Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/236

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224 The Library. two sides of a leaf in the splendid Appian of 1477, that Ratdolt must have been possessed of the art of making cliches, as if the two sides of a leaf could be printed at the same impression, so that the same block could not be used on both without duplication ! Of more importance is Mr. Redgrave's decisive proof that in the case of the editions of Pomponius Mela by Ratdolt and Renner of Hailbrun, that it was Renner and not Ratdolt who was the imitator. Mr. Redgrave shows, also, that Zapf, the chronicler of the Augsburg Press, was mistaken in assigning Ratdolt's death to 1516, as he continued to pay his taxes until 1527, and according to Mr. Weale actually printed a Coutances service-book two years after Zapf's date for his death. In the bibliography, a list is given of no less than sixty-seven books printed by Ratdolt, alone or with his partners, at Venice, about half as many again as are to be found in Hain. For these and for those not seen personally by Hain, the titles and collations are displayed in full ; for those for which he vouches there is a reference to his number. References are also given to copies in the British Museum, the Bodleian and the Cam- bridge University library, and, wherever possible, it is stated in which of Ratdolt's ten Venetian types the book is printed, and which of his ten sets of initial letters and seven borders are used as ornaments. The ten illus- trations are worthy of the excellence of the text, the frontispiece, from the Appian of 1477, being so well reproduced as almost to surpass the original. Other plates show the borders of the Cepio of 1477, and Ars Moriendi of 1478, the title page of the Kalendario, Ratdolt's first set of initial letters, his Augsburg device and the type-sheet which he issued on his return to Germany, about half of the types in it being brought from Venice. The monograph is finely printed at the Chiswick Press, and is in every way a credit to its author and the Society. Bibliographica. A quarterly magazine of bibliography in twelve parts. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1894. Parts I. and II. The history of periodical literature is strewn with the bones of so many magazines of bibliography that the publishers of Bibliographica have, perhaps, been well-advised in boldly facing the fact that the goods they have to offer are esteemed only by a scanty handful of readers, who may therefore be expected to pay a reasonably high price for their hobby, so long as they get fair value for their money. In the point of externals Bibliographica plainly aims, not altogether unsuccessfully, at magnificence. The type is large and clear, the margins ample, and the paper good of its kind, though a trifle thick and stiff for a volume which will claim for itself a good binding. Too much praise can hardly be given to Messrs. Constable for the excellence of the press-work, and the majority of the numerous illustrations are also well printed. The initial letters and tail- pieces, specially designed by Mr. Laurence Housman, on the model of the ahan strap-work of the fifteenth century, are unusually happy, and alto- gether the "get-up" is distinctly imposing. As regards the letterpress, in the first of the two numbers before us the publishers showed a certain inclination to compromise. There is a masterly and very thorough article (concluded in No. 2) by Mr. Gordon Duff, in which he traces the istory of a firm of stationers at the sign of the Trinity in St. Paul's Church- yard from 1506 to 1515, and again from 1518 to 1539. The earlier mem- rs of the firm were Henry Jacobi and Joyce, or Jodocus, Pelgrim, and the industry of Mr. Duff has unearthed no less than twenty books printed them, three by Thierry Martens at Antwerp, most of the rest at Paris, ! four earliest by Wolfgang Hopyl. The books are all ecclesiastical or