Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/273

 Record of Bibliography and Library Literatim. 261 possible to take an interest in an old form of literature (if the word is here appropriate) without any desire to see it revived, and we grudge the addition to the weight of Mr. Clouston's book of these twenty-three thick leaves. The first English Hieroglyphic Bible was issued, it would seem, about the year 1780 by T. Hodgson. No copy of the first edition is known to exist, but the title-page of the second edition, an example of which is in the British Museum, runs as follows : A CURIOUS HIEROGLYPHICK BIBLE ; | or, Select Passages | in the | Old and New Testaments, | represented with | Emblematical Figures | for the | Amusement of Youth ; | designed chiefly | to familarize tender Age, in a pleasing and diverting | Manner, with early Ideas of the Holy Scriptures. | To which are subjoined, | a short Account of the Lives of the Evangelists, | and other Pieces, illustrated with Cuts, j The Second Edition | with the Addition of many remarkable Parts of | Scripture, and other great Improvements, j LONDON : Printed for T. Hodgson, in George's Court, St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell, I mdclxxxxiv. [Price One Shilling Bound.] Entered at Stationers' Hall, agreeable to Act of Parliament. On a proof of the cover in the British Museum John Bewick has scrawled the statement that "T. Hodgson has sold three thousand Hiero- glyphic Bibles since Sept. last, and is going to print another edition, 1787 . . . 3,000 printed since Sept., 1781," and the further note, " Cover of the [Hieroglyphick Bible] 1776." This proof of the cover confirms the tradition that Thomas Bewick had some hand in the book, but, as Mr. Clouston justly observes, the cuts are very inferior to Bewick's work, and as he was only in London from October ist, 1776, to June 22nd, 1777, we must either suppose that the first edition of the book was issued or pre- pared six or seven years before the second, which from the quickness with which the third and fourth were called for, is unlikely ; or else that Ber- wick was working for a London publisher while at Newcastle. Mr. Clouston decides against the cuts in the text, but in favour of the frontis- piece, the value of which, we think, he overrates. No less than twenty editions of Hodgson's Hieroglyphic Bible were called for, the last being issued in 1812 ; after which its reputation was traded on for five spurious editions, called the 2ist to 25th, which have no connection whatever, except their title-page, with the original work. In 1794, a " New Hieroglyphic Bible" was published by G. Thompson and J. Parsons. The cuts in this were poor, and the book in its original form met with little success. It was copied, however, and improved on by Dean and Munday, Arliss, and other firms, and thus became the parent of a long line of editions. When Mr. Clouston has described for us all these English editions he harks back to 1686, and shows us that the real home of the Hieroglyphic Bible is Augsburg, where, in that year, a certain excellent Melchior Mattsperger, with the aid of an engraver of some cleverness, Johana Georg Bodeneho, produced the first hieroglyphic version known. He had broken his leg, it seems, and the compilation of the book was a means of employing his enforced leisure. Despite the hope he expressed that he might be allowed the copyright of his invention, his work was imitated in Germany and Holland, and Mr. Clouston has no difficulty in showing that Hodgson's English version was also greatly indebted to it. The rest of Mr. Clouston's book is devoted to an account of a I5th century Latin MS., now in the possession of the Earl of Denbigh, the idea of which is somewhat akin to that of the Hieroglyphic Bibles, and after this to a brief description of block books, rebus verses, emblem