Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/118

 The Show-Case of Recent Additions to the Library of the British Museum. T TNTIL recently, the only way in which a bookman interested ^ in the National Library could learn what treasures it had recently acquired, was by studying the report of the British Museum, which is annually printed as a Parliamentary paper. For a Parliamentary paper to get itself printed, it has to be formally moved for in the House of Commons or Lords, and then to take its turn with others. As a result, the Museum report for one year generally appears in the summer of the next, and for this reason, as well as, perhaps, from the great number of departments with which it deals, book-lovers do not often acquaint themselves with its contents, though these generally include some interesting bibliographical notes. By a recent addition to the show cases in the King's Library, a more excellent way has been discovered of acquainting the public with the chief treasures lately acquired by the department of printed books, room having been found for an exhibition of " recent additions." A visitor to the Museum can thus inform himself at a glance what books of exceptional interest the library has recently acquired, and instead of merely reading about them, can see at least the title pages. The show- case is now quite full, and the variety of its present contents make it happily illustrative of the catholicity of taste which a national librarian is bound to cultivate. Apparently the Museum has not lately acquired any peculiarly fine specimen of early printing, for the incunabula, at present exhibited are more interesting for other reasons than for their typography. A Spanish edition of Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus Temporum bears an earlier date than any other book in the case, having been printed by B. Segura and A. de Portu at Seville in 1480. It is open at the page which shows a little wood-cut of Venice, copied from that used in the edition printed in that city by Walch the pre- vious year. Side by side with this are shown two other fine Spanish books, the Cayda de Principes, a translation of Boccaccio's