92 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



sixteen years, and then sold it to Dr. Gifford, librarian at the 

 British Museum, for twenty guineas ; and from him in 1784 

 it went, with many rare Bibles, as a legacy to the Bristol 

 College. The strange part of the story is that a bookseller 

 should have sold such a treasure for fifteen shillings. The 

 explanation is that Thomas Osborne, the greatest bookseller 

 of his day, was proverbially an ignorant man. He once 

 offered a library as "the most pompous collection of the 

 classics known," and manj' such malaprops by him were the 

 gossip of the day. He was the bookseller Dr. Johnson was 

 said to have knocked down with a book, in his shop, and 

 when Boswell asked if the story were true, the doctor 

 answered : " Sir, he was impertinent to me and I beat him, 

 but in my own room, not in his shop." Yet, if Osborne 

 knew little about books, he shrewdly fell back on such as had 

 knowledge. For after his sale of the Tyndale book he had 

 Dr. Johnson himself write the preface and compile two of the 

 four volumes forming the catalogue in which he offered for 

 sale the Harley library, which was perhaps the finest private 

 collection of books ever gathered together. 



Few men have done as much to make known the history 

 of the English Bible as the late Francis Fry, of Bristol. His 

 collection of various editions of the scriptures numbered 

 twelve hundred ; and at his cost fac-similes of three or four 

 editions of special historical value were printed. 'Among his 

 chief books should be reckoned his fae-siniile edition of 

 Tyndale's first octavo New Testament ; and his admirable 

 work describing bibliographically forty subsequent editions 

 of Tyndale's book printed between 1526 and 1566. His 

 minute account contains facsimiles of title pages, colophons, 

 initial letters and specimen pages of each edition ; and all but 

 two of the forty different specimens had been subject to his 

 personal examination. One of these copies, of about 1535, 

 by some unknown printer, is noted for its peculiar ortho- 

 graphy. Tyndale often promised that plowmen should read 

 his Testament, and for years it was thought this special copy 

 must be in English dialect. Examination by Ellis, the 



