P. 32. The bulk of the books of Mr. Samuel Sandars were left to the University Library, Cambridge, which has since acquired those of the late Lord Acton.
P. 33. Lincoln Cathedral Library.—Besides the Honeywood books sold to Dibdin, the Dean and Chapter have suffered others to stray from their homes. A notice is before me of one, a large folio on vellum, containing tracts of a theological complexion, chiefly by an Oxford doctor, Robert of Leicester, which was presented, as a coeval inscription apprises us, by Thomas Driffield, formerly Chancellor of the Diocese, in 1422 to the new library of the cathedral.
P. 34. Provincial Libraries.—Of the books at Bamborough Castle, a catalogue was printed at Durham in 1799. Some of the books at York Minster appear to have been gifts from Archbishop Mathews. At Colchester they are fortunate in possessing the library of Archbishop Harsnet.
P. 35. Marlowe's Edward II., 1594.—Possibly obtained by the Landgraf of Hesse during his visit to London in 1611. This is mentioned by me in my Shakespear Monograph, 1903.
P. 37. Private Libraries.—In the case of private collections, we have to distinguish between those of an ancestral character, insensibly accumulated from generation to generation without any fixed or preconcerted plan, and such as have been formed by or for wealthy individuals in the course of a single life, if not of a few years, on some general principle, with or without an eye to cost. Under either of these conditions the motive is usually personal, and the ultimate transfer in some instances to a public institution an accident or afterthought.
P. 38. Harleian Library.—The taste of the Harley family for books dated from the time of Charles I. Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Castle, is credited with the possession of "an extraordinary library of manuscript and printed books, which had been collected from one descent to another." The house was besieged and burned in 1643, and these literary and bibliographical treasures probably perished with it. But his grandson, the first Earl of Oxford, restored the library; and we all know that the second earl, who survived till 1741, elevated it to the rank of the first private collection in England, while he unconsciously sacrificed it to the incidence of a languid and falling market.
P. 42. Mr. William Henry Miller of Craigentinny was originally a solicitor in Edinburgh.
P. 65. Books of Emblems.—Besides those described is the translation executed by Thomas Combe, and licensed in 1593, of the Théâtre des Bons Engins of Guillaume de la Perriere, of which no perfect copy of any edition had been seen till the writer met with one of 1614 among the Burton-Constable books.
P. 103. Books Appreciable on Special Grounds.—Among these are—Pennant's Tour in Scotland, 1769, and White's Selborne, 1785. Everybody is aware that there are better works on Scotland than Pennant's, and better accounts of birds, those of Selborne included, than White's. But we desire the two heirlooms, as their authors left them, pure and simple. We prefer not to have to disentangle the two pieces of eighteenth century workmanship from the editorial and artistic improvements which have overlaid them. A much-edited writer becomes a partner in a limited company without a vote. His pages are converted by degrees into an arena where others commend him above his deserts, or what might have been his wishes, while here and there he finds a commentator, whose aim is to convince you how superior a job he would have made of it had it been left to him.
P. 109. Translations.—It is remarkable that Aulus Gellius makes the same complaint as is embodied in the text, about the lame versions of Latin writers from the Greek.