Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/431

 * S. III. JUNE 3, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

425

bu j needs not reversal. In the early modus to obtain relief blocks the method was rude, ex sending from the fifties to the eighties. Tl e printing of " livres de luxe " was ck ae by hand on paper that, whilst less durable than that of the old block-books, we s more so than the enamelled, glazed su -face, due to milling and china clay, on which they now print by improved machinery, ur aided by art, the most modern photograph as well as minute engravings from faille douce or lithography.

Now with this preamble, I would put before collectors a plea for the purchase and pre- servation of the hand - printed books that delighted our grandsires, and are in their way unique books that, I am pleased to say, are rising in value, as also are the engravers 7 hand proofs that were taken by the stylus upon india paper for the approval of the artist and as an aid to the printer. These hand-rubbed proofs are now rare indeed, and bound to become more choice still as time advances.

Of French hand-printed books I would note those of Horace Vernet, Raffet, Meissonier, Johannot, Gavarni, Grandville, Dore, &c.

Of English, Bewick, Corbould, Thurston, Cruikshank, Seymour, Williams, Duncan, Meadows, Millais, Rossetti, Leech, Gilbert, Doyle, Foster, Thomas, Harvey, Leighton, Walker, Pin well, Houghton, Fildes, Du ,Maurier, Keene, Stanfield, Maclise, Browne, and last, and not least, Tenniel, who to this day delights us weekly with a woodcut cartoon in Punch.

i Of the Kelmscott Press books it may be said that they, whilst carrying on the tra- iditions of the early block-books, owe their ^production greatly to "process," press work, land a method of inking unknown to the primitive printers, to whose work they bear striking resemblance.

JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.

Ormonde, Regent's Park.

" BEARTH." Prof. Masson tells us that this

is the correct form of the word used by Milton

at the end of v. 624 of the ninth book of

Paradise Lost,' though " birth has been

ubstituted in all the modern editions, but

improperly." It here means " produce,"

and birth is sometimes used in that sense,

?., by Dryden in his translation of the

' Georgics,' where we have (i. 196) :

But all was common, and the fruitful Earth Was free to give her unexacted Birth.

I have consulted the original edition (pub- lished "at the Judge's Head in Fleet Street," 1697), and ascertained that the word so stands

there. The form oeartn, occurs, 1 oelieve, only in the above place, and is not mentioned in the * H.E.D.' The A.-S. form of birth is beorth, as given in Bosworth, though Prof. Skeat tells us that it is very rare. W. T. LYNN. Blackheath,

[It is bearth in the first edition, in which it stands in book viii. 1. 624.]

THOMAS BROOKE. (See 2 nd S. i. 189.) At the above reference a Thomas Brooke is quoted as author of some verses written the day before his death, "who suffered at Norfolk the 30 August, 1570." Is this Brooke of the Cobham family 1 if so, according to an article in ' Arch. Cant.,' vol. xii., although arrested by his own brother on 14 Oct., 1571, and com- mitted to the Tower, he was not executed. He was engaged in a plot with the Duke of Norfolk and others in the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, for which the duke suffered 2 June, 1572. This article concludes that Thomas Brooke was alive in 1588 and took part in the " great drama of the time." He married Katharine, daughter of Sir William Cavendish.

It is somewhat strange that Lord Cobham had two sons named Thomas. Thomas the younger is referred to in his father's will, 1552 ; and on 5 Sept., 1571, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, wrote to Lord Burghley the following :

"Captayne Keyes ys departyd. I pray let me entreat you to recomynd my younger brother Thomas unto yt [the captaincy of Sandgate Castle ?] trewllye he ys right honest and can do right well for that he ys my Id. of leicesters servaynt. I have also advertised [?] unto him to sue to your high- ness. I shall do very I shame and envy if any

other be preferred unto it being under my charge.' ' State Papers, Domestic.'

Lord Cobham was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Sandgate Castle would be within the liberties thereof. R. J. FYNMORE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. One of the dreams of modern bibliographers is the compilation of a 'General Catalogue of English Literature.' Before any such gigantic work is undertaken, would it not be as well to try the experiment of making a complete bibliography of one period, say the first forty years of the present century 1 ? During that time there was a determined opposition among publishers to the Copyright Act, with the result that an immense number of books never found their way to the shelves of our national library, and it is most difficult to trace them. I could without much trouble give the titles of a hundred such books, but let one instance illustrate. In a memoir of Francis Wrang- ham, Archdeacon of Chester, which appeared