Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/35



[5] (1) The reader will find some account of the details of this persecution in 'Bentley's Miscellany' for July, 1852, and in the 'Athenæum' for May 27, 1848, and May 12, 1849. How completely the charges are to be attributed, in the first instance, to political and private malice, is now sufficiently known. "He was condemned." says the 'Times,' "for stealing books, many of which are now to be found in the very places from which he was said to have taken them; he was condemned for stealing books which he was proved to have bought of Messrs. Payne and Foss in London; he was condemned for stealing books which it was beyond the power of the French courts to identify, or even to describe correctly." All this we know to be true, with the exception of what is implied in the word even: correct description is no such every day matter.

[6] (2) The examiners of M. Libri's books found the Aldine Catullus of 1515, Venice, with what they read as "Bibliothecæ S. 10 in Casalibus Placentiæ" either stamped in old type, or in manuscript, (they could not tell which!) on the front leaf. The "S. 10." had they known how to read, would have been "S. Jo." and the whole would have shown that the book once belonged to the Library of the Convent of St. John of the Canals at Piacenza. They impute to M. Libri that he stamped these letters, first, to hide the marks of another stamp which they assert to have been erased, next, to pass off the work as printed at Piacenza. The terms in which they crow over their unanswerable proof, as they take it to be, that the book has been stolen, will perhaps be cited in bibliographical treatises for centuries to come: " le titre annonçait une édition de Plaisance, et la bibliothèque [de Montpellier] avait perdu une édition de Venise Pour dissimuler les traces du grattage dont il a été parlé, on avait mis à la place de l'estampille ces mots