ary
value; it consists of 20,240 volumes, forming about 16,000 works, which
cost upwards of L54,000, and would sell for more now. During his
lifetime, Mr. Grenville's library was most liberally rendered accessible
to any person, however humble his condition in life, who could show the
least cause for asking the loan of any of his precious volumes. By
bequeathing the whole to his country, Mr. Grenville has secured to
literary men, even after his death, that assistance, as far as it
relates to the use of his books, which he so generously bestowed on them
in every way during his long and dignified career:--the career of a man
of high birth, distinguished for uniting to a powerful and cultivated
intellect a warm and benevolent heart.'

Sir Anthony Panizzi, in describing the contents of the collection, adds:
'It would naturally be expected that one of the editors of the "Adelphi
Homer" would lose no opportunity of collecting the best and rarest
editions of the Prince of Poets. AEsop, a favourite author of Mr.
Grenville, occurs in his Library in its rarest forms; there is no doubt
that the series of editions of this author in that library is
unrivalled. The great admiration which Mr. Grenville felt for Cardinal
Ximenes, even more on account of the splendid edition of the Polyglot
Bible which that prelate caused to be printed at Alcala, than of his
public character, made him look upon the acquisition of the Moschus, a
book of extreme rarity, as a piece of good fortune. Among the extremely
rare editions of the Latin Classics, in which the Grenville Library
abounds, the unique complete copy of Azzoguidi's first edition of Ovid
is a gem well deserving particular notice, and was considered, on the
whole, by Mr. Grenville himself, the boast of his collection. The Aldine
Virgil of 1505, the rarest of the Aldine editions of this poet, is the
more welcome to the Museum, as it serves to supply a lacuna; the copy
mentioned in the Catalogue of the Royal Collection not having been
transferred to the National Library.

'The rarest editions of English Poets claimed and obtained the special
attention of Mr. Grenville. Hence we find him possessing not only the
first and second edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by Caxton, but
the only copy known of a hitherto undiscovered edition of the same work
printed in 1498 by Wynkyn de Worde. Of Shakespeare's collected Dramatic
Works, the Grenville Library contains a copy of the first edition,
whic