water-poet, enliven several pages,
and make one's mouth water for the books themselves. A third volume
includes only such titles as have the printer's device. If you shut
your eyes to the injury done by such collectors, you may, to a certain
extent, enjoy the collection, for there is great beauty in some titles;
but such a pursuit is neither useful nor meritorious. By and by the end
comes, and then dispersion follows collection, and the volumes, which
probably Cost L200 each in their formation, will be knocked down to a
dealer for L10, finally gravitating into the South Kensington Library,
or some public museum, as a bibliographical curiosity. The following has
just been sold (July, 1880) by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, in
the Dunn-Gardinier collection, lot 1592:--

"TITLEPAGES AND FRONTISPIECES.

_A Collection of upwards of_ 800 ENGRAVED TITLES AND FRONTISPIECES,
ENGLISH AND FOREIGN (_some very fine and curious) taken from old books
and neatly mounted on cartridge paper in 3 vol, half morocco gilt. imp.
folio_."

The only collection of title-pages which has afforded me unalloyed
pleasure is a handsome folio, published by the directors of the Plantin
Museum, Antwerp, in 1877, just after the purchase of that wonderful
typographical storehouse. It is called "Titels en Portretten gesneden
naar P. P. Rubens voor de Plantijnsche Drukkerij," and it contains
thirty-five grand title pages, reprinted from the original seventeenth
century plates, designed by Rubens himself between the years 1612 and
1640, for various publications which issued from the celebrated Plantin
Printing Office. In the same Museum are preserved in Rubens' own
handwriting his charge for each design, duly receipted at foot.

I have now before me a fine copy of "Coclusiones siue decisiones antique
dnor' de Rota," printed by Gutenberg's partner, Schoeffer, in the year
1477. It is perfect, except in a most vital part, the Colophon, which
has been cut out by some barbaric "Collector," and which should read
thus: "Pridie nonis Januarii Mcccclxxvij, in Civitate Moguntina,
impressorie Petrus Schoyffer de Gernsheym," followed by his well-known
mark, two shields.

A similar mania arose at the beginning of this century for collections
of illuminated initials, which were taken from MSS., and arranged on
the pages of a blank book in alphabetical order. Some of our cathedral
libraries suffered severely from depredations of this kind. At Lincoln,
in t