Page:The Library (Lang).djvu/115

 sometimes merely the "Explicit. Laus Deo," which has found its way into many modern books. This colophon, which comes as a rule immediately before the index, often contains curious notes, hexameters giving the names of all the books, biographical or local memoranda, and should always be looked for by the collector. One such line occurs to me. It is in a Bible written in Italy in the thirteenth century—

Vergilius was, no doubt, in this case the scribe. The Latin and the writing are often equally crabbed. In the Bodleian there is a Bible with this colophon—

This was also written in Italy. English colophons are often very quaint—"Qui scripsit hunc librum fiat collocatus in Paradisum," is an example. The following gives us the name of one Master Gerard, who, in the fourteenth century, thus poetically described his ownership:—

In a Bible written in England, in the British