d acquired most of its maturer
features and no longer has for us an unfamiliar look. Designed to serve
as a permanent exhibition, it is a selection rather than a collection,
not large, but wisely chosen, and no less attractive than instructive,
having been formed a quarter of a century ago, at a time when
opportunities were unusually favorable.

The surviving books of the first presses, which are the chief sources of
our knowledge of the early art, are at the same time, when obtainable,
the most efficient teachers. For the illustration of the typography, the
feature of first importance, there is nothing comparable to the open
pages of a representative series of the original books, such as are here
spread out before us. The best of the available substitutes, phototype
reproductions of specimen pages, apart from other limitations, must
always lack the authority and the impressiveness of the originals.

While it is the main office of the present collection to set before the
students of the University as a whole the more general features of the
art of the early printer, a further service which it is prepared to
render must not be overlooked. To such as are prompted to go into the
subject more deeply it offers an excellent body of the original
material upon which any serious study must of necessity be based.

The two fine fifteenth century MSS. at the head of the collection, far
from serving a merely ornamental purpose, like their own illuminated
initials for example, are a needful introduction. It is obvious that
from such sources the first printers got the models of their types, and
the MSS. in which Jenson found the prototypes of his famous roman
characters, which in the judgment of some are still unsurpassed, could
not have been very remote from these. Some of the more striking features
which distinguish the early printed books from the later were not
original with them, but only survivals from the MSS. The abbreviations
and contractions in which both abound were the labor-saving devices of
the copyists, adopted without hesitation by the printers who used the
MSS. as copy and only slowly abandoned. The copyist left spaces in his
MS. for initials to be supplied by the illuminator, without which his
work was not considered complete, and for about a hundred years the
printer continued to do the same. If the copyist saw fit to attach his
name to his work, we look for it at the end of the volume and there also
the printer p