passed out of sight and existence.
P. 19. Old Libraries.—Add Fraser of Lovat, Boswell of Auchinleck, and Fountaine of Narford.
P. 25. Rolls of Book-Collectors.—Rather say 5000 names.
P. 29. Spoliation of Libraries.—A precious volume of early English tracts was not very long since offered at an auction, which had been stolen from Peterborough Cathedral, and another, which constituted one of the chief treasures of Sion College.