from the bishop's collection, it would
be possible to restore a hypothetical but not improbable Bibliotheca
Ricardi de Bury. The difficulty would be with that contemporary
literature, which they would think below the dignity of quotation, but
which we know the Bishop collected."

Early Editions of the Philobiblon.

The book was first printed at Cologne in 1473, at Spires in 1483, and
at Paris in 1500. The first English edition appeared in 1598-9, edited
by Thomas James, Bodley's first librarian. Other editions appeared in
Germany in 1610, 1614, 1674 and 1703; at Paris in 1856; at Albany in
1861. The texts were, with the exception of those issued in 1483 and
1599, based on the 1473 edition; though the French edition and
translation of 1856, prepared by M. Cocheris, claimed to be a critical
version, it left the text untouched, and merely gave the various
readings of the three Paris manuscripts at the foot of the pages; these
readings are moreover badly chosen, and the faults of the version are
further to be referred to the use of the ill-printed 1703 edition as
copy.

In 1832 there appeared an anonymous English translation, now known to
have been by J. B. Inglis; it followed the edition of 1473, with all
its errors and inaccuracies.

Mr. E. C. Thomas' Text.--The first true text of the Philobiblon, the
result of a careful examination of twenty-eight MSS., and of the
various printed editions, appeared in the year 1888:

"The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Treasurer and
Chancellor of Edward III, edited and translated by Ernest C. Thomas,
Barrister-at-law, late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, and
Librarian of the Oxford Union. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co."

For fifteen years the enthusiastic editor--an ideal Bibliophile--had
toiled at his labour of love, and his work was on all sides received
with the recognition due to his monumental achievement. To the great
loss of English learning, he did not long survive the conclusion of his
labours. The very limited edition of the work was soon exhausted, and
it is by the most generous permission of his father, Mr. John Thomas,
of Lower Broughton, Manchester, that the translation--the only
trustworthy rendering of Richard de Bury's precious treatise--is now,
for the first time, made accessible to the larger book-loving public,
and fittingly inaugurates the present series of English classics. The
general Editor desires to express his best