--and the _Historia Typographorum aliquot Parisiensium
vitas et libros complectens_, 1717, 8vo.--Of these two
latter works, (which, from a contemporaneous catalogue, I
find were originally published at 4_s._ the common paper,)
Mr. T. Grenville has beautiful copies upon LARGE PAPER. The
books are rare in any shape. The principal merit of
Maittaire's _Annales Typographici_ consists in a great deal
of curious matter detailed in the notes; but the absence of
the "lucidus ordo" renders the perusal of these fatiguing
and unsatisfactory. The author brought a full and
well-informed mind to the task he undertook--but he wanted
taste and precision in the arrangement of his materials. The
eye wanders over a vast indigested mass; and information,
when it is to be acquired with excessive toil, is,
comparatively, seldom acquired. Panzer has adopted an
infinitely better plan, on the model of Orlandi; and if his
materials had been _printed_ with the same beauty with which
they appear to have been composed, and his annals had
descended to as late a period as those of Maittaire, his
work must have made us eventually forget that of his
predecessor. The bibliographer is, no doubt, aware that of
Maittaire's first volume there are two editions: why the
author did not reprint, in the second edition (1733), the
fac-simile of the epigram and epistle of Lascar prefixed to
the edition of the Anthology, 1496, and the Disquisition
concerning the ancient editions of Quintilian (both of which
were in the first edition of 1719), is absolutely
inexplicable. Maittaire was sharply attacked for this
absurdity, in the "Catalogus Auctorum," of the "_Annus
Tertius Saecularis Inv. Art. Typog._," Harlem, 1741, 8vo., p.
11. "Rara certe Librum augendi methodus! (exclaims the
author) Satis patet auctorem hoc eo fecisse concilio, ut et
primae et secundae Libri sui editioni pretium suum constaret,
et una aeque ac altera Lectoribus necessaria esset." Copies
of the Typographical Antiquities by Maittaire, upon LARGE
PAPER, are now exceedingly scarce. The work, in this shape,
has a noble appearance. While Maittaire was publishing his
Typographical Annals, ORLANDI put forth a similar work under
the title of "_Origine e Progressi della Stampa o sia dell'
Arte Impressoria, e Not