Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/119

 Recent Additions to the Library of the British Museum. 107 De Casibas Illustrium Virorum, printed at Toledo in 1511, and a copy of the first Spanish translation of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Libra de las Maravillosas del Mundo y del viage de la tierra sancta), printed at Valencia by Jorge Castilla in 1521. Both these handsome folios are illustrated, the, Mandeville with the usual catchpeny cuts copied from the German editions, and the Boccaccio by a really fine design of the Wheel of Fortune, distinctively Spanish in style. As we have said, the interest of these books is literary and artistic rather than typographical, and the same remark applies to an early French book, the Chasteau de Virginite, printed by Jean Trepperel in 1506, which has a title-cut which is a good example of French work of that decade. A copy printed at Rome about 1482, of the second letter of Pope Sixtus IV. to the Doge of Venice, about a treaty of peace with Ferrara, is of importance historically, and the Museum was doubtless glad to acquire it as a complement to the unique copy of Caxton's edition of the correspondence (Sex quamelegantissime epistole) purchased two years ago. Liturgical students will doubtless rejoice in a missal for the use of St. Malo (Missale ad usum insignis ecclesie Macloniensis] printed by R. Mace at Rouen in 1503, and said, perhaps rashly, to be unique, while mathematicians of an antiquarian turn may be glad to see a copy of the Paris edition (1514) of the Ars Arithmetica of Cardinal Martinez Siliceo. To the mere collector this work will be chiefly interesting, because it is nicely printed on vellum, a distinction which it shares with two other of the present exhibits, a copy of an early seven- teenth century edition of the Constitutions of the Golden Fleece (reprinted from the editions of c. 1560), and of Didot's edition of another Constitution of a very different sort, that of France in 1790. Of the movement which led up to this latter, Voltaire is reckoned as one of the originators, but another " recent addition " shows him in the unusual character of a defender of Christianity. The friends of a certain deceased M. Boulanger had thought fit to publish in 1756, a work which he had left in manuscript, entitled Le Christianisme devoile, giving it the imprint of London to avoid the censorship, though it was really printed at Nancy. A copy of this was no doubt sent to Voltaire in expectation of a testimonial, but the critic played the part of Baalam ; and the marginal notes with which the book is full, are not of a character to have pleased " feu M. Boulanger," had he survived to read them. That on the title-page is, of