ART. IV.-Typographical Antiquities; or the History of Printing in England, Scotland, and Ireland; containing Memoirs of our Ancient Printers, and a Register of the Books printed by them. Begun by the late JOSEPH AMES, F. R. & A.SS., considerably augmented by WM. HERBERT, and now greatly enlarged, &c. by the Rev. THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. London, John Murray, Vol. III. 1816. 4to. pp. 616.

THE publication within the last month of this (the third) volume of Mr. Dibdin's laborious work, gives us an opportunity of noticing that and the two former, which appeared respectively in the years 1810 and 1812, and of which no mention has yet been made.

All must allow that the editor of this great undertaking is a man of profound learning in the science of bibliography: he has devoted his life to the study, and has possessed facilities in the acquisition of knowledge, which few of his predecessors, or competitors, have had the good fortune to enjoy. Independently of the invaluable library of Earl Spencer, with which he is officially connected, he has had access to all the collections of curious and rare books in the three kingdoms; and with these advantages, it would indeed be extraordinary, even if common abilities, seconded by moderate industry, could not most importantly illustrate the subject of British typography. We are not among those, however, who are accustomed to look upon Mr. Dibdin as a man of pre-eminent talents-certainly not as a man of an original mind; and after often hearing him from the pulpit, and reading him from the press, we have come to the opinion, (in which we are aware that some will differ from us,) that, though learned, his learning is of a very inapplicable, and comparatively useless kind; and that his taste has been depraved from a natural love of the beautiful, to an artificial admiration of the curious. In the study of antiquities, it not unfrequently happens that men begin the pursuit from the hope of discovering something intrinsic ally excellent, and are led on from step to step, until at last they lose sight of their original object, the unfolding of concealed beauty, and it degenerates into a mere mechanical operation, which consists in the pointing out of insignificant peculiarities. That this is the case with the class of persons, who are usually known by the name of Bibliomaniacs in poetry, many in the present day, we apprehend, can bear witness, when they look back over the mass of mere black

letter they have collected to the point from whence, and the purpose for which, they originally started: like the man, of whom the story is told in one of our old writers, who having dug out of his ground all the gold he could find, acquired such a love for subterranean excavations, that he exhausted all the wealth he had previously procured in raising stones and rubbish, which might easily have been obtained upon the surface. It is not, however, fair to apply this illustration without great qualification to the pursuit in which Mr. Dibdin has been for years engaged, and which has employed the labours of so many individuals whose knowledge and industry have never been exceeded: one of them truly says, that the origin of the art of printing, "by multiplying letters, is entitled to the first place after the invention of letters themselves;" and all investigations upon this important point, however minute, must, almost necessarily, be productive of some useful information, not merely relative to the progress of the typographic, but to the condition and advancement of the sister arts. excuse, however, will not apply to the mere divers into the depths of black-letter darkness, who exhaust those lives that might have been devoted to valuable acquisitions, in employments to which they blindly attach an imaginary and factitious importance.

This

How much further Mr. Dibdin intends to carry his researches or rather, how many more volumes of his "Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain" he intends to publish, it is not easy to conjecture: three thick quartos have already been issued from the press, and the preface to the last seems to hold out no hope that it will be completed in less than as many more. In the advertisement to the third volume, the author thus speaks of his labours :

"Some apology may be due for the length of time which has elapsed since the publication of the second volume of this work. The public, however, will not accuse me of indolence during this interval; as the completion of the Bibliotheca Spenceriana is a sufficient evidence of unabated ardour in the study of bibliography.

"Without pledging myself to any definite period for the publication of the remaining volumes, it may safely be affirmed, that no cause, of a magnitude equal to what has just been noticed, can operate to produce delay; although I must be permitted to declare, that the Bibliographical Decameron may precede the fourth volume of these Typographical Antiquities. Those who are disposed to censure the tardiness of my progress in this publication, must suffer their severity to be softened by a reflection upon the comparatively

disproportionate reward attending it:-arising from the very nature of the undertaking:-for in a work so voluminous and expensive as the present, of which the impression is necessarily limited, both the Editor and the Publisher must contempt themselves with a moderate remuneration, and with the hope that what they lose in pecuniary profit they gain by reputation and credit."

With regard to this extract, we apprehend that the subscribers have some right to complain. Four years elapsed between the publication of the second and third volumes, and the excuse is, that the editor has not been indolent, because he has been completing his Bibliotheca Spenceriana. This is no doubt very true; and it is no less true, that that production has been a source of immense profit to the author, who published it on his own account; but if it had engaged him forty, instead of four years, the same cause for delay might have been assigned, and in the mean time, the subscribers to the Typographical Antiquities (of whom we are one) are to be all the money they have paid out of pocket, with a book unfinished in their hands, merely because Mr. Dibdin thinks fit to employ himself upon works that are more lucrative: he may with reason talk of the disproportionate reward attending this undertaking, as compared with others to which he has given an undue preference; but surely three guineas and a half for each volume is no insignificant price; especially when we find that the embellishments (to which Mr. Dibdin is careful to advert) in the last volume are much less curious and expensive than those which accompanied the first and second. The fact is, that the editor has not used his subscribers quite fairly, and has proceeded too much upon an illiberal money-getting principle, not very consistent with the nature of his literary avocations. In the advertisement to the first volume, he talks of "a general preface" to be given with the last volume; and in that which has recently appeared, he calls it by the enticing title of a Biographical Decameron, "which may precede the fourth volume." These are intended as little decoys to his purchasers-as inducements to them to wait with patience for the fourth, fifth, sixth, or more volumes, as it may answer the editor's purpose to proceed; but, in the mean time, his more immediate friends, who have aided him with their books or their remarks, seem not a little anxious for the expression of those "particular obligations" which he admits in the first volume, and which he promises to acknowledge seriatim in the general preface: accordingly, in the introduction to the third volume, thanks

