Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/238

 226 The Library. previous outline, and the heads, limbs, details of dress, &c., being afterwards sketched in. Another masterly article is contributed by Mr. R. C. Christie, having as its subject the Chronology of the early Aldines. " On no point," he tells us, "are the historians of Aldus and his press in more absolute accord than in the assertion that he used the legal Venetian computation in the dates contained in his books, and consequently that those dated in January and February in any year, did not in fact appear until a year later, according to our mode of computing the year from the first of January, and consequently that a book dated February, 1495, was not issued until February, 1496, new or common style, and nearly a year after one dated March, 1495. O n tms point Renouard, Firmin-Didot and Castellani are all in accord," and on this point Mr. Christie demon- strates with delightful conclusiveness that they are all three wrong. It is the weakness of bibliographers that they so often object to reading any- thing save title-pages and colophons, and Mr. Christie, who is not used to limit his studies in this way, is able to make short work of his pre- decessors, largely by quotations from extant letters of Aldus. Thus in the dedication of the Juliux Pollux of April, 1502, to Elias Capreolo he writes of having, " superioribus diebus? dedicated his edition of Stephanus De Urbibus, dated January, 1502, to an- other Brescian professor, Giovanni Taberio. Yet in the face of this statement, which they duly print, both Renouard and Didot insist that the January, 1502, of the De Urbibus really means January, 1503, and bibliographers have followed them in this absurdity like a flock of sheep. The case of several other books is as simple and clear as this, in others it has to be demonstrated by rather more complex arguments ; in one case it is so doubtful that Mr. Christie is willing to leave Renouard's date undisturbed. But for nineteen out of the one hundred and thirty books printed by Aldus he is able to show that the dates usually assigned to them are exactly a twelvemonth too late, and having regard to the importance of many of these works in the history of the classical renaissance it is difficult to over-rate the value of the correction. Of the other contents of this number we have not left ourselves much space to speak. Mr. Madan contributes an annotated list of twenty-four different representations of printing presses taken from books printed between 1499 and 1600, with especial reference to an engraving by Stradanus, on which the antiquary, Hearne, has left some notes. Dr. Kristeller writes on an instance of an Italian wood-engraving, designed as a cover for a fifteenth-century book, and Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Austin Dobson contribute notices of the libraries of two English bookmen, Samuel Pepys and Henry Fielding. The articles which we have singled put for mention show that the publishers of the magazine are anxious that its contents should be for the most part of permanent bibliographical importance, and if they can maintain the same standard for the ten remaining numbers they will have accomplished an excellent work. Index to the Periodical Literature of the World (covering the year 1893), 4 to - Review of Reviews Office, 1894, 5 s - It is almost unnecessary to direct attention to the value of this work, as it is now considered indispensable to any library, public or private, and we are confirmed in this opinion by the testimonials to its merits from well- known librarians printed in it. It is published at such a remarkably cheap rate that the cost of printing, much less the labour involved in its compila- tion, can hardly be represented by the publishing price, and therefore,