The number of lexicons and dictionaries is large, and among the latter may be found all the rare old English works so valuable for reference. Three bookcases are devoted to serials, which contain many of the standard reviews and magazines. One case is appropriated to voyages and travels, in which are found many valuable ones. In another are upward of one hundred volumes of table-talk, and numerous works on the fine arts and bibliography. One bookcase is devoted to choice works on America, among which is Sebastian Munster's "Cosmographia Novum Orbis Regionum," published in folio at Basle in 1537, which contains full notes of Columbus, Vespucci, and other early voyagers. Another department contains a curious catalogue of authorities relating to Crime and Punishment; a liberal space is devoted to Facetiæ another to American Poetry, and also one to Natural and Moral Philosophy. The standard works of Fiction, Biography, Theology, and the Drama are all represented.
There is a fair collection of classical authors, many of which are of Aldine and Elzevir editions. Among the rarities in this department is a folio copy of Plautus, printed at Venice in 1518, and illustrated with wood-cuts. The true name of this writer was T. Maccius Plautus. He was of humble origin, and is supposed to have once been a slave. He lived at Rome about one hundred and eighty years before the beginning of the Christian era, and wrote a number of plays which obtained great celebrity in the time of their author, and continued to be looked upon as models of this species of composition for many centuries after his decease. Twenty of his plays are extant, which are distinguished for the purity of their style and the exquisite humor of their characters, although Horace blames him for the coarseness of his wit. Gellius, who held him in much esteem, says that he was distinguished for his poetry upon the stage at the time that Cato was for his eloquence in the forum. The first edition of his works was printed at Venice, in 1472, by Merula. The edition of 1518, in this collection, is so rare as not to be mentioned by Brunet, De Bure, or Michael Mattaire. There is also a folio edition of Sallust, published at Venice in 1511, with wood-cuts; an excellent copy of Statius, published at Venice in 1498; and a translation from the Greek of Plutarch into Latin by Guarini, of Verona, surnamed Veronese, who was the first of a family celebrated for their literary attainments, and who is frequently confounded with Battista Guarini, the author of "Il Pastor Fido." Guarini Veronese was the grammarian of his day, and a strong advocate for the preservation of the Greek language in its purity. He was an assiduous student, and spent considerable time at Constantinople in copying the manuscripts of the best models in Grecian literature. Accompanied by his precious freight, he set sail for Italy, but was shipwrecked, and lost all of his laboriously acquired treasure, which produced such an effect upon him as to change his hair from a dark color to white in a single night. The world is indebted to him for the first edition of the "Commentaries" of Servius on Virgil, and likewise for the recovery of a number of manuscript poems of Catullus, which he found mouldering and almost obliterated in a garret. With the assistance of his father, he applied himself to the task of deciphering them, and, with the exception of a few verses, reproduced them entirely.
The collection is well supplied with editions of Virgil. In addition to Ogilby's folio, with Hollar and Fairthorne's plates, is a choice copy of the illustrated edition in three folio volumes, and the very rare fac-simile Florentine edition of 1741 (Ex cod. Mediceo Laurentiano). This edition is now so scarce that a copy was recently sold in London for fifty pounds sterling.
The collection also contains a copy of the Vatican edition of Terence, in Latin and Italian, after the text of Heinsius, with numerous illustrations of ancient masks, etc., published at Rome in two folio volumes in 1767; an excellent copy of the best edition of Suetonius, with commentaries by Baraldi, printed in Roman letter at Paris in 1512; "Titi Livii," published at Nuremberg in folio, in 1514, in its original wood binding; Livy's Roman History, published in 1600—the first English edition; "Diogenes Laërtius de Vitis et Dogmatibus Philosophorum," published at Amsterdam in 1692; a vellum black-letter copy of Eusebius, of the rare Venetian edition of 1483; Boëtius, published in 1570; the two original editions of the eminent critic, Justus Lipsius; the Antwerp edition of Seneca, published in 1570; the same work in folio, in 1613; and Stephen's edition of Sophocles, published in 1518, which is an admirable specimen of Greek typography.
Among the Italian poets is a copy of Dante, in folio, published in 1497, with most remarkable cuts; and the "Commentaries" of Landino, the most highly valued of all the old commentators upon this poet; also an excellent large-paper copy of Tasso, in the original text, with Morghen's exquisite line engravings, published in 1820, in two folio volumes.
Cervantes appears to have been quite a favorite with the possessor of this library, who has the excellent Spanish edition of 1738, with Van der Gucht's beautiful plates and many inserted illustrations, in four volumes; the quarto edition, published at La Hayé, in 1746, containing thirty-one plates from Coypel's designs; Smollett's quarto edition of 1755, in two volumes, with plates by Grignion after designs by Hayman; a folio edition by Shelton, with many curious engravings, published in 1652, besides several modern editions.
In the historical department is a fine edition of Montfaucon's works in twenty folio volumes, including the "Monarchie Française"; the original edition of Dugdale's works, including the "Monasticon" with the old designs; Boissardus's "Romanæ Urbis Antiquitates," in three volumes, folio; and a large number of the old Chroniclers, in their earliest and rarest editions. Among these latter are two copies of the very scarce "Polychronicon," by Raulph Higden, the monk of Chester: the one in black-letter folio, printed in 1495, by Wynkyn de Worde, is wanting in the last page; the other, printed in 1527 by Peter Traveris, and ornamented with wood-cuts, is in perfect order. Both of these volumes have marginal notes, probably in the handwriting of the day.
The collection is particularly rich in copies of original editions of old English poetry, among which are the works of Samuel Daniel, 1602; Sandy's Ovid, published in 1626; Lucan, by Sir Arthur Gorges, published in 1614, noticed in Colin Clout, and personified as Alcyon in Spenser's "Daphnaida"; "Arte of Englysh Poesie," with a fine portrait of Queen Elizabeth, published in 1589; Quarle's works; Harrington's translation of "Orlando Furioso," folio, published in 1591, with plates in compartments; Sir W. Davenant's poems, published in quarto in 1651, with an original poem in the author's handwriting, never published; copies of the editions of 1613 and 1648 of George Wither's poems, and Chapman's "Seven Bookes of the Iliad of Homer," published in 1598.
This latter writer, who was born in Kent, in England, in 1559, was one of the coterie formed by Daniel, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, and others, and lived upon terms of great good-fellowship with England's greatest bard. He had no mean reputation as a dramatic writer, and was, besides, highly respected as a gentleman. His social position appears to have been an excellent one, and his urbanity of manner such as to endear him to all his friends. His intimate association with Shakespeare seems to establish the fact that in his own day the great poet occupied a prominent place in society, and was as duly appreciated in his own time, as Johnson and Pope in theirs. A monument was planned and erected over the remains of Chapman by his personal friend, Inigo Jones, on the south side of St. George's in the Fields; but in the changes which have disturbed the repose of those who were consigned to their last resting-place in that burial-ground, the monument has been destroyed.
This department possesses the black-letter folios of Chaucer in 1542 (the first complete edition), that of 1561, and that of 1598, all of which are now quite scarce; the folio editions of Milton of 1692 and 1695, possessing the old but characteristic engravings, as well as the quarto edition in two volumes, published at the expense of the Earl of Bath; Touson's edition of 1751, with plates; a large-paper copy of the edition of 1802, which contains Westall's plates; and Martin's edition of 1826, enriched by twenty-four original and beautiful engravings; likewise the first folio edition of Spenser's "Fairy Queen," published in 1609, and Fairfax's Tasso, published in 1624.