Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/389

 12 s. ix. OCT. 15, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 319 justices of the peace for the county, by men j of character and respectability. For further i details see the first volume of the Wernerian | Society's Memoirs. JAMES SETON-ANDERSON. 39, Carlisle Road, Hove, Sussex. on A History of the Carttbridge University Press, 1521-1921. By S. C. Roberts. (Cambridge University Press, 17s. 6<Z. net.) THE beginnings of great things can hardly spare a touch of legend. John Siberch was without doubt the first Cambridge printer, but, lest he should start up too abruptly at the beginning of the history of the Cambridge Press, Edmund Carter, in 1753, was inspired with a supposition that Caxton " might Erect a press at Cambridge," and that a certain book of Rhetoric, compiled at that University in 1478, was printed there and then. An oration delivered by Henry Bullock on the occasion of Wolsey's visit to the University in 1520 is the first Cambridge ! book. Four copies of this are known : but none I of them is at Cambridge. Of the second of Siberch's books ' The letter of a certain faithful I Christian to all Christians ' only one copy is known, which is in the Bodleian. Its title page in the Greek motto -jravruv /ierajSoAT? presents us with the first bit of Greek printing from mov- I able Greek type done in England. Six more j books of Siberch's are extant, of which the latest bears the date Dec. 8, 1522, and the commonest is Linacre's translation of Galen's ' De Tem- peramentis.' The Royal Charter which formally established printing at Cambridge is dated 1534, and the occasion of its granting was the recurrent diffi- culty about the publication and dissemination of heretical books. The Chancellor, masters and scholars of the University were now empowered to elect " three stationers and pf inters or sellers of books " who should print " all manner of books approved of by the Chancellor or his vicegerent and three doctors " a licence wherein Cambridge then excelled Oxford. This right, however, lay for fifty years in abeyance, the I'nivei-sity having received a severe snub from Lord Burghley upon its proposing, in 1576, to print psalters and prayer-books. In 1583 Thomas Thomas was appointed University printer and set to work with a book by William Whitaker. Thereupon the Stationers' Company of London lose in wrath and seized his press as an infringe- ment of their rights. Mr. Roberts prints in full tin- I'mversity's protest to Burghley on the suhject, wherein they speak pf the " erecting jf a print " as an " antient privilege, granted and confirmed by divers princes." Their charter having been pronounced valid by the Master of ih<- Rolls, Thomas started afresh. In about four years he printed at least 20 books no bad record for those days, and considering the Star ('hinilHT decree which forbade any Oxford or Cambridge printer to have more than one appren- tice at a time. He died in 1588 at th^ age of 35. It has been supposed that his life was shortened by his labours on the ' Latin Dictionary,' his greatest work, which was compiled, he tells his readers, " Carptim inter operarum susurros." Thomas had some trouble with anxious ecclesias- tical authorities, scenting heresy in the produc- tions of his press ; his successor, John Legate, found himself involved in disputes with the London Stationers. In 1591 he had produced the first Cambridge Bible. In 1604 he himself became Master of the Stationers' Company, and left the dispute to be continued by his successors. The charter granted to the University and the trade monopoly held by the Stationers' Company proved, indeed, practically as well as logically, irreconcilable, despite numerous attempts at compromise. With the Bucks and Daniel we come to the printing of some famous books : Crashaw's ' Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber ' ; Puller's ' Holy War ' ; and ' The Temple ' of George Herbert. But the great glory of Buck's day was the first edition of ' Lycidas.' To the time when Buck's name has disappeared from the title pages belong some books of hardly inferior worth : Fuller's ' Holy State ' ; an edition of Bede : and Harvey's treatise on the Circulation of the Blood. During the Commonwealth and the first years after the Restoration, John Field, a printer not altogether above reproach, brought out several editions of classical authors, and a ' Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascen- tium.' John Hayes, who followed him, con- tinued much along the same lines, but made a hit of a novel kind with his almanacks. Printing, however, languished at Cambridge during the last third of the seventeenth century ; on the brink of the eighteenth, with the advent of Bentley and the formation of the first Press Syndicate, it took a great stride forward. The new Curators were specially zealous for the beauty of Cam- bridge typography ; types were sought for abroad, and the most unsparing labour was spent over the corrections of the press. It is of interest to note that Matthew Prior was employed to obtain Greek type from Paris, but failed to carry the matter through, the French being obstinate in demanding that an acknowledgment of the source of the type should appear on the title page of any book for which it was used. Cambridge printing during the eighteenth century began to advance along the line which has brought it to its position in the present day. The earlier half of it gave to English learning Bentley's beautiful editions of the classics among which the Suidas Lexicon calls for special mention. In the middle of the century falls the stimulating influence of Baskerville, who, though his activity was restricted and his commercial success nil, was recognized abroad as well as at home for an artist in his craft. Meanwhile experiments in stereotype, begun in London, were removed to Cambridge, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century stereotyping had been solidly established. The inventive Lord Stanhope was author of one of the secret stereotype pro- cesses offered to the University, as he was also of the Stanhope press. Mr. Roberts tells us