are regularly offered to Mr. Heber, Mr. Wilbraham, Mr. Douce, Mr. Bindley, Sir E. Brydges, Mr. Hazlewood, Mr. Bliss and others for their valuable assistance; but Mr. Dibdin's "particular obligations" to his subscribers, are to be evinced by the postponement of the publication of the remaining part of this work to such a period as may suit the convenience or the interests of the editor.

Mr. Dibdin must excuse these free remarks, dictated in no spirit of hostility; on the contrary, they are induced principally by a wish on our part as soon as possible to enjoy the advantage of the completion of the very valuable and learned work he has undertaken. We do not mean to say, that the price even is unreasonable, but the delay certainly is so; and if the editor have a right to a fair reward, his subscribers have no less a right to expect that the contract between him and them should be fulfilled without more than necessary delay, and not postponed because Mr. Dibdin finds more lucrative employments.

The three volumes upon our table contain, first, the prefaces of Ames and Herbert, and biographical sketches of them by Gough and Dibdin; next, a preliminary disquisition on the early state of engraving and ornamental printing in Great Britain; and, thirdly, an account of the life of William Caxton. Both the latter are by the editor of this work, who afterwards proceeds to a regular statement of all the books known to have been the labour of our first printer. These details occupy the first volume, and the second comprises a catalogue of, and strictures upon, the books printed by Letore and Machlinia, Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and Julian Notary; and the third similar particu lars regarding the productions of the press of a great number of English printers who exercised their art from 1500 to about 1550. The last list includes the names of above fifty printers, and some others who lived within the same period, will probably be noticed in the fourth volume of these Typographical Antiquities when it appears.

It will be obvious, that in the first volume is contained the longest portion of original matter, as far as an industrious collection of facts and opinions may deserve the epithet of original. The prefaces of Ames and Herbert are accompanied by Mr. Dibdin's useful notes, and the life of Caxton may be pointed out as a master-piece of biography of that species. The preliminary disquisition, though too superficial, deserves much praise from the accuracy of its materials, and the neatness with which they are put toge

ther. From the latter we shall give a few extracts, relating chiefly to the progress of ornamental printing; the subject of the origin, &c. of engraving on wood and copper having recently been separately treated by Mr. Ottley in his most learned work, which we reviewed in our last number. The following are Mr. Dibdin's remarks on the chief application of ornamental printing in its earlier stage :

"Two classes of books in particular seem to have been properly selected by our printers for the display of the united arts of engraving and printing; and these were Bibles and Chronicles. Of the latter class, some of the cuts in the last edition of Grafton's, and in the first edition of Holinshed's, Chronicles, as well as the large woodcut on the reverse of the concluding leaf of Hall's Chronicles of 1548, are eminent proofs that there were, in this country, artists [whether foreigners or Englishmen I will not pretend to determine] who understood and practised their profession with skill and

success.

"But the most splendid attempts at engraving seem to have been reserved for the most precious of all books, the Bible; of which a sumptuous edition appeared during the reign of Henry VIII. Many other editions were destined, under the sovereignty of Elizabeth, (when arts, arms, and learning, made us known, felt, and admired' throughout Europe) to receive some of the costliest decorations from the presses of Grafton, Jugge, Bill and Barker. The specimens on the two ensuing pages are taken from the fragments of a beautiful quarto edition of the Testament, printed in the black letter, which belonged to the late Rev. Mr. George Ashby, of Bury, in Suffolk; who supposed that the edition came from the press of either Grafton or Whitchurch, or of both. They are unquestionably very skilful productions; although it is probable that the curious collector may be able to adduce others of still greater beauty and force. My object in laying these fac-similes before the reader is, to impress him with an idea of that peculiar species or character of wooden-block engraving, which may be traced in a variety of productions that signa

Some of the prints of this Testament are probably copied from the beautiful wood-cuts in the Lyons Bibles of 1550-1555-executed by Petit Bernard, or Bernard Solomon; concerning whom Papillon has a long and interesting account (vol. i. 206). So scarce is this Bible, that Papillon could hardly find two complete copies of it in the course of twelve years. It has been called " a most beautiful work, and though it does not come up to the masterly Venetian manner, yet it is a fine performance." See a rare treatise entitled "An Inquiry into the Origin of Printing in Europe. By a Lover of the Art. Lond. 1752. 8vo. p. 23." Bernard's most precious performance seems to have been a small quarto volume, called " Hymnes du temps et de ses parties," consisting of 88 pages only. See Papillon, Traite Hist. de la Gravure en Bois. vol. i. 208. Strutt has disgraced his Dictionary by his superficial notice of this incomparable artist.

CRIT. REV, VOL. IV. Sept. 1816.

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